The big difference here is that I think a lot more people in San Francisco is a good thing, and a lot more cars on the road is a bad thing. I never specified t

The big difference here is that I think a lot more people in San Francisco is a good thing, and a lot more cars on the road is a bad thing. I never specified that N = the number of people currently living in San Francisco. The outflow of people is somewhat greater than the inflow, as children of existing residents (and often their parents, too) move out and new people move in, limited by the slow growth of homes. However, when we have so many employed homeless people in the streets, it’s pretty obvious that whatever N is, N > M. https://sf.curbed.com/2017/5/10/15612746/sf-math-teacher-housing-homeless https://sf.curbed.com/2017/5/10/15612746/sf-math-teacher-hou... If we actually built housing in accordance with demand, then the population of San Francisco would be much, much higher, but it wouldn’t be unlimited. I wish San Francisco would get over itself; not everybody wants to live here. Patrick Wolff estimated that we would need 50% more homes in the next 20 years to make housing affordable. http://www.sfexaminer.com/solve-affordability-crisis-bay-area-housing-stock-must-grow-50-percent-20-years/ http://www.sfexaminer.com/solve-affordability-crisis-bay-are... There’s no way we can get 50% more homes with our current system, project by project, 500 units here, 1,000 units there. We need about 200,000 units in San Francisco alone. We can get there by eliminating the density limits. Just look at the zoning maps, how much of the city is restricted to single-family homes. With the more ambitious versions of SB 827, we could have achieved 50% more homes by converting half of the single-family homes into quad-plexes, as was traditional before zoning was invented to keep poor people out of nice neighborhoods. http://sf-planning.org/zoning-maps http://sf-planning.org/zoning-maps https://www.nytimes.com/2017/08/03/opinion/sunday/zoning-laws-segregation-income.html https://www.nytimes.com/2017/08/03/opinion/sunday/zoning-law...