[true_religion]

As an outsider, the discussion of San Fransisco housing seems incredibly polarized.

Are advocates of new housing talking about disenfranchising their parents, grandparents, and older aunts and uncles? Are they actually talking about tearing down their old family homes that they grew up in and putting up apartment complexes instead?

If so then... wow that's a level of forward-thinking that's truly rare.

If not ... then these people are trying to have their cake and eat it too.

They want whatever district they move to temporarily for jobs to utterly change its character to suit them, at the expense of those already resident there. And yet anything they find sentimental, and all of their families' land assets, will remain safe in their hometowns far-far from San Fransisco.

[closeparen]

You don't get to criticize us for being temporary when it is the policies you write that force us out.

And yes, if for some reason millions of people wanted to move to Wisconsin, I'd rather they built on the site of my family home than lived in RVs and mega-commuted. People's well being matters more than the sentimental value of manufactured goods.

I didn't win the genetic lottery to be born in a place with economic opportunity. But I am an American, and since we live in America and not 14th century feudal Europe, I am not obligated to stay put.

[true_religion]

People's wellbeing would be served equally well by the California government designating land for development outside of the intractable San Fran polity, and encouraging tech companies, restaurants, and commercial entities to invest in the area.

The essence of democracy is allowing people to determine their own future, not forcing it upon them due to outside interests.

We aren't 14th century serfs, and closer to home---we aren't waitresses, maintenance workers, or migrant farmers. We are tech workers in a market were demand vastly outstrips demand, so the notion that we are forced to move to San Francisco alone for work lacks perspective.

People want to live in San Fran, not merely because of work, but because of the character of the city, the trendy restaurants, etc. People want San Fran for its luxuries, and its that which I do not believe trumps the ownership stakes of the residents whom already live there.

[closeparen]

A local's desire for a quiet street doesn't morally outweigh another American's desire to live on that street.

>The essence of democracy is allowing people to determine their own future

Precisely! We The People determined that it would be our future to have freedom of movement, via the Privileges and Immunities Clause. When we ratified the 14th Amendment, we further reiterated that every American citizen is entitled to equal status under state laws.

That's why prosperous cities resist growth through ham-fisted but plausibly-deniable proxy measures like zoning, rent control, and environmental review. Their goals could be achieved with more elegance and fewer damaging side effects by establishing immigration controls, but they can't, because the American community says that's off-limits.

Subsets of America closing themselves off is a perversion of the right to self-determination, same as it is when people and corporations decide not to pay their federal taxes. It doesn't matter that San Franciscans don't want more neighbors, any more than it matters that the tax evader wants to keep his income. The democratic process ordained that you have to share.

Americans trying to move around America are not outside interests, they are members of the community. Local NIMBY policies transfer wealth to small subsets while harming the community in aggregate, which is right down the middle of behaviors that governments should and usually do shut down.

As people with disposable income, tech workers find a way: redirect some of it to rent. The real victims of opportunity hoarding are the others in the economically stagnant towns we come from would like to follow us but can't. And of course, locals who remain subject to the pressure-cooker housing market, because NIMBY policies are imperfect and ensnare some natives too (those who didn't lock in rent control or mortgages in time).