I agree with the pessimism that we are unlikely to completely solve the problem with these measures, although I believe that is for political economy reasons and not because it's impossible. However I also don't think we should let the perfect be the enemy of the good.

> I wonder how many new houses would need to be built to reduce prices to what I would consider affordable.

A single new unit permits one additional family to live in the Bay Area. Even if we don't build enough to let everyone live here who wants to, each one we do build counts. And if we built enough it would actually bring prices down.

> I wonder why developers would want to sell houses at that rate when new townhomes in Dublin are going for 700k and your looking at 1m+ for a new home

Developers just need to earn a spread between development cost and purchase price. Developers will happily build units as long as that spread is sufficient compensation. We are a long way from bringing that spread down to zero (and if we ever got there houses would be much cheaper!!).

> I wonder how people with high home values, especially those who bought in high, will feel about losing so much of their home's value

Increased as of right property rights actually increases land value and probably ends up being net positive for homeowners.

> suspect homes in SF won't become "affordable" again until another economic crash of some sort

This is probably true, but increased supply can at least alleviate the problem.

Prices won't lower at all. This is a movement by large SF landowners to raise the worth of the land they already own, using credulous tech kids as patsies. They will use new units as tax writeoffs and collateral for loans to scarf up land in gentrifying neighborhoods in other cities and other countries, so they'd rather let them sit vacant than let rents or prices drop by a penny.

This is the same as when pharmaceutical companies set up and fund patient advocacy organizations.

I'm not sure I'm that much of a conspiracy theorist, but I definitely don't buy what's being sold; making housing affordable. Affordable to me doesn't mean you can physically locate yourself in SF, it means you can own a home while growing your wealth and saving for retirement. The old wisdom was 1/3 your take home for housing, max.

If people really want to talk about making housing affordable lets here what affordable means to them and how many new homes at what price would be required to get us there. Yes, I KNOW if you build enough homes prices will drop. Tell me what the target is and how many homes are enough. Otherwise, yeah, it smells like people with some sorta ulterior motive selling snake oil.

Demand that they publish funding sources. PACs and 501c4s; my bet is that the mean contribution is $20K, and probably not from the "YIMBYs" that are protesting the fact that they can't afford BYs, but from a half-dozen or fewer very wealthy people.