Affordable housing is a symptom, not an issue. The basic issue is that living in a nice city falls prey to basic supply and demand curves. The unit of supply i

Affordable housing is a symptom, not an issue. The basic issue is that living in a nice city falls prey to basic supply and demand curves. The unit of supply is not the house itself, but everything that's included within a city - opportunity, lifestyle, family, friends, food, etc. These things are subjective to each individual, but have some universal similarities (ie: people generally prefer more opportunity to less). The population of demand is theoretically the entire world, and more practically, the body of people that wants to live in that city due to opportunities and lifestyle. Just speculating, I'd estimate demand to live in a nice city is much greater than the population by 10 or 100x. When supply is short and demand is not, you reach equilibrium at the point where only the people who can afford to live there do. "Afford" is subjective too, as some people are willing to pay much more in terms of rent and lifestyle sacrifices. In the case of SV, since wages are still extremely high, I think the cost of housing will still increase. It will squeeze the middle class lifestyle heavily (if its not doing so already). If you want to look at a mature housing market in the dystopian sense of the word, visit Hong Kong. An abundance of high paying finance jobs, low income taxes, and a crazy amount of powerful real estate investors made HK some of the most expensive housing in the world. But finance is no longer growing, real estate is squeezed of its profits, and the affordability of housing in HK is in serious crisis. Haven't lived here for too long, but it seems that lifestyle has been constantly compromised (small houses, live with your parents forever) by the expensiveness of housing. Or that affording your own house is actually a luxury, not a basic human right (depends on your perspective). Is there a long term solution? Quite simply, not unless we dramatically think of cities differently than we do currently. Fixed housing costs doesn't solve the basic situation that a city is a very attractive place to live, and that many people would like to move there if they could. Housing cost is currently the way of deciding who gets to live there, and what they're willing to give up for it.