Solving housing crisis needs cooperation

I like looking at what San Francisco is going through regarding housing and home affordability as a large scale version of what we face in Redwood City.  Like SF, we have low-cost housing advocates, supply-and-demand, financial assistance advocates and people like me who believe we need to do all three.  And a recent report by the SF chief economist supported my position.

For the market to solve the housing crunch in SF, and Redwood City, we need to build a whole bunch of housing.  San Francisco needs 100,000 market rate units to apply market force pressure and reduce housing costs.  Redwood City is about 10 percent the size of the SF population with almost identical population growth, so that means we need 10,000 new units for a supply and demand solution.  SF's mayor thinks he only needs 30,000 units by 2020, all market rate.

With all the building we have going on in Redwood City, we aren't coming close to building 3,000 units (10 percent of SF's mayoral target) in 6 years, and thousands of people are fleeing San Francisco into San Mateo County to find more affordable housing.  Below-market/subsidized housing won't solve the problem alone because there aren't enough developers willing to build with such low profit margins. Our city, county and state doesn't have to funds to do financially assisted housing effectively.  And we don't have the political will to overcome minority objections to market-rate development to build 10,000 units, even if we could find the space to put them.

We need to start thinking holistically, not politically when it comes to housing.  Those looking for discounts in new developments have to come up with reasonable incentives for developers to work with them.  We need to increase tax revenue to pay for assistance (Note I specified revenue not taxes specifically.  We need to maximize our current tax system, not put a damper on it), which means making development in Redwood City attractive.

It's time to put politics aside, stop focusing on our differences and start talking with each other about solutions.