SPUR Publications

The League of Women Voters Oakland and SPUR co-facilitated Mayor Barbara Lee’s Charter Reform Working Group over the past six months. The collaborative process engaged more than 750 Oakland residents through public meetings and listening sessions, conducted over 60 interviews with officials and experts, and collected 433 survey responses plus written comments. Residents expressed frustration with unclear accountability and called for structural changes. The working group has released its final report and ultimately recommends adopting a strong-mayor system with a strengthened City Council.

Faster and more frequent service is earning San Francisco Muni its highest customer rating in decades, but without an additional $307 million in revenue by 2027, it could be forced to cut more than a third of its transit service. SPUR and partners have advised the city on a big piece of the solution: a proposed local parcel tax expected to generate $160 million annually. SPUR digs into the details of the tax.

In December, the San Francisco Board of Supervisors adopted the city’s most ambitious zoning reform in decades. The Family Zoning Plan allows dense multifamily housing to be built in most neighborhoods in order to help address the city’s housing crisis. SPUR led advocacy efforts to ensure the plan met state mandates and addressed housing inequality, as well as facilitating public engagement throughout the process. Here’s what went into getting the plan passed — and what it will do for the city.

Three years after establishing a regional network management structure to coordinate Bay Area transit, customers are beginning to experience real changes. A recent SPUR forum highlighted progress in implementing transit priority treatments, simplifying fare systems and signage, and increasing accessibility for individuals with disabilities. But sustaining these initiatives and transit operations more generally requires new funding.

In the wake of the devastating Los Angeles fires in January 2025, SPUR examined wildfire mitigation in the Bay Area and to explore opportunities to improve management strategies. In a new report, SPUR's Sarah Atkinson and Colleen Corrigan find that neighboring cities with shared wildfire risk could significantly improve their resilience by establishing coordinating entities. We asked them about the governance models they studied and how this research may support action on other climate hazards.

Michael B. Teitz, a former two-term SPUR board member, professor emeritus of City and Regional Planning at UC Berkeley, and senior fellow at the Public Policy Institute of California, died December 17 at age 90. He was a member of the SPUR Regional Policy Board and the SPUR Ballot Analysis Committee.

Like many urban centers, downtown San José is grappling with low daytime foot traffic and high vacancies in office and commercial buildings. A new policy brief from SPUR suggests that filling empty ground-floor spaces is a critical first step to long-term economic revitalization. We spoke with the brief's authors, Erika McLitus and Sujata Srivastava, about how SPUR’s recommended policy changes can support local artists and entrepreneurs and bring new energy to downtown.

The Bay Area is shifting to zero-emission heat pump water heaters by phasing out the sale of smaller residential gas models. Despite the loss of federal tax credits, SPUR’s analysis shows that combining local and state incentives helps many residents purchase heat pump water heaters at prices comparable to those of gas models. However, continued incentives and new financing options are crucial to ensure low-income residents can afford the transition.

In an op-ed for the San Francisco Chronicle, SPUR argues that the San Francisco City Charter is due for an overhaul. What was meant to be a concise constitutional framework has become a detailed and disjointed instruction manual. Riddled with outdated, duplicative, and overly specific provisions, the charter ties the city’s hands at precisely the moment when flexibility and adaptability are needed most.

Transit may get some much-needed funding thanks to the newly passed Connect Bay Area Act, which authorizes the placement of a five-county sales tax measure on the November 2026 ballot. If passed, the measure could generate about $1 billion annually for transit operations. SPUR helped develop the law, which includes robust oversight measures to ensure fair fund distribution and requires transit operators to improve financial efficiency.

As federal support for climate resilience diminishes and state funding ebbs and flows, local governments and residents are increasingly burdened with hazard mitigation and adaptation costs. They are relying mainly on municipal funding mechanisms, such as taxes and bonds, that are insufficient and often inequitable. SPUR is investigating collaborative financing models and new partnerships to effectively and equitably address climate risks.

This month, Governor Newsom signed into law 45 housing-related bills, including four sponsored by SPUR. We played a critical role in developing these bills, which aim to facilitate low- and middle-income multifamily housing near transit. The bills address zoning, mixed-income housing on commercial properties, transparency in housing production, and traffic impact fees, significantly advancing the state’s housing goals.

Multifamily condos made up only 3 percent of new housing built in California between 2011 and 2021, compared to 38 percent in Canada. Why? A new report commissioned by the Terner Center for Housing Innovation at UC Berkeley and SPUR identifies a direct consequence of our state’s construction defect liability laws: the high cost of insurance for condo builders pushes developers to build rental apartments instead of for-sale projects that could create more affordable homeownership opportunities.

An October deadline for amending local energy codes has inspired many California cities to accelerate adoption of energy efficiency and sustainability “reach” codes, which SPUR helped develop. Because the deadline makes some exceptions for home hardening and emergency standards, Bay Area cities are reassessing their options to exceed the state minimum requirements for resilient building design. Doing so offers big savings but requires incentives to offset upfront costs.

On November 4, 2025, Santa Clara County voters will weigh in on a proposed measure to temporarily raise the county sales tax from 9.125% to 9.75%, estimated to generate $330 million per year until it expires in 2031. While sales taxes are regressive in nature, Measure A would directly benefit low-income and vulnerable communities by backfilling some of the deep federal funding cuts to social safety net services such as Medicaid. SPUR recommends a YES vote on Measure A.

SPUR collaborates with Nuestra Casa to address critical environmental and public health issues, such as groundwater rise and drinking water safety, in East Palo Alto. We asked Nuestra Casa Environmental Justice Fellow Osvaldo Macias about the fruits of this partnership. He explains how our work together has advanced impactful research while extending his organization’s reach and influence in advocating for policy changes.