How Can UCSF House Its New Workers?
March 5, 2021
By Fernando Martí and Peter Cohen
Healthcare infrastructure has long been a foundation for San Francisco’s economy. So it’s good to see UCSF’s modernization at the Parnassus campus. UCSF has rightly proposed constructing new homes along with its expansion to mitigate the increased housing needs for its workforce. As we’ve been saying for years, a functioning city needs to house its workers!
UCSF will increase the size of its Parnassus campus by 50%. With 4,000 expected new permanent jobs, between faculty, researchers and support staff, the expansion will have an impact on the city’s housing capacity and on the surrounding neighborhood. If the project doesn’t include enough homes, new higher-wage workers will compete with local residents for scarce housing and exacerbate displacement. And new lower-wage workers will be pushed to find housing outside the city, many forced into long mega-commutes.
But are the 1,263 units proposed by UCSF sufficient to house 4,000 new worker households? What amount should be affordable and at what affordability levels? In other words, what would it take for the project to adequately house its workers? We don’t know, because the Planning Department has not provided the needed Jobs-Housing Fit analysis.
