"It doesn't matter what gets built, just that it gets built and that everyone gets a place to live in" This makes no sense. ? People who live in SF (or any co

"It doesn't matter what gets built, just that it gets built and that everyone gets a place to live in" This makes no sense. ? People who live in SF (or any community) are already housed in SF. 'Everyone' already has a place to live. Unless by 'everyone' you mean 'everyone who wants to live there', which is absurd, because if cost were not part of the equation probably 50x the number of people in SF would not mind being there. That's why we have suppl and demand. "why would we tell people that they shouldn't come here? " This is really baffling. You do realize that if SF when from 600K people to 5M people (vertical, like HK or Vancouver) that it would be a completely different kind of city, and wouldn't resemble the current SF in any way? Nobody has a right to live anywhere. Every community has a right to influence the future of their own community. If SF residents want to 'go vertical' that's fine, if they don't that's fine as well. "Pretty much everyone I have heard talk about Vancouer is that Vancouver failed to build enough housing." 'Hearsay' (i.e. some random people said some stuff about an issue) does not help your argument. The facts are 1) Vancouver built out massively. You can see the city skyline has been totally transformed and 2) it's still completely unnafordable. Why is it unnafordable? Because of demand from foreign places and ultra low interest rates. Local salaries are not enough to supply that kind of demand. A lot of people moving in from foreign places (or just buying). For a variety of reasons. As a 'global safe zone' the demand is massive, far more so than the locals can endure. In this specific case, the problem is not 'build more' - the problem is 'don't allow foreign ownership', 'get interest rates under control' and 'reduce migration to normal levels' (Canada always has higher than normal migration, that's fine, but the amounts set lately are massive and most migrants prefer cities, putting additional pressures).