Well it's a combination of tech companies liking the bay area location and the supply of any kind of real estate being artificially limited by NIMBYs. We can "solve" this be either reducing demand or increasing supply. To me decreasing demand seems like a terrible solution. You want people to live in your city. It's insane! Something happened a few decades ago where we started seeing cities as "completed" and any change from that state is seen as bad and"loss of character". Cities are changing, living things. If we prevent the change the city dies.

The more reasonable solution that is being acted on is to raise the issue up to the level of the state government where the representative of those impacted by the issue but unable to vote in the relevant local elections can pass laws restricting the ability of local governments to obstruct development.

If I were going to take a job in, for example, the midwest, I would expect a higher salary in order to compensate for the lower quality of life during the winter. Wouldn't that then defeat the purpose of moving a company somewhere cheaper in order to pay people less?

Edit: toomuchtodo brings up a good point. I was thinking more in terms of a higher pay after adjusting for cost of living (e.g. being payed the same amount as an engineer in SF while living in Cleveland). Otherwise it seems like I would be taking both a pay cut and a cost of living cut.

You're making an assumption that there aren't others who would take the job without requiring a bump in pay to compensate for winters (quite a contingent of tech workers already in Chicago, for example). There are already large cohorts of tech professionals who take a pay cut (not saying they should, but they do) for the ability to work remote. I would be remiss if I didn't mention that Google and Facebook are expanding rapidly in the downtown Chicago area. [1]

Bay Area tech salaries are already the highest in the nation; you could make the pitch to an employer, but I think you'd be hard pressed to get a higher salary for living in the midwest (considering the much lower cost of living). Midwest workers (tech workers anywhere outside of the Bay Area really) would be thrilled to get SFBA salaries where they live.

> Menlo Park, Calif.-based Facebook is negotiating to lease more than 200,000 square feet in a recently constructed office tower at 151 N. Franklin St. in the Loop, according to sources.

> Meanwhile, sources said, Google plans to add more than 100,000 square feet of office space in the city’s Fulton Market district, where the company already has a large Midwest headquarters.

> The new Facebook space alone would be large enough to accommodate more than 1,000 employees.

[1] http://www.chicagotribune.com/business/columnists/ori/ct-biz...

> Bay Area tech salaries are already the highest in the nation; you could make the pitch to an employer, but I think you'd be hard pressed to get a higher salary for living in the midwest (considering the much lower cost of living).

Not just the lower cost of living. Being compensated for living through winters is a novel idea, but if you're thinking about the soft factors that don't directly involve salary and cost of living, not having to deal with the bay area commutes is pretty strong compensation in and of itself.

Having to take a pay cut and live through a season you get to ignore in CA could be kind of a bummer for some people. Getting as much as 20% of your waking life back in time spent not commuting can be a pretty strong compensation for it, though.

edit: please do comment in addition to downvoting, if you see a problem with the logic here

There's more to quality of life than just temperature. After 4 years in the Valley, I will certainly take Chicago winter over anything in SV, even with a reasonable pay cut.

> Either pay the market rate, or move somewhere cheaper.

Yes, I am sure that this is what the home owners who own multi-million dollar properties would want. Either leave or drive up their housing prices.

But another solution is to vote for new laws that would increase their taxes (an thus incentive them to sell), or vote for laws that would drive down the price of their investment.

The renters in the city are slowly but surely increasing in voting power, as less and less people are able to afford owning property, until we are soon able to outvote the rich property owners. And when that happens we can pass laws that will reduce prices, raise taxes on the rich property owners, and ruin their investments.

Sure, and also ruin the investments of the property owners who are anything but rich, but managed to scrape their away into buying property anyway.

But who cares about them as long as current renters get to take their homes? /s

Well, if they are living in their house, I am not sure why it would matter if the value of it goes down.

They will still have a house to live in.

If instead it is an "investment", well that's the risk of investing. Nobody is forcing them to sell.

It is actually literally the opposite. It is that other people want to have a right to build stuff on property that they own, and the other home owner wants to force people not to do thie, in order to protect their investment.

How about people are instead allowed to build things on property that they own and nobody forces them to do otherwise?

Did you read any of the preceding - about prop 13 in particular? It doesn’t sound like it.