As someone who grew up in a small town, do you understand how condescending this is? People have homes there, have families there, work hard and live decent lives. Just because they live at a pace you're not accustomed to, doesn't make living there some kind of hellish existence. Many would say the same about a filthy, overcrowded, crime-ridden city, of which I've lived in several across the US.
Phrased another way, if someone came in for an interview and said "I'm from Laketon, Indiana", do you think it would be appropriate for the interviewer to say "Oh, you're from the middle of nowhere." ? I don't think that would be appropriate at all.
I'm sure where you live is lovely, but I still don't want to move there myself.
You need to come to grips with that objective fact.
Am I entitled to own my investment properties? No.
Am I entitled to block neighbouring housing from being built? No.
But society allows both of these things because they ostensibly should result in a better society. Of course, they may not, and if they don't result in a better society, we should probably turn the dial back on these factors, but not get rid of them altogether.
So should anyone be entitled to live anywhere? No. But should a middle-class person be able to build a life in places where there are opportunities for job growth (and like it or not, right now, that's the big cities)? Probably, if we think that will result in a better society. So we may need to turns some policy dials to ensure this will happen.
No. You are not entitled to access to specific jobs or a specific area.
My read is that the person you're responding to is in the middle of that gap; and your response frames them as being on one extreme edge and then says an acceptable answer is to go to the other extreme edge.
You can disagree with how we divvy up SF but claiming you should get to live there is in direct contradiction with the idea that everyone should get to live there.
Someone, somehow, will get bumped. You’re just advocating for a system that would put you there at the expense of someone else.
Your argument contributes nothing because it fails to address the real negative consequences of unaffordable housing. After a point (which we most certainly have crossed), it affects society in strongly negative ways.
I don't know what kind of society you want to live in, but I don't want any part of that.
It's perfectly reasonable to be priced out of some areas of the world, there is nothing at all wrong with that as a general concept.
The issue is that we’re seriously restricting growth and innovation in favor of using housing as a financial investment. Yes, it’s necessary to have some degree of inequality and nobody is entitled to to live in any exact spot, but it’s gotten out of hand at this point, it’s hurting our societies, and it’s unsustainable.
[1] https://www.zillow.com/homedetails/8725-Maple-Ave-Gary-IN-46...
[2] https://www.google.com/maps/@41.6199213,-87.2571163,16z
People have such high expectations of housing, they are pricing themselves out. I do live in a 60+ year old, 1400 sf house, but that doesn't bother me.
You do not deserve to live in San Francisco. Sorry.
What's probably a bit more toxic about your attitude is the implied belief that you deserve "better" than everywhere else in the US, that San Francisco is "yours* and not anyone else's.
And not for nothing, but I do have children (two) and am entirely capable of empathizing with others.
How does that work out in your mind without abolishing the concept of property ownership? What happens when somebody wants to build their house where you already have yours?
If I moved to a a suburb because I wanted a smaller scale, and my neighbor wanted to build an apartment building next door, I'd probably push back against that. It feels like what is happening in SF is some extension of that.. projects getting caught up in community board reviews that happen slowly and unpredictably, and are staffed by old-timer SF residents who want to keep the city small. Frustrating for sure, but hard to fault them for that, if that's why they moved there pre-tech boom?
I personally live in NYC and appreciate that you can build whatever you want here!
And no, "too bad, go live in the middle of nowhere" isn't an acceptable answer.