[lmm]

> Also include in your answer why just living somewhere affordable is no longer an option, seeing as that is what seemingly everyone else so far in human history has done. In fact, it wasn't all that long ago that Palo Alto itself was just some undesirable hayfields. Every place you don't want to live is just a few decades away from being someone else's coveted dream home.

Until the '50s nowhere had zoning laws, that's the big difference. Not to mention all the other ways to make housing illegal by stealth, like building code and electrical code and plumbing code requirements that make it illegal to work on anything yourself. It is now functionally illegal to build anything in cities (occasionally a developer who pays a big enough brib^H^H campaign contribution to the mayor's reelec^H^H an unaffiliated PAC supporting candidates that align with their interests gets to build a couple of buildings); if you're willing to build in an empty hayfield then sure, you can build a handful of houses for people who don't need jobs until there are enough people living there that they vote to incorporate and make building illegal. It's now functionally impossible to obtain a house near where the jobs are unless you are a boomer who got one back when it wasn't illegal, or are descended from one, or otherwise have generational wealth.

The people who built when that was a small town growing into a bigger town have pulled the ladder up behind them; that's new, and happening everywhere, and unfair. Especially because the whole scam only works because existing homes are grandfathered in. If you made the existing homeowners play by the same rules they're imposing on everyone else, and tore down any house where the guy who did the wiring back in 1955 couldn't prove that they had the required 4 years of college or what have you, things would get sorted out pretty quick.