The Bay Area is a desirable place. Even if you limit tech workers wealthy people will buy property here.

Desirability isn't a fundamental property of nature. It's the aggregated choices of individuals. And individuals, and aggregations, can make different choices if given reason and opportunity.

Geography usually dictates desirability the most throughout human history. So yes, in a way it is a fundamental property of the natural environment. The only thing the Bay Area could lack in the future is fresh water.

Iconic landscapes, nature, and almost perfect weather make it expensive.

I’m dismissive because I find your nativist “sorry, we’re full” (or more appropriately, “fuck you, I got mine”) attitude to be contemptible.

Since you are the one in favor of curtailing the freedoms of businesses and people, the burden of proof should be on you to demonstrate why we cannot simply build our way out of this problem.

Again with the insults and dismissals. "Nativist"? "Fuck you, I got mine"?

I have no burden. I already stated: it would be far easier to restrict hiring for the very large, high-salary companies, than scaling out housing to accommodate for the yearly influx of tech works with explosive earnings.

How quickly do you think big companies could start hiring contract workers from smaller tech companies that are also in the bay area? Because they already hire a lot of employees as contractors. Limiting only large companies would simply cause that behavior to increase.

You seem to be underestimating the difficulty here by quite a bit. Cities can’t achieve a policy proposal like this, especially the large number of small legal jurisdictions that make up the Bay Area, and it would obviously have zero traction at the state level. The premise is ridiculous.

I think it’s frankly as ridiculous as anything believing we can build enough duplexes to bring down the $1.8MM median house price (SF).

Price curves are very nonlinear, especially surrounding the point where supply = demand. Housing prices in the Bay Area have about doubled over the last 10 years, while the population has increased by about 10%.

Anyhow, the point of all of this legislation isn’t that duplexes alone will necessarily provide enough housing. It just gives cities a fair chance to meet their housing targets via duplex building and preserve some local zoning preferences. If they fail, the state will step in to void local zoning laws and approve dense apartment buildings.

You made an assertion with zero proof. Do you think that dictating what businesses can do in terms of hiring has zero costs? That it won’t have a chilling effect on people establishing businesses in the area?