When you restrict the supply of something scarce or the demand for it goes up, the price increases.
In this case the "something" is housing. It's essentially illegal to build anything in the bay area which means the supply isn't changing much. But the demand is skyrocketing. Therefore the price is skyrocketing.
This would all be fixed very quickly if it was legal to buy some land, demolish what's on there, and build a skyscraper instead. San Francisco would look like Manhattan within two years.
If you study the 1906 earthquake, you find that a lot of people suddenly didn't have homes. They were all rehoused within a couple of weeks. Today, being illegal to build anything, and with rent controls on what does exist, we'd have a lot of homeless people for a long time.
We all want everyone to have a nice life, and we intend well with these laws. Economics concerns itself with what actually happens when you incent people though, not what we intend by those incentives.
This won't get a lot of votes, but it ended up as diet and exercise for me.
When I dropped caffeine and alcohol my anxiety went away. When I exercised my depression went away.
I tried a lot of things, but it ended up figuring out that I wasn't eating well or working out.
Now I do crossfit. I know, I know. It's a cult blah blah. But go try it. You need to be exercising every day to get all that endorphin goodness and plus, you meet a lot of fun people at crossfit. The community keeps me coming back. I don't get that biking (which I love) so I don't do it as much as crossfit. And I hate running. The key is to keep doing it, and that social component works magic. If you can work out at a home gym every day - good for you - but I lose interest and stop, then I get fat and lazy and depressed again.
As for food, I'm not a fan of cooking. But I found paleo then keto. And I avoid all the stuff you're told to eat. "healthy" grains, for example. I don't drink coke. Basically avoid all sugar. I'm basically paleo to paleo-keto end of the spectrum.
I really didn't think it would work but there it is.
When you restrict the supply of something scarce or the demand for it goes up, the price increases.
In this case the "something" is housing. It's essentially illegal to build anything in the bay area which means the supply isn't changing much. But the demand is skyrocketing. Therefore the price is skyrocketing.
This would all be fixed very quickly if it was legal to buy some land, demolish what's on there, and build a skyscraper instead. San Francisco would look like Manhattan within two years.
If you study the 1906 earthquake, you find that a lot of people suddenly didn't have homes. They were all rehoused within a couple of weeks. Today, being illegal to build anything, and with rent controls on what does exist, we'd have a lot of homeless people for a long time.
We all want everyone to have a nice life, and we intend well with these laws. Economics concerns itself with what actually happens when you incent people though, not what we intend by those incentives.