[ringwalt]

Well you can't really consider the Bay Area housing bubble and cost of living spike without taking the tech boom into account. I think it's both the fault of NIMBYism/failure to build sufficient housing in the South Bay, and the fault of large companies, VCs, and startups for doubling down on the South Bay instead of distributing new jobs more evenly throughout the rest of the country.

[wbl]

Why should they given the gains to concentration? Other metro like Chicago and NYC do have tech offices.

[ringwalt]

I'm not convinced that concentrating tech exclusively in the valley has objective network effects that outweigh the costs.

Regardless, from personal experience most of my colleagues would prefer to live in any large metro area but the South Bay (including friends in Mountain View, some of whom were told in the interview process that Google did not have availability in NYC, Chicago, or Pittsburgh). It's untenable for Google to hugely expand its Mountain View campus (http://www.mountainview.gov/depts/comdev/planning/activeproj...) while its satellite offices, where many employees would prefer to work, are at a standstill. This is driving potential employees on the east coast into Mountain View, where they don't want to be, who end up pricing out working-class families from the bay who are desperately trying to stay there.

[eropple]

Maybe to not effectively destroy cities and communities with CoL traps? Y'know. Basic "we are members of a society and should be working to make it better" stuff. (Shocking, I know, but there have been eras where even Big Businessmans thought about this.)

[akgerber]

The 'cost of living trap' is due far more to a growing amount of wages (good!) chasing after an essentially-capped housing supply near those jobs. When well-paying manufacturing jobs boomed in Detroit during the 1910s auto boom, its population doubled in a decade, and increased by 50% in the following decade— but its housing stock grew to match! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Detroit#Demographics

On the other hand, the population of Menlo Park has increased around 10% in the midst of a world-historical boom: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Menlo_Park,_California And neighboring Atherton is still well below its peak population: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atherton,_California This is because they've zoned out pretty much all new apartment, or even sometimes 2-story house, construction.

So instead more and more of those rising wages chase after the same houses.

[pxeboot]

Aren't the high wages already a response to the high cost of living? If cheaper housing was available, what would stop wages from (slowly) going down?

[austenallred]

Competition for talent

[eropple]

I am aware of everything you are citing. City policy should change. At the same time, the corporate interests that are triggering this should have the social conscience to seek alternate solutions rather than straining the public good to its breaking point. Corporations exist to serve society, not the other way around, and bad actors should be treated as such.

[wbl]

Uhm, you do know that CA housing supply has not grown nearly as fast as in other states? We are not keeping up with population growth. That's why CoL is high. What should be an easy deal of more tax dollars from the rich and services for the poor has become more money for landlords and evicting the poor.

[selectodude]

Those cities should stop destroying themselves and allow new construction.

[eropple]

Ah, yes. It's the cities' fault. Only the cities'. Not the people piling on top while knowing it's both untenable and unfair to their fellow citizens to piss in the public pool as they are--they're blameless.

You know we can walk and chew gum at the same time, right?

[selectodude]

What does that even mean?

[wbl]

Piling housing on top is exactly what is illegal.