In order to meet the region’s future housing needs, the San Francisco Bay Area will need to produce 2.2 million homes over the next 50 years across all income levels. Where should all of this housing go? And what policies are needed to ensure it can be built? To answer these questions, SPUR has developed a “New Civic Vision” for the Bay Area that balances two core goals: environmental sustainability and equity.
In the United States, housing is viewed as a financial asset — something to be bought, rented and sold. In other countries, housing is a human right, necessary for the health and well-being of every person. In these places, housing is affordable to a broad swath of the population, and homelessness is less prevalent. If we began to treat housing as infrastructure, what might the results look like in the Bay Area?
The high cost of housing has come to define the San Francisco Bay Area. It dictates who gets to live here, which in turn dictates who gets to participate in the region’s economy and political process. This report, the first in a series, looks at why housing prices have escalated so dramatically, what the impacts of those escalating costs have been on residents and who has borne the brunt of those impacts.
California has experienced unprecedented wildfire damage in the last several years as climate change has increased temperatures and dried out land and vegetation. The seven largest wildfires in recorded California history have all taken place in the last four years. As a state, we need to develop tools to help us combat wildfire risk in order to save lives, homes and communities.
SPUR's healthy food incentive program reflected the difficulties that thousands in the Bay Area faced in making ends meet during the pandemic. Double Up Food Bucks addressed the soaring demand for food assistance throughout the pandemic, and, alongside efforts by the federal government, non-profit civic engineers, and the state government, supported low-income Californians by increasing their food budgets at participating stores in Santa Clara and Alameda counties.