"$x is a 'good wage'" has always been a simple and loaded statement, but with the media highlighting economic inequality (esp. around tech and silicon valley) for so long, news & people now commonly discuss cost-of-living with wages and now look at the net value as the talking point.

It's not a loaded statement. No one is making you live a the place with the highest cost of living in the US.

"Just move away" is not a legitimate response to these problems.

There is a limited supply of housing and they have no interest in building more. That means only a limited number of people can live there. Someone has to move. Rents will just keep increasing until they do. Paying them more will just increase rents more until someone else is forced out.

And I do see it as a lifestyle choice. You can't choose a lot of things in life, but you can choose where you live. I don't have a huge amount of sympathy for people who choose to live in the most expensive part of the US, and then complain about the cost of living. Despite making boatloads more money than me. I certainly don't feel like I should be forced to subsidize their lifestyle choice (I know that isn't the argument presented here, but it is an issue that often comes up with these issues. I don't think cost of living should be taken into account with regard to government programs and subsidies.)

> ...they have no interest in building more

"They" are easy to motivate, though. You just need to make it profitable and possible to do. "They" are actually very reliable that way.

>There is a limited supply of housing and they have no interest in building more.

Who is "they"?

The people who own the local supply of housing.

At what point do you think that the interests of citizens who don't own property supersede the interests of those who do?

In political science terms: At the point where there are enough of the former to take the property from the latter (by any given method).