I don't understand why people feel they have a right to move to a particular place and live there at a particular price.
I don't understand why people feel they should have the right to decide what their neighbors do with their property (as long as they're not opening up a waste treatment facility or something). But that's beside the point.
There are two main reasons why "just move" isn't easily actionable advice: jobs and family.
The reason expensive areas are expensive is because they have desirable jobs. (One) reason cheap areas are cheap is because they don't have as many desirable jobs. Those of us working in tech in the Bay Area accept that we earn high salaries in part because the rent is so high. So we grumble but we can make ends meet and life is mostly good.
For those who aren't so lucky to be working in hot industries with good pay, support of family and friends matters much more. Single-mom has grandma looking after the kid so she can work; if she moves to Des Moines or wherever the rent is lower, she loses that free childcare she'd been getting. Since most jobs come through referrals, she'd have to have professional and social networks in those cities before moving. Otherwise it's just a leap into the unknown to move before having an offer in hand. If you don't work in tech, I don't think having 15 recruiters emailing you before breakfast is the norm.
They will have a litany of troubles and problems that they go through, ready to fire off, no matter how well off they are.
I know I have one. It's not fair, so I try not to listen to it, but I do have one. A whole litany.
Well the fact remains that it does not happen. When I purchased my home in 2003 I received no tax credits, support from the government, bonuses, or a pat on the back. I put 20% down after saving up everything I could for a solid 5 years after landing a great job after college, which again wasn't subsidized or had grants for.
No one else does this but me and the ridiculous sense of entitlement or attitude of it being "unfair" that someone else can't afford it really stems from a deeper issue.
Get off your high horse about the government charitability towards homes, the government didn’t provide these programs out of its own back pocket, our tax dollars provide these programs.
Are you being sarcastic?
If you're not a Bay Area (or other unaffordable area) resident, then your viewpoint is rational. The price-to-income ratio of your new neighbor should be about the same as your price-to-income ratio when you moved in.
If you're a resident of metro San Francisco, San Jose, Denver, Dallas, Austin, Washington DC, or Boston, then you are expecting different behavior from your new neighbors. They will need to save for 10 or more years for that down payment of 20% due to competition from each other. The income required to live in these metro areas is much higher. The lower-middle class is pushed out. Upper-middle class folks who want to live below their means don't have the option to.
Fairness is the wrong metric; life in all societies is fundamentally unfair.
It is just nonsensical for you to expect other people who are chasing opportunity (those metros are where the best jobs are) to give up, when you chased that same opportunity when you moved where you currently live.
Because our economy is changing, this means it's harder, but don't knock people for trying.
That's not true at all. They could sell their homes for their mindbogglingly inflated values to condo developers in exchange for multiple units in the new buildings. They wouldn't have to move at all (except temporarily, while construction is going on), and would even gain an asset that they can rent out or sell later.
What they're fighting for is the right to keep their low-density suburb, single-family home, lifestyle. Which would be fine except that their insistence on doing this is impoverishing everyone else.