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It's pretty commonly accepted that the housing issue is caused by restrictions on building new housing. It's been Democratic leaders like Scott Weiner and Gavin Newsom that have been pushing hard to remove these restrictions. Trump's party on the other hand has been actively fighting against this, calling it some kind of war on the suburbs.
However, I get the impression that being priced out isn't what you (or the original poster) are mainly focused on here, rather this demographic change. Well, that's easy to address---contrary to what you might think if you spend a lot of time in places like this forum, most Americans and definitely most Californians care that people have similar values and ideals as them rather than that they look superficially similar. "Why aren't more people being radicalized because my personal and unpopular aesthetic preference isn't being satisfied?"---that question answers itself.
I'm sorry, but this is just sloppy demagoguery. If you're being priced out because supply is artificially restricted to such brutal extremes as housing in California, you don't blame the other people who are similarly being screwed over, you blame the people causing the artificial restriction! Anyone telling you otherwise is probably manipulating you.
This is putting way too high of a standard. Buildings are demolished and replaced all the time! If you don't allow this, you get nonsense like the "historic laundromat" in San Francisco. Putting all the cases like this together, there's a ridiculous amount of space in San Francisco itself for more housing when so much of the city looks like this.
Buildings are torn down and rebuilt all the time as they age and wear out. In the absence of zoning restrictions, homes in high-demand areas would be replaced piecemeal with taller and denser structures over a period of many years. We don't need a massive government intervention to flatten entire neighborhoods and remake them from scratch, we just need to give people the freedom to build what they want on their own property and market forces will take care of the rest.
They might like their neighbourhood, but they probably like $5 million for their quarter acre a lot more. Then big developers can consolidate and build something that can house more people and sell the units for $1 million each. Everyone wins: the people who sold their house, the developers, the people who now get to live affordably in the bay area, the government (a lot more tax for them) etc. etc.
Only losers are busybodies who want to restrict what others want to do with lan they own.
This is a signal that supply nowhere near matches the level of demand. It's a sign we need to build even more, not control building.
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