Here's your Bay Area housing update in three acts: Home prices are surging at their fastest clip in eight years. Plans to build nearly 4,000 new homes are being fought tooth and nail. And we're debating a tax on luxury vacants instead of addressing why no one can afford to live here.

Let's start with the numbers. San Francisco home prices jumped roughly 14% year-over-year, according to recent data, with condos climbing even faster. Properties are routinely selling well above asking price. Meanwhile, the national market remains essentially flat. So congratulations, San Francisco — we're not just expensive, we're accelerating our expensiveness.

You'd think this would create some urgency around building more housing. You would be wrong.

A proposal to build nearly 4,000 homes — many of them over existing Safeway locations — has predictably divided Bay Area residents. As one local put it, "It's wild how hard it is to get something like this built. Places like Miami and Tampa are putting up projects just like this faster than you can keep track. It really shouldn't be this difficult to build housing — especially dense housing where it's most needed."

They're right. Mixed-use buildings with grocery stores on the ground floor aren't some radical experiment. Another Bay Area resident pointed out, "I remember there being a Safeway at the bottom of the building I lived in as a kid in the city. It was so convenient. This isn't a new idea."

It's not. It's just an idea that gets strangled by permitting delays, neighborhood opposition, and a bureaucratic process that treats every housing project like it needs to survive a decade of review.

Then there's the proposed vacancy tax on luxury properties that sit empty. Look, we get the appeal — stick it to the absentee owners. But let's be honest about what this actually accomplishes. One resident summed it up perfectly: "Do I think it will significantly help the housing crisis? No. Do I still want to do it? Yes."

That's the kind of emotional policymaking that keeps us stuck. Feel-good taxes that generate headlines but don't generate housing. The math is brutally simple: when demand outpaces supply, prices go up. The only serious answer is building more — faster, denser, and with far less red tape.

Every month we spend debating instead of building is another month prices climb further out of reach for the people who actually make this city run.