[sgc]

I agree, but want to note: Landlords only vote once. Short of being extremely patronizing and presuming that the residents of SF are easy to bamboozle when they are paying very high prices to live there, it has to be recognized that there is a broad appeal to those who live there, including those who rent, to not change the housing regulations - because they do not want the growth. It would seem the housing shortage is a feature not a bug for the majority of residents. That might be selfish (and I certainly don't promote it here), but I do think it has been a societal choice rather than one of a few elites.

[epistasis]

Unfortunately the residents of SF have been far too easy to bamboozle by demonizing developers, both real estate (the villain of so many movies) and software (blamed for rising rents and inequality in SF despite the long-standing inequality for financial services, etc.).

One of SF's big problems is the prevalence of culture war, vibes, and being hipper than thou overriding the economic interests of residents with less wealth.

[sgc]

My observation was that the people buying into that demonization don't do it because they are dumb, but because it serves their purposes.

I agree with your last sentence, but this works because that last group is a minority (even if barely), so the larger society votes against them. it only takes a small amount of poorer people who don't want growth for nostalgic / quality of city life reasons, and you have a pretty sizable majority coalition against change.

[Aloha]

The culture war issues largely forces some weird alignments, its a weird mashup of left social issues, an even weirder mix of left wing and right wing economics and "progressive" requirements that everyone hew to proper "optics". (My gripe with the progressives is that saying the right thing often appears to be more important than doing the right thing.)

In the end, its simply a recipe for never fixing any of the actual problems, with the added benefit of giving your base and activists plenty of ideological wars that can never be won.