Another city that’s seriously trying to address the affordable housing challenge:
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If you think Vancouver is expensive, San Francisco is much worse. The average rent of a one-bedroom apartment is nearly $3,500 per month. While the City of Vancouver does take its knocks for at least trying to build some rental housing, without senior governments’ assistance it’s a nearly impossible task. Here is what the Mayor of San Francisco recently proposed:.
The Biggest Affordable Housing Plan the Bay Area Has Ever Seen
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SF Mayor Ed Lee has begun to lay out a plan to invest $2.7 billion in affordable housing over the next 20 years. This starts with his recently announced $250 million housing bond initiative, which continues to get fleshed out. As currently envisioned, roughly 40 to 60 percent of the funding will go to low-income housing, 20 to 40 percent to public housing and 10 to 40 percent to middle-income housing. The last time a housing bond passed in San Francisco was a $100 million bond in 1996. (Consequent efforts for $250 million in 2002 and $200 million in 2004 failed to win a supermajority.)
Along with the bond, Lee has proposed a state budget trailer bill that would enable SF to issue $500 million of bonds for 3,000 units of affordable housing in former redevelopment areas. The mayor’s big plan accrues funds from different sources over time. His vision for the next five years alone shows $1.1 billion for affordable housing coming from the bond, fees from developers, the Housing Trust Fund, tax increment, the General Fund and other resources.
Pressures on San Francisco continue to mount, and it is critically important that additional resources be brought to bear. SPUR will fight hard to pass the affordable housing bond and will continue to push additional ways to make housing more affordable in San Francisco and around the region.
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A friend started off paying $3000 a month in SF on a one year lease. At the end of the lease the landlord suggested they roll it over into a month-by-month tenancy, same rent. Two months later a rent increase, two months later, same thing. Two years later it was $6500. Eventually he moved out when the inconvenience of moving was less painful than paying the rent that was being gouged out of his tech salary.
Good discussion here about inflating housing prices in LA, New York, London, Paris, “Zombie Urbanism”, but not a mention of Vancouver: http://www.kcrw.com/news-culture/shows/design-and-architecture/has-zombie-urbanism-gripped-the-global-city/#
“seriously trying to address the affordable housing challenge”
…no. Not even close. 3,000 subsidised units is a drop in the bucket, especially because SF’s refusal to zone for additional market housing means that the demand for subsidised units will continue to grow. Almost 2/3 of SF is zoned for single-family homes (source: http://sfpublicpress.org/news/2014-06/housing-solution-backyard-cottages-could-add-one-third-more-homes-to-san-francisco), and that’s not changing.
I don’t mean to pick on SF in particular – much of the rest of the Bay Area is even worse – but I can’t see anyone familiar with the Bay Area housing market thinking that 3,000 subsidised units will make much of a dent.