[kelnos]

Regardless of who is to blame, it's ridiculous that the response seems to be for people to stick their fingers in their ears and just go "la la la la la I don't see you" in the hopes that if they ignore the problem, all those nasty mean tech people will just go away.

Clearly, that's been working so well.

The only reasonable way out of this is to build. A lot. I don't care if people think that's "unfair" or will "change the character of the neighborhood". It's the only option, or we just end up stretching out this housing shortage crisis forever, or at least until all lower- and middle-income people are forced out of their homes and these areas turn into places where nobody but the rich can afford to live comfortably. (And then the rich realize that there are no restaurants, bars, or anything fun to do anymore because the people who'd take those service jobs don't feel like commuting from 2 hours away. So they flee the area and you end up with a wasteland.)

I've been living in the bay area for 16 years. I didn't feel financially secure enough to buy a place until about 4 or 5 years ago, and have finally managed to do it this year. And I'm one of the highly-paid tech people that you hate. We're here to stay. You can either stick your head in the ground and continue to moan about housing costs, or you can vote in politicians who will build more. Those are really the only two options.

[rcpt]

> The only reasonable way out of this is to build

In California we could fix education funding and unfuck our housing market by repealing Prop 13. It's not a total solution but it'd do than building at anything less than Shenzhen rates of construction.