They can, but I think it is missing the other component. Housing alone in a vacuum is not going to. Its not a case of, build houses and they will come. You also need other things that attract people. Jobs, activities, amenities, restaurants, etc. But yes, if building more dwellings in Detroit along with building other things people want make Detroit more attractive to someone who would have moved to San Francisco instead, it can alleviate housing demand in San Fransisco. Which is what some of these places should be gunning for.

I hear what you are saying, but I have an issue with saying something to the effect of 'you are too poor to live in this state'. I can kinda accept it at the city level, but saying 'just move to another state' is a little much. And I am saying this as a person, who moved few thousand miles, because that was my best opportunity at the time.

> They do help though. Individuals need to realize they can’t afford to live in a place like California and have to give up that luxury if they want more affordable housing arrangements.

But this is no solution at all because everybody knows that. People want to live in California because there are jobs in California and not in Mississippi. In Mississippi you pay $100 less for a house and then make $200 less in income, so who is going to do that?

To fix this you either need to make housing cost less in California or make jobs pay more in Mississippi. But if anybody knew how to do the second one they'd be doing it already, whereas we do know how to do the first one -- build more housing.

> In Mississippi you pay $100 less for a house and then make $200 less in income, so who is going to do that?

I understand your point but you’d have to validate this assumption.

You’re also not accounting for the costs to build more housing in California. Instead something you may want to look at is moving employers to Mississippi (or wherever).

To take your point to its logical conclusion everyone in America would move to California for the highest paying jobs relative to housing. But that would never work in the real world even if we had no restrictions on housing development.

When you look at the entire planet I think this becomes more pronounced. When you look at hyper-local environments as well (say Manhattan) it also demonstrates the point.

> I understand your point but you’d have to validate this assumption.

This is basically the efficient market hypothesis. If it was better to live in Mississippi then people would be doing it. Which allows housing in California to be overpriced by the amount that jobs in California pay better, before it starts happening. Which is bad, because then all of the people still in California are overpaying for housing.

> You’re also not accounting for the costs to build more housing in California.

Stop inhibiting it from being built and people will voluntarily pay to build it.

> Instead something you may want to look at is moving employers to Mississippi (or wherever).

But how? And is that even good? There are some benefits to having regions specialize in things.

> To take your point to its logical conclusion everyone in America would move to California for the highest paying jobs relative to housing.

The high paying jobs are for people in particular industries that are currently concentrated in California. Those people do live in California, or other similarly situated places like New York, rather than places like Mississippi or West Virginia.

The way you prevent everybody in that industry from wanting to move to the same city is by creating more housing in every city, so that it balances and the result is not net migration but rather just an increase in real wages at the expense of incumbent landlords.

Living in a productive, walkable city is only a luxury because our public policy makes it so. We can unmake it, and we should, is the point.

I agree with you, but we don’t need to focus this on only San Francisco. Other cities should be walkable and productive. Tech companies should relocate jobs from “status” cities to non-status cities across the country.

Some cities have untapped potential for more suburban sprawl. It's unlikely that any such place capable of attracting tech investment has enough commutable land to make a difference before succumbing to the same problems.

Every area that's a candidate for urban density and public or active transportation has people living in it already. Those people are not any different from San Franciscans in terms of their concerns about gentrification, traffic, parking, shadows, or change.

Yeah those junior analysts should just transfer to Goldmans Poughkeepsie branch.

People join Goldman because it opens doors to other higher paying jobs.

If they don’t like it they can relocate to other financial services jobs in other locations, make less money, but have more discretionary income to spend on houses. Everyone can’t work at the most prestigious companies or life in the most prestigious zip codes.

Alternatively maybe Goldman should open tech and investment banking jobs in Poughkeepsie.