There are plenty of rich people in San Francisco which has a severe housing shortage and homelessness issue. Homelessness is the exhaust fumes of rapid growth, which SF and CA as a whole have experienced. Smart politics knows this and plans ahead to handle it, rather than allowing exploding housing costs stunt the growth of the city. There are many talented people who otherwise would have went to SF who didn’t.
You don’t have to go far from SF to get to single family houses, which should not be possible. They can solve this by adding a land value tax inversely proportional to the distance from specific city functions.
Hate to be the bearer of bad news but you could build infinite housing in San Francisco and the streets would still be riddled with drug-abusing vagrants. They may technically stop being "homeless" if you give them all a free apartment but it's not a magic wand that will solve SF's problems.
You can only have beautiful, clean and safe cities if you're willing to forbid people - who can walk in from anywhere at any time no matter how much you subsidize yesterday's batch with free housing - from making them ugly, dirty, and unsafe, and SF doesn't have the heart to make anybody do anything. They used to halfheartedly try to go through the motions, and for about 10 years now, they have given up even that.
I think some people should get subsidized housing, but when I say build more housing I’m talking about increasing the supply and putting it on the market so that regular people can afford it.
As it stands now housing is completely unaffordable. The median income in San Francisco is $120k which means half the people there don’t even make that. I would like my kid’s elementary school teacher to be able to afford not to have roommates.
Also for what it’s worth 70% of the homeless in SF are from SF.
By the way, I agree to you that overall, more normal (market rate) housing is the only reasonable way to make more housing affordable. The absurd SF system of paying $664K (2019 figure) to build one 'BMR' unit, then using a lottery to distribute it to one lucky family, while keeping most of the city zoned for SFH and fighting every developer who wants to build anything on the scraps where density isn't outright banned, is absurd.
But I gave up on SF and left years ago because the majority of their voters apparently like the situation, since they keep electing the same set of people and supporting ballot measures to keep trying the same failed strategies. Just one more tax increase. Just one more blocked condo tower, just one more $100M bond, and we'll fix homelessness AND housing affordability. Just one more!
(Self reported) - and why would you tell some survey taker you came in on a Greyhound from Bakersfield because you know they have far better amenities for you in SF?
