[midoridensha]

Has anything thought about just doing... nothing? If a city doesn't want to make itself affordable for minimum wage workers, then why exactly is that a problem? I would encourage other municipalities to try to lure away these workers with some incentives, like a relocation bonus, but if places like SanFran refuse to build affordable housing, I feel like it would be better if they simply couldn't get anyone to work there for less than, say, $200k/year. If that means locals have to pay $50 for a Starbucks drink and $500-1000 for a sit-down restaurant meal for 1, then that seems like a good thing to me. At some point, the whole thing will collapse.

The reason there's no affordable housing (or public transit) is because municipalities don't want it. They're run by NIMBYs who block every attempt at building it, and who run up the costs for what housing there is. These people need to feel the consequences of their actions, instead of having some higher-level government compensate for them.