21 year SF resident and tech worker here. A lot of the people who are complaining about the boom are using the late 1980s and early 1990s as their baseline, the

21 year SF resident and tech worker here. A lot of the people who are complaining about the boom are using the late 1980s and early 1990s as their baseline, the time in SF's history when it was actually cheap. That was shortly after Loma Prieta, and at the height of the AIDS epidemic, before anti-retrovirals came out. People were literally dropping like flies back then. There was quite a lot of underground culture then too. A friend referred to it as the "dancing in the ovens" period. Since then, SF has reverted to its mean. People are moving here again, building new housing is systematically blocked by NIMBYism, and predictably it has gotten expensive again. This is really a failure of long-term policy. The tech industry doesn't help itself in many cases, but if housing had been in balance with demand, things wouldn't be so out of control. These things always go in cycles. The get rich quick period will end. The people who are only here for money will leave. The people who are here for the city will stay or come back.