SPUR Publications

San Francisco requires developers of market-rate housing to provide affordable units and pay impact fees to deliver public benefits. Along with rising interest rates and construction costs, these city-imposed costs can threaten whether any new housing gets built at all. As San Francisco reviews its housing policy, it should analyze the effect that all development costs have on housing production and recalibrate its approach to public benefits.

Over the last year, the Trump administration has sought to reform the Federal Emergency Management Agency and shift the bill for emergencies to local and state governments. Facing a major budget deficit tied to the city’s last major emergency, the COVID-19 pandemic, San Francisco must pursue new disaster management strategies, in coordination with regional and state partners, to ensure financial resilience in the face of future disasters.

San Francisco’s commission system has become unwieldy and inefficient. A voter-approved commission streamlining task force calls for reducing the number of commissions, moving many from the city charter to the administrative code, and making governance and operational changes. If enacted, these recommendations — some of which SPUR made last year — would increase flexibility, enhance accountability, and allocate resources more effectively.

As part of a review of its General Plan, the City of San José is looking for ways to encourage “missing middle” housing options like fourplexes and courtyard apartments to help address its housing affordability crisis. This is an opportunity to start legalizing small-scale multifamily homes citywide, particularly in exclusive, high-resource neighborhoods. Over time, the addition of thousands of such homes can meaningfully expand supply, reduce housing costs, and improve mobility within the housing market.

Last week Governor Newsom authorized a loan that will prevent deep transit service cuts on BART, Muni, Caltrain, and AC Transit for the next several months. SPUR fought hard for this funding. We are deeply grateful to the Newsom Administration and the state legislature for bringing their commitment and creativity to help the Bay Area thrive. But the work isn’t finished — it’s now up to the region’s voters to finish the job by passing two ballot measures this fall.

Digital tools are transforming building planning and permitting — and offering an opportunity to address California’s housing crisis. Remote virtual inspections using video and other digital technologies can lower costs and reduce inspection backlogs for many simple home projects without compromising code compliance. By accelerating resilience-focused retrofits, clean energy permitting, and accessory dwelling unit construction, such inspections could reshape California’s housing landscape.

The City of San Francisco is currently examining its affordable housing policies and their impact on the market for building new housing. SPUR asked Leigh Lutenski, the city’s director of Joint Development, about her division’s work supporting the city on its affordable housing obligations. She emphasized the need for policies that balance affordability goals with economic feasibility, in part by providing greater certainty to housing developers about affordability requirements.

As downtown San Francisco grapples with an oversupply of commercial space and anemic street activity, the city’s leaders have an opportunity to reimagine the area to create more housing, boost entrepreneurship, and nurture the arts. In a new brief, SPUR proposes establishing a quasi-public entity to plan and deliver capital projects, negotiate real estate deals, and provide public financing. We asked SPUR’s Sujata Srivastava how the envisioned authority could tackle downtown’s challenges.

In October, Shola Olatoye became the first CEO of the San Francisco Downtown Development Corporation (DDC), a nonprofit organization formed in early 2025 to raise and deploy private investment to transform downtown San Francisco. The DDC is evaluating options to create a long-term entity with regulatory and financing capacity to play a greater role in downtown’s economic vitality. On the heels of our policy brief Reinventing Downtown, we spoke with Olatoye about the DDC’s vision, partnerships, and priorities for downtown.

The League of Women Voters Oakland and SPUR co-facilitated Mayor Barbara Lee’s Charter Reform Working Group over the past six months. The collaborative process engaged more than 750 Oakland residents through public meetings and listening sessions, conducted over 60 interviews with officials and experts, and collected 433 survey responses plus written comments. Residents expressed frustration with unclear accountability and called for structural changes. The working group has released its final report and ultimately recommends adopting a strong-mayor system with a strengthened City Council.

Faster and more frequent service is earning San Francisco Muni its highest customer rating in decades, but without an additional $307 million in revenue by 2027, it could be forced to cut more than a third of its transit service. SPUR and partners have advised the city on a big piece of the solution: a proposed local parcel tax expected to generate $160 million annually. SPUR digs into the details of the tax.

In December, the San Francisco Board of Supervisors adopted the city’s most ambitious zoning reform in decades. The Family Zoning Plan allows dense multifamily housing to be built in most neighborhoods in order to help address the city’s housing crisis. SPUR led advocacy efforts to ensure the plan met state mandates and addressed housing inequality, as well as facilitating public engagement throughout the process. Here’s what went into getting the plan passed — and what it will do for the city.

Three years after establishing a regional network management structure to coordinate Bay Area transit, customers are beginning to experience real changes. A recent SPUR forum highlighted progress in implementing transit priority treatments, simplifying fare systems and signage, and increasing accessibility for individuals with disabilities. But sustaining these initiatives and transit operations more generally requires new funding.

In the wake of the devastating Los Angeles fires in January 2025, SPUR examined wildfire mitigation in the Bay Area and to explore opportunities to improve management strategies. In a new report, SPUR's Sarah Atkinson and Colleen Corrigan find that neighboring cities with shared wildfire risk could significantly improve their resilience by establishing coordinating entities. We asked them about the governance models they studied and how this research may support action on other climate hazards.

Michael B. Teitz, a former two-term SPUR board member, professor emeritus of City and Regional Planning at UC Berkeley, and senior fellow at the Public Policy Institute of California, died December 17 at age 90. He was a member of the SPUR Regional Policy Board and the SPUR Ballot Analysis Committee.