Oakland is experiencing a housing crisis that threatens to irrevocably change the city. Part of the problem is the imbalance between job growth and housing supply. Last year, Mayor Schaaf assembled a Housing Implementation Cabinet of housing experts, advocates and practitioners to look at the issue. Last week, the cabinet released its action plan to preserve 17,000 existing homes and create 17,000 new ones.

Few low-income Californians will ever have the opportunity to live in a subsidized affordable housing unit. How do we help everyone else? A new paper from the California Legislative Analyst’s Office provides evidence that market-rate housing construction plays an important role for low-income households. The LAO’s data shows that urban counties nationwide with more housing construction had slower rent growth than California coastal cities.

Listening to some San Francisco advocates, it’s easy to get the impression that the proposed Affordable Housing Bonus Program will dramatically alter the city overnight. But this ignores two key factors. First, the program has been very thoughtfully crafted to add housing without displacing anyone. Second, the length of the building cycle means these changes will happen gradually, over two decades or more.