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Comment by timr | Hacker News Reader

So, first off, it needs to be acknowledged that this was written by the "Bay Area Council", which is a PR machine for a dues-paying group of bay area corporations, including Facebook and Google [1]. Consider the source.

Second, while I'm the first to acknowledge that SF needs to build up, it's clearly absurd to say that the tech boom is "not the cause" of the city's housing problems -- that's like saying that skiing isn't the cause of Aspen's housing prices. Nonsense. It's plain that tech is the proximal cause, even if you believe that the boom has brought both positive and negative consequences to the city (as I do).

Fair debate on this topic has to begin with the acknowledgement that the tech companies' policies are indirectly driving a displacement of non-tech workers from the city. It's dishonest to claim otherwise.

[1] http://www.bayareacouncil.org/about-us/member-companies/

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> It's plain that tech is the proximal cause

It's half of the proximal cause. Housing prices have increased because of the interaction of supply and demand. Blaming the tech boom focuses only on the demand side, but the supply constraints (height limits, zoning density limits, etc.) are just as important.

The supply didn't decrease. The demand increased. That's the proximal cause.

If you like. The policy levers are all on the supply side, though (unless you want to start kicking out major employers or something). So it's pointless to complain about demand side changes.

"The policy levers are all on the supply side, though"

Are you kidding? Remember the big white buses that everyone is mad about? They play a role here.

The valley tech companies have mitigated the natural barrier that would ordinarily limit the number of tech employees living in the city -- the pain of commuting. So rather than staying close to work and building communities where they live, they use the city as a glorified suburb, but with cushy private transportation. There are a variety of things wrong with this, not the least of which is the fact that they reduce housing supply for the natives.

Econ 101 theories about supply and demand don't apply when large external forces are subsidizing the demand side of the equation. One can quite reasonably argue that instead of "building up" (which is expensive and disruptive) SF should just ban the private buses -- it would be cheaper, more natural, and would solve the same problem.

Ban private buses? You mean, like, prevent people from operating private buses entirely? No greyhound? You can't mean that, because it's ridiculous, but I'm not sure exactly what you do mean.

A huge number of people employed on the peninsula would absolutely live close to work and build communities there, if those peninsula cities weren't so hell-bent on preventing dense development. There just isn't the supply there.

And what the f do you mean by "natives", anyway? Native Americans? Everyone else is an immigrant. If you moved here a year before I did, do you have some more legitimate claim to live here? I don't think so.

Of course supply and demand applies to the situation. Your suggestion of banning private buses, while ridiculous, is specifically an attempt to influence demand. Your own suggested solution assumes that the "Econ 101" theory applies.

Once enough of the employees are commuting, I would imagine that any smart business would look at the situation and think "Time to move the office to the city or at least build a satellite office there."

The demand has been increasing for like forever. The supply has never reacted to the increase in demand. The complete paralysis when it comes to rezoning is an equally valid proximal cause. The Bay Area hasn't been constructing housing to meet the demand caused by job growth, tech or otherwise, for 30-40 years now.

True, but one of the comments on the article is especially telling:

    "The title of this piece expresses a false choice. It's not 
    meaningful to consider the development of industry separately 
    from the development of housing for the workers in industry. We 
    chose in the early 1950s to develop industry in the Bay Area 
    without regard for where the workers in the new workplaces 
    would live. Long before the current wave of tech immigrants 
    reached San Francisco there were people commuting to the Bay 
    Area from Manteca and Mountain Home and Santa Rosa and Santa 
    Cruz. Silicon Valley activists raised alarms in the early 1970s 
    that four new jobs were being created for each new housing unit 
    that was built. It shows an astonishing nearsightedness that 
    the people and the governments of Bay Area cities are only now 
    realizing that this is problematic."

It's observations like that that further support my views that San Francisco (and the Bay Area in general) is managed by children and has been for an incredibly long time. Considering how many people in the Bay Area are inventing the future, the local government here exhibits a level of shortsightedness that I have previously only witnessed in developing countries.

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