After decades as a prime destination, demand has finally outpaced supply to an alarming degree.
To put it simply, San Francisco’s city culture drew a ton of people through the second half of the 20th-century. But the countercultural mecca could only do so much on the relatively tiny peninsula.
As the last 35 years have seen growth in a large number of US cities, housing prices has subsequently risen in tandem. Coupled with San Francisco’s long standing policies that oppose most new development in the city and you have a recipe for disaster.
San Francisco would have needed to average 5,000 new housing units a year to keep pace with the demand to live in the city. The 1,500 that is did average is not even half of the required number.
Other factors have only compounded the issue, as the rise of Silicon Valley put San Francisco in commuting range of the country’s largest job creator, and the Bay Area does not have a regional infrastructure on par with a city like New York.
Gabriel Metcalf says the real tragedy is that nobody intended this affordability crisis, instead, “It was simply the unintended consequence of so many people wanting to live here, coupled with local policies that made it impossible for the amount of housing to grow enough to absorb the demand.”
Recently, the San Francisco Planning and Urban Renewal Association (SPUR) published a report with a number of ideas to make San Francisco more affordable going forward. Much of the report is housing focused, in addition to aspects involving transportation systems and the minimum wage.
For the full story on SF’s affordability crisis, see here.
For the full SPUR report, see here.