You could easily solve the immediate problem by exempting locals' primary residence - CA already has policies like prop 13 after all. More generally, who could

You could easily solve the immediate problem by exempting locals' primary residence - CA already has policies like prop 13 after all. More generally, who could reasonably be considered to have a legitimate interest in housing policy? I can think of a few potential groups: 1) People who own homes in the locality 2) Renters 3) People who work in locality but commute 4) (This is the biggest stretch) People left behind by economic geography On economic geography: as the economy evolves over time, the location of jobs changes. As farming is automated, there are less jobs in the rural Midwest. After the steel mills closed, Pittsburgh lost population. As the economy has become more knowledge and technology oriented, more jobs have moved to relatively dense urban areas that can support very liquid job markets and a high degree of labor specialization. Obviously there's a lot of subjective trade-offs here. Personally, I feel there should be a middle ground (on policies around development) between "kick existing residents out of their homes" and "no middle class housing in areas with lots of job growth".