No, its not following the law of supply and demand. Its artificially suppressing supply in just about every city in the Bay Area. Not only that, SF as over 100k units of rent controlled apartments which is one of the worst things you can do for supply.

As someone else pointed out, building permits are being granted all over the place, especially along the corridors. Opposition to multi-story developments has given way over the past decade as all those environmentalists realized that low-density housing of the past decades was the chief cause of sprawl and traffic. Do you still live around here? If you want the secret of cost here, it isn't NIMBYism (which exists everywhere), it is found in Apple/Alphabet/Facebook and the rest of NASDAQ.

Image of building ordinances by height in San Francisco. Yellow is not good.

https://imgur.com/Tn7CSTX

Development to bring 42,000 office workers to Mountain View and the housing to support it

https://www.mv-voice.com/...dented-office-growth

Google's housing plan rejected

https://www.mv-voice.com/...n-citys-general-plan

Height and density limits to be extended in San Mateo

http://www.smdailyjournal.com/...b3-abe35f290db0.html

Here's an example of something that happens all too frequently in the Bay Area. Shrinking proposals

http://www.smdailyjournal.com/...28-fba1582870c9.html

I could go on and on.

Here is an article today from Seattle which has built a tremendous amount of housing in the past five years. Guess what, even with a booking economy and influx of residents, rents are going down. I wonder why?? Supply??

http://www.king5.com/...-years/281-508203311

A good listen explaining the two Califonias.

https://ww2.kqed.org/...vide/?a=commentsATag

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I'll be what I am
A solitary man

VDH has also given talks on the same subject in front of various groups. They're on YouTube. He's been on about the two Californias for some time now. I also know the place has changed in outlook and demeanor since I first was there in the late 1970s.

There's no denying the state's strengths in certain economic and resource arenas, but it has to get unfunded liabilities such as those public pension costs under control. It's also true, as an op-ed in the LA Times just pointed out the other day, that California is the poverty capital of America. About 20% of the state's population is poor. Nearly $1 trillion has been spent by state and local government in California to help the poor from 1992 to 2015. With 12% of the nation's population, the Golden State is also home to a third of all welfare recipients. All that generous spending on welfare seems to have failed to reduce poverty, however. In fact, it looks like it's made it worse

Circling back to a topic under discussion in this thread, there's the matter of California's housing costs as well, which the op-ed author says is making it impossible for the state's middle class to get ahead:

"Further contributing to the poverty problem is California's housing crisis. More than four in 10 households spent more than 30% of their income on housing in 2015. A shortage of available units has driven prices ever higher, far above income increases. And that shortage is a direct outgrowth of misguided policies.

"Counties and local governments have imposed restrictive land-use regulations that drove up the price of land and dwellings," explains analyst Wendell Cox. "Middle-income households have been forced to accept lower standards of living while the less fortunate have been driven into poverty by the high cost of housing." The California Environmental Quality Act, passed in 1971, is one example; it can add $1 million to the cost of completing a housing development, says Todd Williams, an Oakland attorney who chairs the Wendel Rosen Black & Dean land-use group. CEQA costs have been known to shut down entire homebuilding projects. CEQA reform would help increase housing supply, but there's no real movement to change the law."

Land-use restrictions, some NIMBYism in the Bay Area (a place whose real estate market I've written about extensively in years past for the San Francisco Chronicle's real estate section), and what appears to be a limited supply of housing created by a wide variety of state and local government policies may be choking off access to "affordable" middle class housing (affordable by California standards, because a "reasonably priced $400,000 starter home" in that state would purchase a mini-mansion here around the Detroit area). Take out the middle class, which will go somewhere else to afford that middle class lifestyle, and what you'll be left with are the rich and the poor. That's a recipe for trouble.

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"Politics is just show business for ugly people."

You wrote for the chronicle? I used to love the chronicle (back when it was on paper). I tip my hat to you sir...

You left out Maryland at 8.95%. State is said to be 5.75 but you have to live in a county and that brings it up to 8.95% for most people.

Tax and spend is fine, it's the tax, spend and borrow that gets you in trouble.

I feel for my son in the bay area. He's making 6 figures but buying a house anywhere but out in the hinterlands of the bay area is a dream. My second son lives in Fresno, makes about the same and already purchased a nice house three years ago. A tale of two sons.

The reason moonbeam has balanced the budget is deferred maintenance everywhere in the state. In my business, if I cut spending on my property and plant and don't take care of my employees, suddenly I have a great immediate bottom line. Fortunately for moonbeam, there is not a line item on CA's balance sheet for deferred maintenance and crumbling infrastructure. If there was, moonbeam's surplus would be a deficit into the trillions. CA likes to think of itself as progressive but in many ways it is really backwards.

Back to the OP, the delightful irony is that one of moonbeams main voting blocks was public employee unions who are now facing pension "adjustments."

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I'll be what I am
A solitary man

Sounds like they are both doing well! I'm not sure that you should pull out the violin yet. From what I've seen from many friends' kids, the ones who can maintain a stable marriage with a spouse who works end up just fine financially.

I feel for my son in the bay area. He's making 6 figures but buying a house anywhere but out in the hinterlands of the bay area is a dream. //

I don't know man, I think it would be a blessing him not being able to get in now. Sure values are sky high and going higher, but at some point it could all crash down and that area is going to get hit hardest. High fliers come down harder it seems. Just rent for awhile, pocket some down payment money, and just wait for either a crash, or correction. I mean maybe it never comes, but doesn't it always??


The worst thing would be that dad lent him some money to get the huge down payment and he ends up with a huge mortgage, and then the market takes a 20 to 30% hit. Underwater on 1.5 million shacks has to be the worst. Maybe he will be able to transfer to just about any other county in the state with his company, would be nice around SLO or north San Diego county.. Beach home or track home shack, let me see...... (-;

Heard the podcast, it wasn't too illuminating. On the positive side, VDH was way less vitriolic than he is in a lot of his op-ed pieces. OTOH, after some valid (and less than valid complaints), he doesn't really have many tangible solutions, primarily because the main drivers of inequality are market-driven. Examples of "less than valid" points:

• He complained about electrical energy costs in California, which are somewhat high, but certainly not the highest. His complaint devolved into an observation that folks in Fresno had to spend three times more on air-conditioning than folks in the Bay Area.... because it's hotter there. (?).
• He complained about lack of school choice, but didn't explain how that would transform the Central Valley (dubious), but how Obama sent his kids to private school (messenger attack and non-sequitur).

A lot of specific attacks went that way. He was at his best describing the changes in his community, but really just chalked it up to the success of global capitalism. Krasny was being way too deferential, and callers only got to ask questions without rebuttal (and a few of them were too rabid), so he didn't get called on many weak points. He certainly pointed out problems, but his own ideological leanings have left him unable to push for plausible solutions, and with little more than attacks on the terrible elites that he rubs elbows with. Perhaps he explains solutions better in other videos.