I think the article raises an important point. I'm skeptical that increasing the supply of housing in San Francisco will lower prices. I do think that San Franc

I think the article raises an important point. I'm skeptical that increasing the supply of housing in San Francisco will lower prices. I do think that San Francisco suppresses a lot of potential business activity through restrictive housing practices. Some of this business can move elsewhere, but there's a chance that some of it just doesn't happen. More housing might just stimulate the local economy (the agglomeration effect mentioned in this blog post). We certainly know that higher density doesn't necessarily produce lower prices - San Francisco recently passed Manhattan to become the most expensive housing market per housing unit, but Manhattan remains more expensive per square foot. And even if it does, existing San Francisco house owners might still benefit. The structure isn't all that valuable compared to the land, at this point. So even if greater density causes housing prices per unit drop, and even if it causes prices per square foot of living space to drop (due to multiple unit apartment buildings but where a single or two story house used to exist), the value per square foot of land could increase astronomically. And that's if per unit or per square foot prices drop. It could be that these prices would rise, which would only increase the value of land even more. This is why I don't buy into the notion that San Franciscans are anti-development because of a desire to maximize the dollar value of their house. It could be that they haven't thought it through like this, or it could be that the have and they disagree... but I think a lot of San Franciscans are driven by a motivation to keep things from changing. They like it this way, and they don't really want it to change. They got in a while ago, they can afford it, their property taxes are low due to prop 13, and their house value has gone up to the point where they don't really need it to go up much more. They just aren't motivated to seek more density, but it isn't necessarily because they want to maximize the value of their real estate asset (the land their house sits on). It could actually be indifference to the price of their house that motivates them to block new development.