Uh...don't look now, but SF is building more. You can't throw a stone in the city without hitting a new construction project, and there's something like 80,000

Uh...don't look now, but SF is building more. You can't throw a stone in the city without hitting a new construction project, and there's something like 80,000 more projects in the pipeline. And I'll wager that many of those won't even be completed, because the market is beginning to soften at the high end due to oversupply: http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-06-01/apartment-owners-fall-as-nyc-san-francisco-rents-seen-softening http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-06-01/apartment-... http://sf.curbed.com/2016/7/12/12163544/san-francisco-rent-price-decrease http://sf.curbed.com/2016/7/12/12163544/san-francisco-rent-p... That's what's so irrational about this debate: the construction market may be inefficient on the margins, but it's basically functioning as you would expect. The "build up" crowd has a poor understanding of the practical impacts of their proposals, and the "affordable housing only" crowd has a poor understanding of local real estate economics. Meanwhile, everyone ignores the elephant in the room.