Housing

Our goal: Make it affordable to live here.

SPUR’s housing agenda:

• Zone for more housing—in the right locations.
• Invest in permanently affordable housing.
• Enable more housing to be affordable by design.
• Rethink parking requirements.
• Encourage secondary units.
• Get housing development fees right.

Read more from SPUR’s Agenda for Change

  • SPUR Report

    Room for More

    Our housing agenda for San Jose 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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  • 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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  • SPUR Report

    Re-Envisioning the San Francisco Housing Authority

    The San Francisco Housing Authority has a budget short fall and lacks funding to meet its capital needs. SPUR offers recommendations to help the agency become financially sustainable over the long term.

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  • SPUR Report

    Affordable by Design

    Housing units that are affordable "by design" cost less to produce because they’re small, efficiently designed and don’t come with a parking space. Could this be a new way to produce middle-income housing without using public subsidy?

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  • 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

How Much Housing Should the Bay Area Have Built to Avoid the Current Housing Crisis?

News February 21, 2019
One of the key causes cited for the Bay Area’s housing affordability crisis is that demand for housing continually outstrips the available supply. If only the region had built more housing, extreme competition for a limited number of units wouldn’t be driving prices so high. How much housing should the region have built? SPUR presents new data to answer this question.

Urban Field Notes: Manifest Density

Urbanist Article January 31, 2019
If San Francisco is going to house families, teachers, firefighters, service workers and more, we’re gonna need some taller buildings.

Did the Bay Area Reach a “Grand Bargain” to Solve Housing?

News January 31, 2019
The Bay Area’s housing shortage and affordability crisis is arguably the greatest threat to its future. In January, the region took an important step forward with the endorsement of the CASA Compact, a grand bargain among dozens of governments and organizations to arrive at real solutions.

Legalizing Better Land Use

Urbanist Article January 24, 2019
California passed a huge BART housing bill, the latest legislation geared toward addressing the state’s housing shortage. This sets higher standards for local land use, but it remains to be seen if they will result in more building.

Why San Francisco Should Stop Requiring Parking in New Housing

News December 3, 2018
Housing developers in San Francisco are currently required to provide a minimum amount of parking in new buildings. What if we eliminated those requirements? Then we’d see both lowered housing prices and more efficient use of urban land. Requiring parking brings too many new cars into the city, congesting streets, taking up space needed for more housing and harming the environment.

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