Cost of housing among area's top woes
Both the Chron and Examiner have coverage of a small study by the the Bay Area Council on why people are leaving the Bay Area.
From the Chronicle, “Two out of five residents of the nine-county region have given serious thought to moving away — mostly because of high housing costs, according to a survey released today by a business and public policy group.”
“There’s a ripple effect as people leapfrog from the Bay Area to the interior parts (of California),” said Rob Wiener, executive director of the California Coalition for Rural Housing. “As housing becomes less affordable, people who earn wages in those communities have to move farther out as well.”
“Everyone is working so hard [in Rhode Island] to pay the heating bill and the taxes,” [a former resident who now lives in Rhode Island] said. “In the Bay Area, people work hard, but they also play hard. We miss that.”
“Nearly three-quarters of those questioned in the Bay Area Council poll said increasing the supply of affordable housing was “very important.” Fifty-eight percent supported building new homes on underutilized space within urban areas; one-quarter favored building new homes on land outside of existing Bay Area communities.”
And from the Examiner, “Many residents surveyed blamed their own elected officials for a lack of affordable housing, with just 26 percent saying their city is doing a “good” or “excellent” job encouraging appropriate development.”
““While the market is producing plenty of market-rate housing, it’s just not producing the range of choices that the Bay Area requires,” said Tina Doung, spokeswoman for Non-Profit Housing Association in San Francisco.”
“But in what might prove to be a positive shift, people who have opposed development in their neighborhoods in the past appeared to be rethinking that position, the survey shows. About 58 percent indicated they’d support higher-density housing development in urban neighborhoods, including vacant lots, as opposed to 25 percent who preferred rural area.”
