These extremely high housing costs in coastal California areas are really a two part problem - they are not an infrastructure or building houses problem but a h

These extremely high housing costs in coastal California areas are really a two part problem - they are not an infrastructure or building houses problem but a human nature problem and a regulation problem. The first issue(human nature) is the weather and lifestyle of these places is extremely desirable to people given most of the US is either very humid a majority of the year, very cold during the winter with snow, or extremely hot(100F for 20+ days of the year). So you have this extremely mild climate that is very family friendly and is by the beach and is also next to a funnel of money from the entire planet - silicon valley, where millions are getting extremely rich. It doesn't take alot to realize that the market is going to make these places very expensive due to housing supply and demand. As for the second point(regulation) due to excessive building code regulations which make the cost of housing artificially high to ensure new buildings are up to code, even if you build hundreds or thousands of new units they are going to be very pricey(per unit) and unless the govt. heavily subsidies these units they will never be affordable to anyone making less than 200k a year(its just building materials, cost of labor and requiring the need for the building to be up to code). And then you have the first point being that you build the new units and people from all over the country and of course the bay area will jump on them and you are back to square one(high housing costs). I don't see how this problem resolves itself as there is alot of money coming into the US the past few years during the tech boom and this is a absolute side effect of this unprecedented flow of money into CA and a few other places on earth. But trying to fight human nature and the market is a exercise in futility given how well thats gone in California the past 7-8 years. As a side note I grew up in the south sf bay area and spent alot of time in santa cruz with my friends and know the area very, very well. Kind of surprised to say the least how expensive its gotten compared to the sf bay area proper.