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

SPUR Supports SB 5 to Create a Housing and Development Investment Program

Policy Letter May 23, 2019
SB 5 is structured to make significant affordable housing and community development dollars available immediately. Fifty percent of the funding overall and 50 percent of a given local agency’s funding would be required to be spent on affordable housing. SB 5 is an important commitment from the state general fund toward important affordable housing and community development needs across the state.

SPUR Supports Assembly Bill 11 to Create Affordable Housing and Infrastructure Agencies

Policy Letter May 23, 2019
SPUR supports Assembly Bill 11, which authorizes cities, counties and other districts to create affordable housing and infrastructure agencies. AB 11 would require that at least 30 percent of funding going to the affordable housing and infrastructure agency would be dedicated to the creation, improvement and preservation of low- and moderate-income housing. SPUR sees AB 11 as a step in the right direction.

SPUR Supports AB 1487 to Create a Bay Area Regional Housing Entity

Policy Letter May 23, 2019
The Bay Area needs more funding for affordable housing and regional coordination of policies. SPUR supports Assembly Bill 1487, which would help increase affordable housing in the Bay Area by providing funding and technical assistance. We believe it is critical that the creation of this entity strengthen the Bay Area’s ability to function as a region rather than weakening it.

What’s Next for Housing Now That SB 50 Has Been Deferred to 2020?

News May 22, 2019
Earlier this month, controversial state zoning bill SB 50 was denied a committee hearing, meaning the state legislature won't pass it in 2019. But the push to increase housing supply goes on. Quite a number of other housing bills are still under consideration, and SPUR is supporting many of them.

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