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.
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.
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?
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.
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.
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
Coming Soon: The SPUR Regional Strategy
News /Three years ago, SPUR undertook an initiative to envision a more equitable, sustainable and prosperous Bay Area for all and propose the bold strategies needed to get there. On May 13, we will release the completed SPUR Regional Strategy, providing a clear vision for the region’s next 50 years.
SPUR joins coalition to make key state budget requests for affordable housing
Policy LetterSPUR has joined with the Non-Profit Housing Association of Northern California (NPH), All Home and the Bay Area Council to call on the Newsom Administration to make targeted investments to keep affordable housing development moving in our state.
Rooted and Growing
SPUR ReportThe Bay Area's severe housing shortage has sent prices through the roof, pushing many long-standing residents to move to the edge of the region or leave it altogether. This has changed the demographics of the region, contributing to patterns of resegregation by both race and income. What can the Bay Area do to make sure it retains its people, its communities and its culture?
Meeting the Need
SPUR ReportIn 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.
Housing as Infrastructure
SPUR ReportIn 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?
Housing the Region
SPUR ReportImagine 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.