The Registry, a blog about the San Francisco real estate market, ran a great post on housing supply and demand, transportation, and wealth by John McNellis called Let them Commute. Along with the headline’s reference to Marie Antoinette’s famous and misunderstood quote “let them eat cake,” he also quotes F. Scott Fitzgerald’s Great Gatsby: the rich are different than you and me.

Rich cities are different, too, but—like rich people—they have their own seemingly insoluble problems. It’s just that their problems are different. At first blush, less fortunate municipalities would beg for their issues. While every other city from Bangor to Burbank is scrabbling to improve its sputtering job growth, a handful of charmed towns should be embarrassed by their employment riches.

From 2012 to 2014, the San Francisco Bay Area created 382,500 jobs while providing only 68,200 new dwellings (homes and apartments). The forecast for 2015 is roughly another 4 new jobs for each new dwelling. Even if you consider economists’ predictions on a par with those of shamans, you know the dismal science is dead-on about supply and demand. The 2014 median house price in America was $206,800. In San Francisco, it was $1,006,600, five times more. Median apartment rents nationwide are $1,231 while San Francisco’s weigh in at $3,396.

Nothing shocking here. Except McNellis’ article challenges the notion that what’s behind all the hand wringing about housing is really about the costs suffered by the poor renter. If cities that were facing affordability issues really cared about the poor, they’d open their doors widely to growth. But they don’t. 

The proof is in the numbers. Create 382,500 jobs but only 68,200 housing units because of more rules and taxes and only the poor suffer. Most social justice advocates in the housing arena advocate for policies that would add costs to housing and reduce production and make it riskier. So do single-family advocates. Their common cause are things like quality of life, neighborhood character, and affordability, but the effect of what they push for is what McNellis describes as the moated city with the drawbridge permanently up.

In the housing debate sometimes we have to say the same thing over, and over, and over again. McNellis’ latest post says it again but says it well.