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.

San Francisco is running out of funds to build affordable housing, and the city will need to make changes quickly to fix the problem. How did this happen and what can be done? A combination of rising construction costs and new requirements is slowing down new development and curtailing incoming fees. SPUR has five suggestions for how to address the problem before it gets worse.

What can California and its cities do to bring down the soaring costs of housing? Land entitlement is one process that could be reformed to speed up the construction of new housing and reduce costs. At a recent SPUR forum, researchers and planners discussed how state and city reforms might (or might not) streamline the approval processes.

The dramatic escalation of housing prices in the Bay Area has sparked a lot of discussion about affordability — but what do we mean by “affordable” housing? Who is it for? How is it funded and created? Our primer explains all.