You can't really make the comparison being made in #1 without a lot of assumptions that just don't actually hold water in the market. Seattle has a population

You can't really make the comparison being made in #1 without a lot of assumptions that just don't actually hold water in the market. Seattle has a population of 652k, with an average density of 8k/sq mi. San Francisco has a population of 864k, with an average density of 18.5k/sq mi. And yet: Seattle has a jobs-to-housing ratio of 1.5 SF has a jobs-to-housing ratio of 1.6 So what explains SF's higher costs? Density coupled with massive wealth inequality. Period. Upzoning increases land value in a tight market. Markets remain tight in desirable locations and no amount of development has been able to keep up; population is growing, job growth in the tech sector is high, and the wealth gap coupled with high demand means that there's enormous price elasticity for some, who then push the rest out. High density construction carries a higher barrier to entry, and is almost exclusively allocated to rental units. Additionally, high density construction allows one to combine multiple profitable uses in the same plot; commercial and residential. This accelerates the wealth divide, putting more money into the hands of fewer and fewer land owners, with rents tracking whatever the high demand is capable of sustaining. Nobody else ever builds up equity, the city winds up being owned by fewer and fewer, and the low end of the market is priced out. This then requires attempts at government correction, through subsidized housing; either as outright grants to developers, zoning variances granted to allow higher margins in exchange for permanently affordable (but still rental!) units, tax credits, etc. This further accelerates the growth of the wealth divide, as development and development investment companies begin to specialize in cornering access to (and brokerage of) these economic perks that are unavailable to individual potential home owners. Density does not fix housing. It literally never has, and I do not even begin to understand how this conception became the norm amongst housing activists. As near as I call tell, it's something that's been green/liberal-washed as a necessity by those who profit the most from the government-funded development incentives.