If the free market was less constrained, there would be less of a housing problem, because the pursuit of money by developers would cause more housing to be built. Acting like the artificial scarcity of housing has nothing to do with it and telling people to just reduce demand because it's a market problem is a weird solution, since the first thing everyone learns about markets is that their is supply and demand which together affect prices.

This looks like there’s an assumption that there’s a lot of space in the Bay Area to grow in terms of houses which isn’t necessarily a correct premise. The Bay Area does have a lot of housing, there are always new developments being made around the area, and it is actually crowded. I don’t think an artificial scarcity is involved.

There are plenty of limits on what types of housing can be built in what areas. How many stories high can you build? Can it be multi-family housing (condos, apartments)? Can you subdivide a larger property into smaller ones, and what rules are imposed on that? These are the types of things that are used to limit housing. Sometimes there are good reasons for the rule, sometimes not. Sometimes there's a good reason for the general rule, but not the current limits it enforces.

It's not an issue of building out, or even necessarily of building up, but just allowing and/or encouraging more building and allowing some building to replace existing low-density housing.

I've lived an hour North of SF my entire life. I've seen how housing policies affects SF as well as where I live (which is also very expensive, but not quite to the same level). People don't like to allow too much change into a neighborhood because it changes the nature of the community. News flash, so does allowing housing prices to double or triple over a couple decades. The only difference is that the existing land owners get to capitalize on that, so it's not just about change, it's also about people controlling the flow of benefits of an area to maximize their own benefits.

Trust me you don't want to live in a city where developers are allowed to build as much as they want. This is how you end up in 2nd word megapolis which is hardly pleasant to be in. Past certain size incentives should exist to spread people across other cities/metro.

If we lived in a capitalist society, it would be easy to build more housing supply in the bay area.