And if you're a regular person just trying to find a normal, unfurnished apartment to actually live in? Tough luck. Those units are off the market.

It's easy to get mad at Blueground — and there are reasons to be frustrated. They're vacuuming up inventory that could otherwise house long-term residents, and not everyone who's dealt with them walks away happy. As one Bay Area renter put it after relocating for work, "They are highly disorganized and take a lot of money upfront for short-term furnished rentals that offer fewer amenities, and less support than a typical Airbnb."

But here's the thing: Blueground is filling a real market niche. Companies need temporary housing for mobile workers, and they're willing to pay a premium for it. Blueground is just doing what any rational business does — responding to incentives.

The real question is why those incentives exist in the first place. And the answer is one San Francisco and the broader Bay Area refuse to grapple with honestly: we don't build enough housing. One local resident nailed it: "Bay Area people stop new housing from being built. So housing gets super expensive. That's the entire story."

That really is the entire story. When supply is artificially constrained by decades of NIMBY zoning, Byzantine permitting processes, and environmental review abuse, every available unit becomes a battleground between competing uses. Corporate housing outbids regular renters not because corporate housing companies are evil, but because scarcity drives prices up and makes premium uses more profitable.

Blaming Blueground for the housing crisis is like blaming scalpers for expensive concert tickets when the venue only has 200 seats. Build more seats. The scalpers disappear.

Until Bay Area cities get serious about approving housing at the scale the region actually needs, we'll keep finding new villains to blame while the underlying problem festers. Blueground didn't create this mess. Your city council did.