[zipfle]

We could try to regulate away the good fortune of the people who bought the house, or we could try to convince the tech industry that they actually don't all need to be colocated, alleviating competition for resources in that area. What I've observed about human nature suggests that neither would be very popular.

[justin]

Or we could build more housing

[taysic]

I agree with building more housing. There are a decent amount of empty lots in Berkeley... and a smallish downtown area that could be revamped. However, even in best case scenario with a bunch of new housing, unless people start selling their single family houses to get replaced by higher density housing, I don't see housing prices going down a ton.. it won't be cheap but it may be more accessible to the middle class.

[davidw]

> selling their single family houses to get replaced by higher density housing

That's exactly what would happen in a normal market.

[WillPostForFood]

Or you could move somewhere cheaper

[Decade]

That actually does happen. And then we have the twisted situation where the economists say the economy is great, practically zero unemployment, even construction workers are scarce in California; and at the same time workforce participation rates for working-age males is the lowest it has ever been. Given how terrible idle males tend to be, this is worrisome. http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-labor-force-men-201611...

People used to move to cities for the opportunities. Now it's increasingly difficult to do so. For lots of reasons we need to make it possible for people to move to the cities and thrive.

[seanp2k2]

Suburbs in most places = medium-low pay but fairly cheap housing country = cheap housing, no [tech] jobs Metro areas (more dense than suburbs, less dense than cities...e.g. most of the Bay Area) = expensive housing, medium or high pay Cities = extremely expensive, high pay (for tech jobs)

Pretty much every scenario seems to be "optimized" to have techies paying 30-50% of their monthly income to housing. You can't really win, but you can attempt to maximize the real dollar amount you end up left over with with each month. Working remotely is "cheating the system" and is therefore largely disallowed, or "work from home" is allowed only to quell some degree of outrage. Literally the industry that invented video chat doesn't [want to] understand how to use it to work remotely.