I agree with your question: "do we have a moral obligation to make housing as accessible as it could be for the largest number of people?" I say the answer to

I agree with your question: "do we have a moral obligation to make housing as accessible as it could be for the largest number of people?" I say the answer to that is yes. But if you make the question specific to a particular area, my answer would be no. Just about anywhere in the US is cheaper to house people than SF (other than NYC). It'd also probably be better for the economy to develop other urban and even suburban areas, because there would be more jobs related to people living in those areas (think cashiers, gas stations, places to eat, etc.) While some places are hard to live, because there's no water, no medical services, etc, there's a lot of places to go live. The big question now is about jobs. There's a lot of jobs in SF, and not a lot of jobs in small affordable towns, and people need jobs. But I think that's a self fulfilling cycle, in that tech jobs can really happen anywhere. You don't need a railroad, or factory, or have a port. Overall I feel like people in SF are complaining that they can't afford to live in SF. Not where they are standing, or in a great neighborhood, but they want to live in SF. And most of them are blaming the tech companies completely. I'm also not sure what system is helping or hurting people here. It seems to be simple economics. And while I'm all about helping people, knowing some of the ways people get around rent control in both SF and NYC, you're really fighting the clock to get things back to a normal equilibrium. I'm all about people demanding things get better, but it just seems like people are angry that things suck, and while there are things that we can do (both people and government), nobody is budging.