Curtis Aaron leaves his house at 9 a.m. and drives to work as a recreation center director for the San Francisco Recreation and Park Department. He tries to leave enough time for the trip; he's expected on the job at noon.
Aaron lives in Stockton. He moved there with his wife and two kids three years ago because "there was no way I could buy a place in San Francisco, not even close." His commute takes three hours one way when traffic is bad. He drives by himself in a Honda Accord and spends $400 a month on gas.
Peter works for the city as a programmer and lives in Suisun City, where he moved to buy a house and start a family. Born and raised in San Francisco, he is now single again, with grown-up children and a commute that takes a little more than an hour on a good day.
"I'd love to move back. I love city life, but I want to be a homeowner, and I can't afford that in the city," Peter, who asked us not to use his last name, explained. "I work two blocks from where I grew up and my mom's place, which she sold 20 years ago. Her house is nothing fancy, but it's going for $1.
2 million. There's no way in hell I could buy that."
Aaron and Peter aren't paupers; they have good, unionized city jobs. They're people who by any normal standard would be considered middle-class — except that they simply can't afford to live in the city where they work. So they drive long distances every day, burning fossil fuels and wasting thousands of productive hours each year.
Their stories are hardly unique or new; they represent part of the core of the city's most pressing problem: a lack of affordable housing.
Just about everyone on all sides of the political debate agrees that people like Aaron and Peter ought to be able to live in San Francisco. Keeping people who work here close to their jobs is good for the environment, good for the community, and good for the workers.
"A lack of affordable housing is one of the city's greatest challenges," Mayor Gavin Newsom acknowledged in his 2007–08 draft budget.
The mayor's answer — which at times has the support of environmentalists — is in part to allow private developers to build dense, high-rise condominiums, sold at whatever price the market will bear, with a small percentage set aside for people who are slightly less well-off.
The idea is that downtown housing will appeal to people who work in town, keeping them out of their cars and fighting sprawl. And it assumes that if enough market-rate housing is built, eventually the price will come down. In the meantime, demanding that developers make somewhere around 15 percent of their units available at below-market rates should help people like Aaron and Peter — as well as the people who make far less money, who can never buy even a moderately priced unit, and who are being displaced from this city at an alarming rate. And a modest amount of public money, combined with existing state and federal funding, will make affordable housing available to people at all income levels.
But the facts are clear: this strategy isn't working — and it never will. If San Francisco has any hope of remaining a city with economic diversity, a city that has artists and writers and families and blue-collar workers and young people and students and so many of those who have made this one of the world's ...
Beyond that – I see part of the problem (of our locally overpriced housing) also lies in the far suburbs of the region, including the greater Sacramento area, which are now the de-facto homes of many of San Francisco’s workers – and the cities/counties have not been pulling their weight in terms of regional transit.
Only so many people think San Francisco is so unbearably beautiful that they must live here at any cost. But as an ex LA native, I know that I would not give up three hours a day or more to commute from affordable housing – I’d spend more than half my income to live close if it would give me hours of my life back.
I would suggest that's the only way we will ever solve the housing crisis - "Homes for people, not for profit." Whether it's done by land trusts, non-profits or redevelopment, new housing has got to be built without the middle men, the developers, and provided to those who need it, not those who want to speculate on it.
And in synch with the environment.
Thanks for opening the door.
So let's keep talking about this. My goal was, and is, to stimulate discussion.
Tim Redmond
I'm glad to hear that development fees "are coming." After a quarter century of watching city planning policy, forgive me if I say I'll believe it when I see it.
But Mr. mxiteca, I can't figure out if you're disputing my main point, which is that market-rate housing and market-driven solutions cannot and will not solve the city's housing problems.
The city's own general plan says that roughly two-thirds of all new housing should be below market rate. There is nothing in the Eastern Neighborhoods Plan or in anything the mayor has offered that explains how inclusionary housing and the existing level of public spending can come even remotely close to that.
Let me know how you think we can reach that goal.
Speaking as an ex-resident (driven out during the craziest days of rent prices in the year 2000), this article reminds me of many that have been written in the past.
The first point protects the "haves", those who have affordable rent-controlled housing, and it should. Unfortunately, nothing ever really goes beyond that.
Point two, $30 million a year?? In a city like San Francisco, that is nothing. Leverage it to a billion? Wow!!! Amazing, smoke and mirrors!! How, where, why hasn't it been done before (simple answer, these days there is no interest in Washington for building housing for the poor, any money available will go to trying to rescue a few of the subprime borrowers.)? So, you will be left with a sum that is totally insufficient to address the needs.
In fact, given the presence of vacancy control (which really means the slower gentrification of San Fran, but hardly stops the bleeding), you may only end up breaking even at best (and probably not that!).
Prop M for housing? Sounds pretty, but in the details the article lists, mostly sounds like another way to ensure that those who are already there in SF in affordable housing can stay. It doesn't seem to do much to build the new housing that is needed (except the usual nickles and dimes worth).
Want to get serious? A real estate transfer tax on every property over $400,000. Make it progressive depending on how long the building has been owned (the quicker the turn over, the higher the tax). Use the money to build rental housing (DON'T let the city run it, but set up a strong watch dog body).
Tell the Democrats, no Vacancy Control repeal, then everyone will only vote for Greens (and if that means Republicans get elected, so be it, frankly many of the local Democrats would pass for moderate Republicans elsewhere, the idea of liberal San Francisco is a myth).
Get together and strengthen regional government. Put teeth in regional planning for housing, zoning and transportation.
Too hard? No one wants to pay taxes? Well, then nothing will be done, and in another ten years, there will be an article about how to save Viz Valley from the new luxury condo projects.
Actually, San Francisco may have "tipped" to the point where it is so upper middle class that there is no support for progressive housing policies anymore. I sort of tend to think so, but then I haven't been around for a bit (just hear from my friends as they leave).
At least though, you are talking about the problem.... which is a start... or an end??
Speaking as an ex-resident (driven out during the craziest days of rent prices in the year 2000), this article reminds me of many that have been written in the past.
The first point protects the "haves", those who have affordable rent-controlled housing, and it should. Unfortunately, nothing ever really goes beyond that.
Point two, $30 million a year?? In a city like San Francisco, that is nothing. Leverage it to a billion? Wow!!! Amazing, smoke and mirrors!! How, where, why hasn't it been done before (simple answer, these days there is no interest in Washington for building housing for the poor, any money available will go to trying to rescue a few of the subprime borrowers.)? So, you will be left with a sum that is totally insufficient to address the needs.
In fact, given the presence of vacancy control (which really means the slower gentrification of San Fran, but hardly stops the bleeding), you may only end up breaking even at best (and probably not that!).
Prop M for housing? Sounds pretty, but in the details the article lists, mostly sounds like another way to ensure that those who are already there in SF in affordable housing can stay. It doesn't seem to do much to build the new housing that is needed (except the usual nickles and dimes worth).
Want to get serious? A real estate transfer tax on every property over $400,000. Make it progressive depending on how long the building has been owned (the quicker the turn over, the higher the tax). Use the money to build rental housing (DON'T let the city run it, but set up a strong watch dog body).
Tell the Democrats, no Vacancy Control repeal, then everyone will only vote for Greens (and if that means Republicans get elected, so be it, frankly many of the local Democrats would pass for moderate Republicans elsewhere, the idea of liberal San Francisco is a myth).
Get together and strengthen regional government. Put teeth in regional planning for housing, zoning and transportation.
Too hard? No one wants to pay taxes? Well, then nothing will be done, and in another ten years, there will be an article about how to save Viz Valley from the new luxury condo projects.
Actually, San Francisco may have "tipped" to the point where it is so upper middle class that there is no support for progressive housing policies anymore. I sort of tend to think so, but then I haven't been around for a bit (just hear from my friends as they leave).
At least though, you are talking about the problem.... which is a start... or an end??
By the way, I don't think it's entirely wrong to try to defend the rights of people who already live or work here. We shouldn't be exclusive about it, but if we'd had more of that attitude in 2000, you might not have been driven away.
Tim Redmond
Hi Tim,
You are right about the transfer tax, never had much interest in it while I was there either (grin). But that becomes the problem. My father (a nowadays moderate Republican) used to say that everyone always says "Don't tax you, don't tax me, tax the fellow behind the tree."
In some ways housing is San Francisco's global warming. The only way to fix the problem is for someone to pay. None of the "haves" (who have power also) want to pay. But at some point, you don't just lose people like me (replaceable!!), you lose all of the artists who aren't wealthy, the young musicians and poets, the aspiring film makers, the bicyclists, the skateboarders, the families (they are the canaries in your coal mine, and they are fleeing!), and many of the people who work in the low paid jobs..
But why am I telling you this? You already know it. The people who need to hear it, won't listen, and if they do, suggest that we tax the feller behind the tree.
The flip side of the problem is that merely doing nothing doesn't help (not really), because while it protects those who have managed to squeeze in, it does nothing for the next generation, who won't even look at the city.
Ironically, Beijing faces a similar problem (incredibly high housing prices). But vestiges of the old regime (not given entirely over to the market, thankfully) mean that many people get free or cheap housing with their jobs (me!). It ain't always grand, but it ain't always so bad either. The government is also banning new construction (except that in the pipeline) until the low and moderate income problem can be solved.
Anyway, good luck to you guys, you're gonna need it if you try to avoid becoming a home for the rich, the elderly and tourists only..
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