A subset of people in Boulder are convinced that the problem is not housing, but "too many jobs". I wish I could send them to spend a year in Greece or Southern Italy or some other such place that is blissfully free of those awful jobs.
Interesting... I've heard "It's not the lack of jobs that's the problem, it's the lack of demand. We're out of demand." before, but didn't think I'd ever hear "we have too many jobs"...
"A couple of weeks ago, I went to the East Boulder workshop and couldn't wait to discuss my ideas about slowing down job growth in Boulder and other ideas for the housing issues."
All sorts of new development in Boulder is restricted. Not sure the specifics, but it's kept prices quite high. Tiny 50 year old shacks go for a million dollars.
It's particularly acute in California. The East Coast has many denser areas. California has a stunning lack of density given how many people live there and want to live there.
The DC area is right there with wealth with SF and Silicon Valley and is more educated. While still being rather expensive, it's much cheaper than SF and Silicon Valley. Why? Much better density and land use. Not only is the District adding 100,000 housing units a decade, Arlington, Alexandria, Bethesda, Silver Spring, etc. have downtown areas with density that are Metro accessible and more are being built and added to.
And we still deal with NIMBYs out here! Everyone does. But you have to put rules in place that limit their influence. People need to live somewhere. Density is good for the environment (and California has major issues with air quality in certain areas).
These are all things that people in California understand, but NIMBYism is carried out at the local level, and there aren't strong enough land use laws in place to brunt their force.
Every metro in the country would love to have a huge influx of white collar companies and workers. The idea that this is the fault of tech companies or tech workers is ridiculous. The problem is very poor land use policies, and people are taking out their frustration out on individuals just trying to work and live, when the real problem is not being addressed at all.
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