If you tally up all of the people who own their home in San Francisco and all of the people who live in rent-controlled apartments you get a majority of the vot

If you tally up all of the people who own their home in San Francisco and all of the people who live in rent-controlled apartments you get a majority of the voting population. It follows that either they don't have a stake in the housing crisis or that they stand to benefit from it. Either way they have no incentive to vote for solutions to the housing crisis. As long as the majority of voters in a democracy aren't negatively effected by an issue it's unlikely to get solved. Abolishing rent control at the state level (as WA did in the 1980's) would go a long way toward lowering the cost of housing in the bay area. All of a sudden the majority of the population would be clamoring to approve as much new housing as possible and investors would be rubbing their hands in glee thinking of how much money they could make by undercutting the existing market while still turning a larger profit than they would have previously. Seattle faces all of the same issues that San Francisco does, earthquake-proofing expenses, massive influx of population, water on three sides of the city, disproportionate zoning allocation to single family homes, etc. But unlike San Francisco, Seattle has seen an incredible construction boom in high-density housing because it's actually legally possible and economically viable to build.