That's a perfectly fair stance to take, but then people will simply have to accept that rents will be sky high in cities like SF in perpetuity. The high prices are fundamentally a supply issue; build enough housing and prices will inevitably fall.
In don't understand this. If you can get permission to knock down a two-storey house and build a six-storey apartment block, doesn't that increase the value of your house?
Why not? If my neighbor gets planning permission to do something, doesn't that increase the chance that I might also get such permission in future? If so, doesn't that increase the value of my house?
Only 1/N homes would be converted to apartment complexes. If 1/N * (gain for selling home to build apartments) < (average loss in home values) it's a net loss for the community.
So, the real question is how much home density are you are adding. Further, density can get vastly higher as people would be adding 20 story buildings not just smaller apartments which means most homes would not be converted.
