There's a reason people keep pulling out their cameras in this city. The light hitting the Painted Ladies at golden hour. Fog rolling through the Gate like it owns the place. A Chinatown alley bathed in neon. San Francisco, for all its problems — and we catalog plenty of them — is stunningly, absurdly beautiful.

A recent wave of city photography making the rounds online is a nice reminder of that. As one local put it, a particular shot looked like "a Wes Anderson" frame, though they were quick to note that San Francisco is "more of a Hitchcock, Don Siegel, David Fincher town." Fair point. This city has always had an edge underneath the postcard beauty.

And that edge is worth acknowledging. Because the people snapping these gorgeous photos? A lot of them are barely holding on financially. When the state officially classifies a single person earning $109,700 as "low income" in San Francisco, you know something has gone sideways. One resident summed it up bluntly: "I make less than 70k a year. I got very lucky with an apartment that my partner and I split. It's hard, but I can save sometimes. I have no idea what I would do if I need to get another job."

That's the tension at the heart of modern San Francisco. The beauty is real. The community is real — from Taishanese families who've been here for generations to transplants going on seven years who still can't believe their luck. But the cost of staying? That's real too, and it's driven by decades of City Hall policies that restrict housing supply, layer on regulatory costs, and treat every new unit like a political football.

We love seeing the gorgeous photography. We love the civic pride behind it. But let's be honest: the best thing San Francisco could do for the people who love this city is make it possible for them to actually afford this city. That means building more housing, cutting permitting nonsense, and stopping the bureaucratic gatekeeping that keeps supply artificially low.

San Francisco doesn't need more Instagram filters. It needs fewer barriers to staying.