The zoning, height limits, floor area ratio limits, etc. in various cities are the substantiation of the claim. Also, the (brutally obvious) fact that housing is ridiculously expensive here.
Some city plans include provisions for some affordable housing, but that misses the point of the article. The point is about housing supply: creating a few units of "affordable" housing and requiring them to be sold below market to income-qualified people doesn't address the supply problem at all. It just changes the distributional effects of the supply problem a tiny bit.
The claim is not that politicians are stupid, exactly, it's that bay area incumbent residents, collectively, have made stupid land-use decisions. As long as you own real estate here, and the value of your home keeps going up, why would you complain? You'd only have a problem if you were trying to move here, or if you're trying to recruit here, or if you have the imagination to see all the increased economic activity that would occur if the housing supply problem was solved. And most residents don't have the ability to see that.
Some city plans include provisions for some affordable housing, but that misses the point of the article. The point is about housing supply: creating a few units of "affordable" housing and requiring them to be sold below market to income-qualified people doesn't address the supply problem at all. It just changes the distributional effects of the supply problem a tiny bit.
The claim is not that politicians are stupid, exactly, it's that bay area incumbent residents, collectively, have made stupid land-use decisions. As long as you own real estate here, and the value of your home keeps going up, why would you complain? You'd only have a problem if you were trying to move here, or if you're trying to recruit here, or if you have the imagination to see all the increased economic activity that would occur if the housing supply problem was solved. And most residents don't have the ability to see that.