[eli_gottlieb]

Umm... I spent last summer in the Bay Area, does that count?

I mean, here's the thing: housing prices in the not-shitty and already-gentrified parts of the Bay Area are batshit insane. As in, $1100/month for a rented room in a shared house, insane. And for this money you got your own private bathroom, use of the kitchen and backyard, and weekly maid service, because holy crap gentrification. Yet that was actually the cheap deal compared to paying $1200/month to rent a bunk bed in a "hacker house" further away from work via AirBNB.

The only possible good move I see is for the Bay Area to approve massive amounts of housing construction and increased density, but political will is 100% stacked against that move because local governments are almost always dominated by well-off local landowners (who've usually resided in the same single town for decades) rather than by the large population of salariat-class transplants who rent.