Among many things, including talent, opportunity, and soft power, the technology industry has brought tremendous tax revenue to the Bay Area. The budget of San Francisco literally doubled this decade, from around six billion to over twelve billion dollars. With our government’s incredible, historic abundance of wealth, the Board of Supervisors has presided over: a dramatic increase in homelessness, drug abuse, crime — now including home invasion — and a crippling cost of living that can be directly ascribed to the local landed gentry’s obsession with blocking new construction. This latter piece is important, as it appears to be the only thing our Board cares about. This is because significantly increasing the local housing supply would decrease the value of the multi-million dollar homes almost every single one of our Supervisors owns, and we could never have that.
Source: Extract or Die – Pirate Wires
This is the most-direct analysis I have seen of why Silicon Valley has become the most overpriced area in which to live in the US. The situation described here is heart-wrenchingly discouraging, but what’s completely and utterly heart-breaking is that nothing seems to be getting learned by it. I’ve watched the San Francisco housing market from afar — with no small amount of schadenfreude — for many years now. They’ve been on this course for a couple of decades or more, and it just keeps getting worse. Instead of enacting any policies to help matters, they keep doubling down on the liberal policies and NIMBY-ism that has gotten them into such a sorry state of affairs to begin with.