Meeting the neighbors isn’t going to fix the problem.
SF is cursed by its own success and appeal. They have brutally restricted growing housing and on top of that instituted rent control. The result is that new housing isn’t built anywhere near fast enough to keep pace with the booming economy. Worse, rent control does a number of very nasty things. First, it encourages people to not move around, further restricting the supply of housing. If you are rocking $400 a month because you get an apartment a couple of decades ago, you are a fool to leave. Second, it means that the only way to adjust your price is to brutally evict someone, and that someone has no where to go because with the housing shortage, anything new is going to cost vastly more. It is a fucking mess set into motion decades ago.
An economic boom should be something people are excited about. Yeah, techies make a pile of money, but people making money spend it supporting other jobs. These are not CEOs hording money in their money vault. These are glorified kids given a big pay check. Everyone in the area should be cashing in. Sure, there is always some level of displacement when any economic conditions change, but SF has made it infinitely worse.
The worst part is that there is no solution other than an econopoclypse that wipes out the area and SF gets to feel what it is like to get the Detroit treatment when your money pit of an industry dies, or pigs will fly and SF will have to unfuck their politics. An economic implosion would be ruinous for SF. SF has a massive stream of money coming in from the tech companies and have built their entire government around gobs of cash. Cutting off SF from tech would be like stealing Saudi Arabia’s oil. SF would be thoroughly and completely fucked. The government would be bankrupt in a year and the cascade of unemployment rip through city works. It would make people long for Google buses again. The other option, unfucking their politics would mean tearing down a huge portion of the housing regulation and building like mad to relieve the pressure. It isn’t going to happen, and even if it did, the unfucking would take years to accomplish, even assuming that a magic fairy lifted the vast majority of development regulations and bureaucracy overnight.
The “just talk to your neighbors” solution is on its face foolish. They want to be your neighbors. That is the problem. If they are your neighbor, it means they bought or rented property, driving up the cost. It isn’t going to get better. Until the number of housing being created exceeds the number of people moving in, or at the very least everyone moving in happens to be broke, SF is fucked. Build more housing, leave to a cheaper place, or pray for the economic gods to turn the area into a wasteland. You can get an apartment in Troy or Detroit real cheap. Those are the only three options.
