Supes, labor advocates: City’s workforce desperately needs affordable housing
November 9, 2021
By Bay City News
San Francisco supervisors, housing advocates and labor organizers agreed Monday that more must be done to address the housing crisis, which has left many people unable to afford to live in the city in which they work.
During a hearing on affordable housing for The City’s workforce in a meeting of the Board of Supervisors’ Land Use Committee, Supervisor Gordon Mar called for an expansion of programs and funding that serve low-income families to further serve workers.
“Over the past decade, the new housing that’s been constructed and permitted in our city has been extremely imbalanced and overwhelmingly of one typology: luxury condos and apartments,” Mar said. “This type of housing, while meeting the needs of single, high-income workers, has been overbuilt, and with pandemic-driven changes to how and where some of us work, demand for high rise luxury condos cratered over the past two years.”
He added, “If we are to bring needed balance to our city’s housing development and extend housing opportunities for the essential workforce and the people in our community in need of stable and affordable housing, we need to continue to fight for greater public investment, appropriate regulations and equitable land use policies.”
According to a report released last month by Jobs with Justice, the Council of Community Housing Organizations, and San Francisco Labor Council, the overall area median income for San Francisco is $93,250, while the 2020 median annual income of union workers is considerably less at about $67,350.
