"Taking Issue With S.F. Needing 5,000 Homes Per Year "
SF Business Times, November 8, 2013
Regarding the editorial “Housing’s worst enemy in S.F. is housing activists” (Nov. 1-7 issue), the Business Times staff should get its facts straight.
Where it came up with the assertion that San Francisco “needs 5,000 new housing units a year” is a mystery. The precise housing needs for the 7-year period 2007-2014, direct from the City’s General Plan Housing Element “quantified housing goals,” are: 12,124 units of housing for low-income households, 6,754 units for middle-income households, and 12,315 units of market-rate housing for upper-income households.
That is a total of 31,193 housing units over a 7-year period, or average of 4,456 units per year of production. And most importantly, 61 percent of all that housing production is supposed to be below-market affordability, which means only average of 1,759 units of market rate housing a year is “needed.”
The Business Times is entitled to its opinion, but at least back it up with some real numbers.