Model Places Illustration

Housing

Our goal: Make housing affordable for everyone.

SPUR’s Five-Year Priorities:

• Reduce the cost of building housing to make it more affordable for everyone.

• Provide low- and middle-income residents with homes they can afford, and prevent displacement.

• Use housing as a tool for closing the racial wealth gap and leverage public investment to support wealth creation for low-income households.

 

​​ Read our policy agenda

Monte Vista Gardens apartments in San José

SPUR Report

Housing the Region

Imagine a Bay Area where our greatest challenge, the scarcity and expense of housing, has been solved. This may sound like an impossible dream, but it isn’t. Within the next 50 years, we can live in an affordable region. But only if we make significant changes, starting right now. SPUR's series Housing the Region defines the Bay Area's housing crisis and put forth concrete steps to build a better, more affordable region.
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Regional Strategy Illustration

SPUR Report

A Civic Vision for Growth

The Bay Area is a place of incredible possibility, but it faces threats from some of the highest housing costs in the country, growing income inequality, long commutes between jobs and affordable homes, and increasing danger from climate change. If we continue with business as usual, the region can expect these challenges to continue to escalate. But what if the people of the Bay Area chose a different future?
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SPUR Report

What It Will Really Take to Create an Affordable Bay Area

The San Francisco Bay Area’s lack of housing and limited affordability have significant ramifications for the people who currently live here, the people who once lived here but have been forced to move elsewhere and the people who used to be housed but now live on the street. These housing pressures are remaking the region’s diversity, culture, economy and environment.

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Model Places Illustration

SPUR Report

Model Places

Over the next 50 years, the San Francisco Bay Area is expected to gain as many as 4 million people and 2 million jobs. In a region where a crushing housing shortage is already threatening quality of life, how can we welcome new residents and jobs without paving over green spaces or pushing out long-time community members?
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Apartment Buildings

SPUR Report

Room for More

Our housing agenda for San José lays out 20 concrete steps the city can take to address the chronic housing shortage, ranging from fixing its planning process to finding more funding for affordable housing.
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Apartment Construction

SPUR Report

8 Ways to Make San Francisco More Affordable

San Francisco is in the midst of an affordability crisis. Reversing the situation will require far-reaching changes to the city’s housing policies. But there are many things we can do at the local level to make San Francisco more affordable for the people who live here.
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Homes in San Francisco

SPUR Report

A Housing Strategy for San Francisco

San Francisco’s unique culture is threatened by the high cost of housing. Unless we do something, the city will lose its artists, its progressive politics, its immigrants and its young people. This second edition of our Housing Strategy for San Francisco updates the policy reports that define SPUR's housing agenda.
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Updates and Events

SPUR Comments on the San Francisco Housing Element 2022

Advocacy Letter
SPUR urges the City to develop stronger implementation mechanisms to develop specific policies and implementation strategies for equity priority geographies and cultural districts on a faster timeline, create more incentives for housing in well-resourced areas, and commit to reforming the approvals process.
The ABCs of JPAs

The ABCs of JPAs

Policy Brief
With housing prices out of reach for many, California is facing the need to find new ways to create housing affordable to middle-income households. A promising new model — joint powers authority (JPA) owned middle-income housing — uses tax incentives to close the gap between development costs and affordable rents. This brief by SPUR and the Terner Center for Housing Innovation explains how the JPA model works, how it’s being used and how to ensure that it delivers meaningful public benefits.

SPUR Submits Comments on Oakland’s Draft Housing Element

Advocacy Letter
On May 12, 2022, Oakland's draft General Plan Housing Element was published for public review, which outlines the strategies Oakland will execute over the next eight years in order to achieve the city’s housing goals. SPUR submitted a letter with feedback on the Draft Housing Element.

SPUR Supports the Affordable Housing and High Road Jobs Act

Advocacy Letter
The 2022 Statewide Housing Plan estimates that California needs to build 2.5 million units of housing over the next eight years. Yet California averages less than 100,000 new units per year and has never produced more than 20,000 new affordable homes in any year. AB 2011 will do just that. It pairs the ability to build housing by right on underutilized commercial sites with strong labor standards that ensure all construction workers earn prevailing wages and receive health benefits. SPUR and its partners support AB 2011.
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