People keep talking about the rising prices, but what is being done? What CAN be done? Its supply and demand. San Francisco will always be expensive because it is a desirable location for certain groups of high-earning people.
Being "progressive" is great, but we live in the real world and if you refuse to do things to lower prices in the name of culture, prices will keep going up. Ironically, this will also hurt, if not destroy, the "culture" that they're trying to protect in the first place.
There's a lot that can be done. The most obvious thing to do is remove rent control and zoning restrictions and push for the construction of higher buildings with more units. Stop living in the past and pretending it's a quaint coastal town.
San Francisco is statistically the second most dense city in the US, wedged into a geographically bounded ~50 sq miles. It's dumbfounding that there were probably more high rise apartment buildings (>20 stories) in my zip code back in NY than in all of SF.
SF and the bay area have an anti-development attitude in general, leading to a predictable supply shortage and thus the crazy rents you have now.
This is how you solve it:
1. Allow development, stop getting in the way.
2. Create punitive pigovian long term unused property taxes to encourage property use. Stop land owners from letting property just sit there unused and discourage using property just as a fancy bank account for the wealthy.
I find it interesting that everyone sees this as a sliding scale with culture on one side and rent on the other. There's a third variable that the city could play with to keep the rent down while not building a single building:
Raise Taxes
If you want to lower prices and you can't/won't increase supply, the obvious solution is to lower demand. Adding a sharp jump in the local income tax at a high income level will free up housing space as wealthy citizens leave the city. The less affluent won't see a tax increase, since it's outside their bracket, but they will see housing become available, lowering rent prices.
Of course, this will be a hit on the economy as all the wealthy individuals leave the area, but it decreases rent while keeping culture constant.
Being "progressive" is great, but we live in the real world and if you refuse to do things to lower prices in the name of culture, prices will keep going up. Ironically, this will also hurt, if not destroy, the "culture" that they're trying to protect in the first place.