[ericmay]

Market forces take time to do things, they're not instantaneous. If San Francisco becomes so unaffordable that employers can't attract talent, then they'll have to open offices elsewhere. I live in Columbus. I'd love to see Anthropic or any leading tech company who can't attract talent to San Francisco due to cost/prices to set up shop here. And no, politics isn't enough of a reason to avoid states like Ohio.

Part of the "problem" with San Francisco real estate is that to develop it you have to buy the land, then construct a building, and prices for both of those items have gone up drastically due to a few different factors (inflationary effects, supply/demand, wealth creation and jobs, climate, and more) and so even if new housing does get created it's going to be rather expensive because of those factors.

[appreciatorBus]

Columbus is capable of exactly the same dynamics, there’s nothing magical about San Francisco dirt.

Regardless of how long it takes, there isn’t any other choice. You have to start sometime so let’s start now. Collectivism doesn’t get us out of this either. If we have a revolution tomorrow, and reduce rent to $100, there will be a 50 year waitlist to live in San Francisco and the only way to get it down to zero is to build build build. Yes, it will take a long time, but that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t do it or that we shouldn’t start now.