Document Type

Blog Post

Publication Date

4-28-2019

Abstract

In an area where the median home costs $820,000, San Francisco’s Bay Area is currently experiencing an affordable housing crisis. Unsurprisingly 25,951 people lack stable housing in the Bay Area. A recent Brookings Institute income inequality study ranked the San Francisco metropolitan area (including San Mateo, Alameda, Contra Costa and Marin Counties) the third highest in income inequality in the United States. In the Bay Area, where the median fair market rate for a two bedroom apartment is $3,121, the highest earners were making eleven times more than the lowest.

Among those most affected by the rising rents are minority communities. A U.C. Berkeley and California Housing Partnership study found that Bay Area neighborhoods lost twenty-eight percent of minority low-income residents when the neighborhoods experienced a thirty percent rent increase. Further, African American families are seven times more likely to face homelessness than white families.

Download

Included in

Housing Law Commons

Share

COinS