We constantly hear that Marin and the Bay Area are enduring a housing crisis.

It’s obvious the price of purchasing a single-family house or condo has skyrocketed in recent decades. The impression development proponents and big-city politicians give is that the “crisis” is caused by us suburbanites. Those selfish folks enamored of their people-scaled communities force their compliant elected council members and county supervisors to disapprove needed new housing.

The story goes that prosperous coastal Californians are the cause of this unique “crisis.” If we’d just approve a slew of high-density development, presumably the so-called crisis would end.

That’s the logic behind both SB 35 and SB 827, San Francisco’s Democratic Sen. Scott Wiener’s draconian legislation which would effectively end local land use control.

Wiener’s proposed laws will mandate eight-story housing along most California streets served by buses.

Supposedly, suburban Bay Area is a selfish bastion compared with the rest of enlightened America and the developed world where a build-baby-build approach prevented the crisis.

Research shows Marin is hardly an outlier.

The following cities report a “housing crisis:” New York, Boston, Seattle, Berlin, Austin, Madison, Portland, London, Hong Kong, Metro Washington, Amsterdam, Los Angeles, Sydney and, of all places, Sacramento.

What all have in common is that they are economically prospering first-world cities. When it comes to housing development it doesn’t matter if cities are wide-open or restrictive.

There’s a housing crisis as well in economically distressed Buffalo, Cleveland, Detroit and parts of Philadelphia. Their crisis involves too many houses, many of which are abandoned and available for pennies.

Since the California Gold Rush, the Yukon, Silicon Valley and now the entire Bay Area — all boomtowns — face shortages and relatively high prices for everything, especially housing. Everyone wants to move there when the boom is expanding. There are never enough places to house everyone wanting to reap the bonanza at whatever is contemporaneously considered a “reasonable” price.

Detroit, Buffalo and Virginia City were boomtowns once, but their booms collapsed, as do all bubbles.

It’s the nature of free enterprise. It’s no different in the socialist world where the quality “reasonably priced” housing goes to party cadres. It’s what’s called supply and demand.

Building out of that dilemma is expensive, in both real dollars and long-term social community costs.

It’s the “American Way” to say “we’ve got to do something” when a dilemma appears. The result is often well-intentioned, ill-advised reactions like Wiener’s Senate bills 35 and 827. Neither will solve the underlying problem — because it’s unsolvable — and inevitably will result in unintended consequences.

Building more affordable housing to create diverse communities is a good move, but it’s folly to believe even pack-and-stack developments are going to lower the cost of owning a home or reducing rents unless the units are subsidized by taxpayers.

Such is the frustration of living in a boomtown.

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It was standing-room-only at the IJ Forums session in January on wildland fire at Corte Madera Town Hall. And more than 300 people this month jammed College of Marin’s Fusselman Hall at Assemblyman Marc Levine’s panel on Marin’s wildfire threat.

Efforts creating fire-safe communities are sprouting without prodding.

This is a grassroots uprising. Now it’s time for our elected officials — particularly county supervisors — to “get it.” Most people intellectually understand the risk, but until they get pound-the-table emotional and, yes, are politically motivated, the status quo will continue.

Good vegetation management plans are useless unless matched with sufficient funding. The key is to set new priorities.

That means foregoing luxuries like buying golf courses or building $20 million bike bridges and spending instead on cutting dead trees and brush.

If that doesn’t happen, the uprising’s next venue will be at the ballot box.

Columnist Dick Spotswood of Mill Valley writes about local issues on Wednesdays and Sundays. Email him at spotswood@comcast.net.