Only 10% of California's water use is urban/residential.
> The residents have voted and agreed to limit development, keep the city as it is
In violation of state law, put in place by a larger number of state voters.
> If you want development and/or high density living, move to other locations or NY or Texas or Florida.
People go where the jobs are.
The jobs go where the people are. If companies can't find people in SF because no one can afford to live there they'll move.
They may yet leave. But if so, what will SF have accomplished? Becoming Aspen on the bay?
Also, in SF we have more than enough water. Maybe you are thinking of Southern California more than 300 miles away?
If you don’t like citizens organizing and advocating for democratic outcomes in the bay area, you can move to NY or Texas or Florida, where democratic decisions do not impact the bay area. (Do you see how the “just move away” rhetoric breaks down under a little bit of scrutiny?)
One challenge in YIMBY-oriented organizing is that "future residents" who would benefit most from new developments have no political power to wield in order to get them approved — because they don't live there yet — because they can't, since there is not housing for them
Of course nobody forces me to live in SF. But if I leave someone will just take my place - this isn’t just a housing problem, it’s also a mismatch in where jobs are relative to where housing is. My desk will get reassigned to someone else who will likely also live in SF (because we can afford it, but the people with families making my food can’t).
The least we can do now is fix it forward and make sure it doesn’t get worse. Even for people like me and the hypothetical low wage worker with a family, the sooner we fix this the sooner we can reap the benefits.
One reason I am in this position to begin with is that Bay Area municipalities approved huge office projects without increasing housing in tandem. Those policies were explicitly to attract people like me - high income office workers who would generate payroll and sales taxes while stimulating the local economy as I buy goods and services, without a large net increase in public expenditures since the static housing supply also keeps the population relatively static.
I have no reservations in calling that out as a mistake. I understand the rationale behind those decisions and if I hadn’t seen what it led to now, I may have supported them. I can understand why people who aren’t affected because they are longtime homeowners, or who were affected and bought in at high prices, really don’t want to rock the boat.
But those policies are reaching their breaking point and materially affecting people’s lives negatively. Because of high housing prices many people are living in smaller/older units, crammed in with more people than they’d prefer, or living very far away from their job. Besides high housing prices this has plenty of other negative effects like bad traffic, social spending on people with what would be middle incomes in the rest of the country, and definitely a contributor to homelessness (something like half of which have jobs and live in unstable environments like their cars - not talking about the addicts at 7th and Market).
It’s systemic - you can rationalize the pain by saying any individual could move away if they don’t like it, but that doesn’t change the imbalance in jobs relative to housing.
Also, I can easily pay for as much housing as I want. But I’d like to stay here and have room for children, not deal with high priced everywhere because rent is too high and it’s too hard to find low skill workers, and not see my neighbors suffer. If you don’t like my presence in this area why don’t you move?
I live on the East Coast. You should come here its great.
At some point though don't rents become high enough it's almost a 'luxury' to live there? What proportion of people paying say $15k/month in rent are in poverty?
If the tyranny of the majority decide they want SF to be an ultra-rich enclave I'm trying to imagine how that can even be stopped, regardless. There's no constitutional right to free-market housing. IMO the 51% of best situated home/property owners will always have the incentive to impose their tyranny on others, and if they flush out the 49% due to elevated cost and repeat this iteratively you end up with an ever-concentrated hyper-wealthy enclave. That kind of self-reinforcing loop appears to be what SF is getting locked into.
Besides what the other comments are saying about residential water usage being a non factor, I'll just point out a competitor: Randstad. For those not aware, Randtad is the Amsterdam metro area.
Ranstad has as many people as the Bay Area in half the space, so double density (to your "the Bay Area is full" bit).
Except for techbros and probably a few other really small population groups, and unfortunately also except for the weather (the Bay Area has better weather), Randstad completely mops the floor with the Bay Area in terms of livability.
What I'm saying is that for how much money there is in the Bay Area, it is comparatively crap to other top metro areas around the world. Is there even a city from the Bay Area in the top most liveable cities in the world?
It's bad development, not development itself. Car centric, bad public transport, low population densities in cities, etc.
If its so bad, how come its so expensive and people want to move there? The population of Amsterdam is the same as it was 60 years ago. It isn't popular, I'm not sure why you think its a good model - esp as it restricts development so strictly.