If you live in the San Francisco Bay Area or follow housing and real estate news, you know that the Bay Area Housing crisis continues to put the crunch on low- and middle-income families and threatens to stifle economic growth in the region.
The causes are multifactorial, with economic and demographic issues contributing to the ongoing problem. I am not a city planner or an expert in housing policy, but as an architect, I do encounter problems every day that seem to make sensible development unnecessarily difficult.
Zoning Laws Contribute to the Housing Crisis
Zoning laws limit what kinds of housing and development can occur in neighborhoods. Laws enacted decades ago – some with the intention of keeping out people of color and lower-income residents – continue to favor single-family homes in certain neighborhoods, keeping other types of development, including higher-density and mixed-use buildings, out of areas in our cities and suburbs.
The debate over California’s Senate Bill 50, which would require cities to allow denser housing in areas near mass transit currently zoned for single-family housing, underscores the difficulty and contentiousness of the issue.
As a parent living in a suburban residential neighborhood, I understand the concerns some kinds of development bring, but I also believe it would make sense to revisit existing zoning laws with an eye toward updating them to better serve our changing communities and alleviate the housing crisis. It’s not my intention to prescribe specific changes, but I believe some concerns about negative changes to these neighborhoods’ character are overblown. From an architectural design standpoint, buildings and developments can be sensitively designed to fit in and enhance neighborhoods and the lives of the communities that use them.
State laws that make it easier to build accessory-dwelling units are an excellent example of small changes that, in aggregate, can help ease the housing crisis.
Construction Costs Drive Increasing Housing Costs
Even where zoning laws don’t prevent development, the cost of building makes it prohibitively expensive. Building costs run about 20 percent higher in California than in comparable cities in other parts of the country. Developers are leery of undertaking housing projects because the up-front costs increase the risk that they won’t recoup expenses or make a reasonable profit. Commercial projects seem like a safer bet for many, so fewer housing units get built.
Research from UC Berkeley’s Turner Center for Housing Innovation suggests several factors drive these high costs, including the cost of materials and labor, development fees, a complex regulatory environment and lengthy and unpredictable permitting processes in some jurisdictions.
From my “boots on the ground” vantage point, I see these problems play out every day in the projects I manage. The best contractors are often booked months in advance – they can’t afford to live and work in the Bay Area, and they can’t find the labor they need to conduct their businesses. It can take weeks to months to get the needed permits for a job, often delaying construction and adding to the cost when complex regulations require changes to plans. (These, by the way, are good reasons to work with a local architect – she knows both the contractors and the building regulations in your area.) Without a good supply of experienced contractors, the housing crisis will continue regardless of any other challenges.
Working Proactively to Increase Housing
To solve the housing crisis, lawmakers, city planners, developers, architects, contractors and citizens need to work together proactively to modernize regulations and find innovative solutions to prioritize housing development – especially affordable housing development.
The city of Santa Rosa, where I often work, has made imperfect but important strides in the quest to increase housing. Perhaps nowhere has the Bay Area housing crisis been felt more acutely than in this suburb of San Francisco, which lost more than 3,000 housing units in the 2017 Tubbs fire, displacing many families who can’t afford to rebuild and can’t find affordable rental housing in the area.
In the wake of the fire, the city streamlined permitting and reduced fees for those seeking to build housing, and the City Council and Planning Commission has recently passed a plan to allow construction of up to 7,000 new housing units in the central neighborhood around Courthouse Square. The city has also courted developers, even leading a group on a tour of potential building sites.
While these efforts won’t solve the problems of construction costs or economic risk to developers, they do demonstrate a roadmap of cooperation for communities who are committed to increasing housing options for the working- and middle-class families that are currently being squeezed out of the area.
It is exciting to this architect to work in a location that is proactively seeking solutions to our housing crisis, and I hope my colleagues, policy-makers and neighbors will continue to work together to create a welcoming, accessible and livable environment for our future.