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.
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?

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.

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?
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.
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.
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.

Updates and Events


Governor’s Proposed Budget Includes Focus on Housing as a Climate Strategy

News /
For the second year in a row, California will have a sizable budget surplus — and a host of critical needs to be funded. Governor Newsom’s proposed budget spending plan continues to include significant investments in affordable housing and solutions to homelessness. SPUR is especially pleased to see a strategy that makes an explicit link between locating housing in urban areas and reducing climate change, a key idea in our Civic Vision for Growth .

Burdens and Benefits

Research
California’s Proposition 13 is one of the most studied property taxes in the country, but how does it affect the lives of residents in Bay Area cities? SPUR’s research brief Burdens and Benefits explores how the law impacts homeowners in Oakland, with a look at who receives the largest benefits from the state’s unique property tax law and who shoulders the burdens from its constraints on revenues.

SPUR Weighs in on San Francisco Housing Element Draft Goals

Advocacy Letter
The San Francisco Housing Element is the City’s plan to accommodate housing over the next eight years. There are many aspects of the draft goals that we support, including the way that the goals center racial equity and also the inclusion of a goal to plan for half the city’s housing growth in wealthier neighborhoods with access to great amenities, called “High Opportunity Areas”.

SPUR-Sponsored Housing Bills Continue to Move in the State Legislature

News /
SPUR is advocating for a number of pro-housing bills and regulatory reforms in Sacramento that would increase housing supply and reduce the time and cost to produce housing. A number of key SPUR-sponsored and supported bills continue to move through the legislative process. When the Legislature returns from summer recess a number of bills will face critical votes in the State Senate and Assembly.