[dragonwriter]

> (That was intended to be humorously ironic, but there's a serious point behind it: everything in the SFBA is more expensive than it would be if housing were more plentiful.)

No, except for housing, most things are less expensive, because more housing would mean more population but not proportionally more infrastructure (at least, without higher maintenance costs per unit, because the cheap choices are already built) for imports to the region, which means supply increases less than demand for anything with external inputs, which means prices go up.

This effect is even worse for things that are limited and local in supply, like unique local features, where you get increased demand with no increased supply, not merely supply increase less than proportional to demand. So prices on those go way up.