San Francisco's housing market has lost its mind
techcrunch.com
techcrunch.com
San Francisco and many other North American cities only allow the first three of the four with any significant freedom.
Production is either banned outright on large majorities of the available land, or heavily constrained and focussed to ensure that any new production happens directly on top of tenants and the most vulnerable rather than on top of relatively lightly occupied single-family houses.
Part of the "problem" with San Francisco real estate is that to develop it you have to buy the land, then construct a building, and prices for both of those items have gone up drastically due to a few different factors (inflationary effects, supply/demand, wealth creation and jobs, climate, and more) and so even if new housing does get created it's going to be rather expensive because of those factors.
Regardless of how long it takes, there isn’t any other choice. You have to start sometime so let’s start now. Collectivism doesn’t get us out of this either. If we have a revolution tomorrow, and reduce rent to $100, there will be a 50 year waitlist to live in San Francisco and the only way to get it down to zero is to build build build. Yes, it will take a long time, but that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t do it or that we shouldn’t start now.