> If housing in the bay area goes down in price, you get people moving in from New York, LA, Boston, Austin Yes, and the other direction too, if NYC dropped h

> If housing in the bay area goes down in price, you get people moving in from New York, LA, Boston, Austin Yes, and the other direction too, if NYC dropped hugely in price probably a lot of people would move from SF. If a city manages to solve its housing problem in some enormous way some of the benefit would go to other cities. The reverse is true too, SF building nowhere near enough will cause people to move away and drive up housing prices in other places like Austin. This sounds more like the reality today. It's a real effect, but it seems like the best action for people who need housing is still to build more. The main thing is does luxury housing act like a totally separate market. For example, if no affordable luxury 2bd apartments are available, will a software engineer move to Boston from SF instead of settling for an ordinary 2bd apartment. I'd expect the majority of the time high-income people who can't afford luxury apartments simply displace middle-income people in ordinary apartments rather than move cities, but I don't have hard data on it.