When there isn't enough room for everybody, the rich get served first. So everytime somebody protests a new housing development which adds to the supply, they are advocating for the rich to stay, and to kick out the same number of people that would otherwise occupy those units.
In the 20th century, we declared housing a human right. But in San Francisco, we have declared that only the wealthy should be able to afford housing, and that the everybody else should leave.
An HOA might, I’m not too familiar with them, but as I understand it even they have legal limits on the restrictions they can place on people moving in, so maybe not. Someone else would have to chime in on that one.
Agreed otherwise.
It reminds me of this classic line: “The law, in its majestic equality, forbids rich and poor alike to sleep under bridges, to beg in the streets, and to steal loaves of bread.” -- Anatole France
To the extent that this means the freedom of poor people to get out of the way of rich people, you can see how some would not be excited. SF's black population has fallen by half in recent decades, for example.
Honestly, the geographic narrowness of the tech boom has always been weird. At the same time we've been selling the limitless power of the Internet to connect people, we've also been working for companies whose structures didn't demonstrate that, and in a financing ecosystem where physical proximity to VCs was a major advantage. So San Francisco got turned into a bedroom community for South Bay companies in areas that refused to build adequate housing for their workers.
Thanks to the pandemic, that is evaporating. We'll see what happens in 6-12 months, when everybody's vaccinated. But the people I'm talking to are unable to remember why commuting every day was ever a thing, and they're very reluctant to go back to it. In which case, we'll write SF's housing issues off as just another bubble.