Affordable, Transit-Oriented Housing Campaign

TALC is committed to creating an environmentally, economically and socially sustainable Bay Area. The Bay Area needs housing that meets these criteria. We believe all new housing should be in compact infill sites on land close to job centers and transit nodes, with appropriate amounts of affordable housing.

Housing Shortage/Parking Surplus report:
Housing Shortage/Parking Surplus examines solutions to Silicon Valley’s housing crisis and transportation problems from a new perspective – parking. The report shows that if we rethink our approach to, and assumptions about, parking, we can free up land to yield more than 15,900 much-needed housing units.

Social, Environmental, and Economic Impacts of the Housing Crisis
A study by the National Low Income Housing Coalition shows that the San Francisco Bay Area is the least affordable area of the nation. The greatest housing gap is for low and moderate-income households – cashiers, teachers, bus drivers – who cannot afford to live and work in the same community. A minimum wage worker would need to work 106 hours per week to afford the average Bay Area two-bedroom apartment. Seeking more affordable housing, residents are moving farther and farther out of the core cities – from San Jose to Gilroy, from San Francisco to Santa Rosa, from Oakland to Tracy. In these outlying areas, the dominant land use pattern is low-density, single-use development – a threat to the environment because it encroaches on agricultural land and open space, and because it forces reliance on driving to meet all daily needs. Car pollution is the central reason that the Bay Area has been out of compliance with federal clean air status for ozone since 1998.

Dispersed housing development encourages a similar pattern of dispersed job development. An increased investment in public transit could provide more connections among jobs and housing, but there is no practical way for public transit to serve the majority of local and long-distance trips created by suburban sprawl. Thus, drivers suffer nightmarish commutes and reduced time with their families. These same transportation problems pose a significant barrier to employment for low-income Bay Area residents. Finally, Bay Area businesses struggle to attract and retain a workforce without sufficient housing.

8 Actions for Housing
TALC urges all Bay Area cities to provide enough housing to meet the needs of moderate-, low-, and very low-income residents of the Bay Area. This housing should be created in existing urban areas and should be compact, transit-oriented, and pedestrian-friendly.

We strongly urge the following 8 actions:

Identify land for redevelopment and reuse, including brown-fields and other vacant sites.
Re-zone for higher density on transit corridors.
Encourage second units and density bonuses.
Establish urban growth boundaries.
Institute inclusionary zoning, a policy requiring that a percentage of every new housing development is affordably priced.
Create urban land trusts, in which land is purchased and preserved for permanent affordability.
Fast-track affordable housing by simplifying the permit and approvals process.
Enforce the requirement to set aside 20% of redevelopment funds for affordable housing.

Update: 10/23/02