San Francisco has two problems: lack of affordability and lack of space. To alleviate this problem, Oakland is now offering to allow S.F. residents who qualify for affordable housing to move across the Bay.
With San Francisco housing costs at an all-time high — and land at a premium — Oakland Mayor Libby Schaaf tossed out an idea that she admitted might sound a bit crazy: What if San Francisco housing developers could fulfill their affordable housing requirements by building some of that housing in Oakland?
Proponents see it as a regional solution to a regional problem.
“[N]o one city can address the regional housing crisis by itself,” the mayor's chief of staff told the San Francisco Chronicle. “San Francisco and Oakland can’t solve these problems on their own because jobs, transportation and housing are all components that people think about when deciding on a place to live.”
The idea may mesh nicely with the Bay Area's Sustainable Communities Strategy, which, among many other provisions, calls for more housing in center cities and a better jobs-housing balance so that residents do not have to move to the urban fringe in order to find affordable housing. San Francisco has embraced a plan to built 30,000 units in the next five years, with one-third of them affordable. By the city's standards, a for-sale unit around $500,000 technically qualifies as affordable in the city's heated real estate market.