Model Places Illustration

Housing

We believe: Housing is a human right and should be affordable to everyone.

Our Goals

• Increase the supply of housing.

• Provide more affordable housing for low- and middle-income residents.

• Protect low-income communities of color from displacement.

Monte Vista Gardens apartments in San José

SPUR Report

Structured for Success

A key cause of California’s high housing costs is its decentralized and fragmented housing governance system. SPUR makes 11 recommendations to set California and the Bay Area on the path to produce the housing we need.
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photo of balconies on an apartment building

Research

Losing Ground

SPUR examines how the Bay Area’s housing market has become shaped by scarcity and wide economic divides — not only among income groups but also among races and ethnicities.
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Apartment Building

Research

Housing the Middle

SPUR digs into the housing market’s failure to meet the needs of middle-income households. California can look to innovative programs across the country as models for how to address the state’s housing challenges.
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Apartment Construction

Research

Planning by Ballot

SPUR has created the most up-to-date database of local land use ballot measures that impact housing production in California. Over the long term, measures that restrict infill housing can undermine housing affordability and have the potential to exacerbate racial segregation.
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Updates and Events

Inclusionary Housing: A Good Tool but Let’s Wield It Carefully

News /
How much affordable housing should San Francisco require market-rate developers to build? A new study offers recommendations, and city supervisors will soon vote on a permanent requirement. The question they’ll face next is whether to stand by recommendations grounded in technical analysis or yield to political pressures to approve a higher requirement that sounds good but could backfire.

The Rise of the YIMBY Movement

Urbanist Article
In a region where people largely agree with each other about national issues, our most heated political debates revolve around local land use. The emergence of a Yes In My Back Yard movement has the potential to change long-unchallenged political dynamics.

Bye-Bye to By-Right Housing

Urbanist Article
Every reform proposal has powerful opponents, and Governor Jerry Brown’s “by-right” housing proposal was no exception. As a result, the policy, which would have automatically approved certain housing developments that comply with local zoning, failed to pass in the legislature.

What East Oakland Can Teach Us About Displacement

Urbanist Article
More and more people with the means to purchase a home are turning to the few places left in the Bay Area that are still (relatively) affordable. This includes East Oakland, which experienced the Bay Area's most explosive growth in home prices, resulting in our current phenomenon of displacement without development.

After the Ghost Ship

News /
The fire at the Ghost Ship artists collective in the Fruitvale district was the most lethal fire in Oakland’s history and the worst in the state since the 1906 San Francisco earthquake and fire. How can property owners and the City of Oakland make places like the Ghost Ship safe without making them so expensive that they cease to be affordable?
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