Agree, but I think you mean NYC of the West, not East.

This take is actively destructive. We need to let people CHOOSE to live WHERE they want to live - and let people who buy land CHOOSE to build housing for demand they perceive. That's it. That's the problem and the solution. It should be unconstitutional to limit housing production arbitrarily.

As soon as FAANG starts hiring people in Utah, Arkansas and Minnesota for the same roles at the same wages as they hire in the Bay, then people will move. As soon as VCs start funding founders in Boise, Kansas City and Chattanooga, then people will move.

Until then, maybe we work to improve the places where most of us are required to live by our jobs. (And yes, in parallel we can work to reduce the employer-mandated dependence on those areas).

>Everyone else can move literally anywhere else in the country

This sentiment makes me so angry. People -- very obviously -- need to live where the jobs are.

The fact that we want to say "oh, well if you don't want to live in the rent-seeking machine just go live in the desert" is the left-wing version of "pull yourself up by your bootstraps."

The fact is this. A housing crisis is a slow motion cascade. The landowners profit exactly because housing has been turned into a zero sum game. The more they profit, the more the political opposition will grow. Because the most desirable areas have been cordoned off, every single new resident will likely be on the losing side of the rent-seeking, and thus a pro-housing advocate. Thus, the political situation is a slow motion cascade, and the dam will break, every new building brings more pro-housing voters, every new building makes another new building more likely.

We could end this cycle by working together, but living in San Francisco, the side that has chosen to support rent-seeking cares only about themselves. You can see the political panic happening now. Scott Wiener will be our new rep. We will have hundreds of new units in the Marina. The west side has been upzoned. The only reason we're having the conversation is because the rent-seekers are starting to lose.