WTF is wrong with housing crisis in San Francisco?
It was my senior thesis project on housing crisis.
As someone who lived in San Francisco, I have experienced the high cost of living derived from high rent.
I researched the current status of how the residents struggle with housing crisis.
What caused the housing crisis?
San Francisco and the Bay Area are suffering a housing affordability crisis for multiple decades.
The City has been failing to provide the needed housing for the residents, which led them to be burdened with rent and ownership and made some eventually leave the Bay Area.
Many are forced to find houses that meet their needs across the bay or further away and face long commute hours, which makes some eventually leave the Bay Area or California.
More people came, less housing were built.
Since 2003, San Francisco has grown by nearly 100,000 people, while producing around 24,000 units of housing.
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Government prioritises less on affordable housing.
Only 602 of 120,000 Below Market Rate Rental Applicants were able to secure their place to live.
The government defunded the housing department which resulted in less affordable units and poor maintenance.
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Single Family Zoning:
Exclusionary, racist segregation
Single-family zoning is a direct outgrowth of now-illegal exclusionary, racist covenants.
It disallows townhomes, duplexes, and multi-family housing (apartments) from being built on any plot of land with this zoning designation for white supremacy.
It resulted in half of San Francisco’s residential lands producing only 10% of housing stock.
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It is too expensive to build housing in San Francisco.
Due to Regulations
Only 3 out of 16 cases were considered to be feasible.
This implies there’s a high perception of risk despite the strong housing market.
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Due to Lengthy Process
With parking space requirements, building more units can trigger escalating quantities of parking, drastically hiking construction costs.
It adds $1,700 per year to rent.
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NIMBY group abusing environmental review process
Under the guise of “environmental concern,”
CEQA, the environmental review process has been abused by local NIMBY individuals and associations.
The uncertainty on finalising the housing projects led to costly housing and even killed the projects.
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“I struggled with finding a place to live. Brownstone shared housing is a personal expression to securing my place to live.”
Interview with Christina Lennox, co-founder of Brownstone shared housing
Vienna and Singapore are the cities that could inspire San Francisco.
Vienna and Singapore
Here is a case study that demonstrates the collective effort between the government and private sector to prioritise housing.
833 Bryant St Permanent Housing Project
Government intervention was crucial to address the housing affordability issue.
A whole new systemic change is required.
Here are my proposals
Here is my proposal:
Stronger Governance on Housing
The government could intentionally design the housing market to be tenant-friendly through tenancy protection and zoning control(Vienna Social Housing).
The government could accelerate the housing supply for residents’ well-being with Environmental Review exempt(SB-35) and Off-site construction for streamlined production and subsidies or low-interest loan for funding.
Here are some ideas >
To execute housing-first governance,
Aggressively acquire land
Local and federal governments need to keep acquiring lands and vacant buildings to strengthen their position in the housing market or leverage their lands and properties to reutilise a city to provide housing units and facilities to benefit the local residents.
(eg. RAD housing, Balboa Reservoir, Potrero Yard Modernisation)
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To execute housing-first governance,
Invest in
society
Design the city with a whole new system of social infrastructure that is embedded into residents’ lifestyles with local communities than just providing a place to stay, by linking residential, social, and commercial uses together.
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Posters on senior show
Then I applied this array of research into a wall pin-up for the senior show.
I showcased the 555 9th Street revitalisation concept as a part of the solution:
Acquire property that is currently in decline and transform it into a community with housing and commercial, implementing concepts of social housing, a walkable city.
