[youngButEager]

The east coast of the USA was settled first, recall. What did they do back east to 'solve' this problem of "we're running out of space"? They increased the density of occupants per unit of land -- they built UPWARD.

That will have to happen here too. It's already happened in LA.

There will always be crybabies like this attorney during the growing pains of a popular 'destination city.'

For now, think of turning the Peninsula into tall buildings, concrete and asphalt. Think how the picturesque drive up highway 280 to San Francisco from the South Bay will be affected.

Everyone wants the nature. Not the tall buildings, concrete and asphalt.

Crybabies need to do precisely what this gal chose -- LEAVE. There's the door. That's how markets work -- when the price of a good or service is too high, demand drops. Well, she's a living example of a smidgen of demand disappearing.

People who don't like markets should move to Venezuela or North Korea or Cuba.

[sctb]

> crybabies

Personal insults are not OK on Hacker News, please leave these out of comments.

[lindenksv1]

There is no free market in housing. Supply is very tightly constrained by the city via a system of very stringent zoning (3 stories max most of the city, only 3% of the city is even zone for multifamily housing) and taxes. What you see happening in the Bay Area isn't the result of the laws of supply and demand, it's the result of the laws passed by city councils. There's no developer in the world who wouldn't love to build more housing in one of the most booming places in the country. They're not not doing it because it doesn't make financial sense or because there's no demand there. They're not doing it because the housing market in the Bay Area has been regulated to death.

[raldi]

> For now, think of turning the Peninsula into tall buildings, concrete and asphalt.

No, the opposite. Urban density reduces sprawl. The more people you can accommodate in the city core, the less you need to spoil the surrounding countryside.

[bufordsharkley]

What you're missing here is that the market delivers rent to the holders of a natural resource (land) far in excess to its marginal product-- which is to say economic rent.

Landowners in the Bay Area are rentiers, and unless we enact policy to reverse this, we'll never have a competitive market in housing.