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Comment by toomuchtodo | Hacker News Reader

I'd say "Why work for a tech company that pushes the externalities of high housing costs onto you by not allowing remote work" but I assume it'd be drowned out by the same sound as the rush of folks to grab shovels and pick axes during the gold rush era.

Housing in the Bay Area is like roads; build more and capacity will simply be soaked up. Either move elsewhere or accept the SV tax. No property owner in their right mind would vote for more building (depressing the value of, most likely, the largest asset they own).

TL;DR Vote with your feet, prefer remote first companies.

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I think you're conflating discussion of what individuals should do with what the city should do.

Should workers vote with their feet for remote first companies? Absolutely. But that doesn't mean SF shouldn't also build more housing.

Saying you shouldn't build housing because people will just buy it all up it is like saying you shouldn't grow food in a famine because people will just eat it. The problem is that demand and supply are massively out of step, and that means you need to build a lot before it starts to even out.

And sure, there are political reasons it doesn't happen, but that doesn't mean it's not a good idea.

This is a really interesting contrarian perspective... I think the only thing that prevents it from being true is that you can very easily build a lot of housing stock - just build up! SF's restrictive zoning/NIMBY is the only thing in the way. The "housing congestion" is artificial - not "induced demand" like with the typical road problem.

I would argue you'll never be able to build so fast as to get ahead of tech hiring in SF, but only time will tell.

There's only so much land you can build on, and only so high you can build (whether through physics or legislation).

That's actually a really good point for housing as public infrastructure. The parallels to roads are very interesting.

Appreciate it. Everyone says "build baby build!"; Facebook, Google, etc have deep enough pockets they'll simply fill that new housing stock with tech workers and you'll be back to where you started (outrageously expensive housing).

You must destroy demand. It is the only way out.

Well demand is a good thing in this case. It implies good economic development. My point was more that market mechanisms don't make sense for public good infrastructure/monopolies.

Building as much (and sustainably) as possible + a land tax to discourage speculation and people not actually living in housing might be a better solution.

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