There has been some facts thrown out appearing to suggest (See question 4) that because the research from a white paper produced for the City and County of San Francisco Department of Children, Youth, and Their Families showed a positive correlation between single-family housing and families with children that must mean that multi-family housing is unappealing to families with children. While there is no where in the report that says that, the housing policy recommendation they make is that San Francisco look at how to incorporate more affordable housing to keep families in San Francisco, not, rather, how to include more single-family housing into San Francisco.
A few weeks ago, Tim Holt of the San Francisco Chronicle wrote two articles which speak to this topic and titled the series “How San Francisco Can Keep Its Families from Moving Out.” The first article talked about the need for increased open space and safe streets. Recreation facilities was one of the key policy issues the white paper suggested that San Francisco focus on, some highlights from Tim Holt’s article:
…This city is never going to compete successfully with Concord for the backyard-and-picket-fence crowd. Instead, it should focus on those self-described “urbanist” families who are lured here by the city’s cultural offerings, its diversity and its vibrant neighborhoods. The challenge lies in keeping them here.
For starters, a great deal more affordable housing should be built — some 2,300 units a year just to keep up with demand, according to estimates in the city’s General Plan.
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And we need to begin looking at the city not the way a traffic engineer or a city planner does, but from the viewpoint of a young mother trying to push a stroller across a busy street, or a child looking for play space in a crowded neighborhood.
Here’s the deal: Those families willing to give up the backyard and the picket fence want safe and enjoyable public spaces as a fair exchange. The success of any city in keeping these families will depend on how well it keeps its end of the bargain in providing vibrant, walkable, mixed-use neighborhoods and good, green open spaces — open spaces that include not only green parks but green and inviting city sidewalks.
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San Francisco families have three major priorities, according to surveys by the Public Research Institute at San Francisco State University: affordable housing, improved public schools and safer streets.
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the city is going to have to make a real effort to keep its middle class families, the ones who anchor neighborhoods, schools and civic organizations — and who are casting longing eyes at places like Seattle, with its more affordable housing, and Portland, with its spectacularly vibrant downtown and walkable neighborhoods.
The good news is that every San Franciscan — rich, poor and in between — will benefit if we begin to look at this city through the eyes of its children and their families.
And highlights from Tim Holt’s second article about housing:
[Gillian] Gillett, who grew up in an apartment house in Chicago, isn’t looking for a backyard and a picket fence. She and her husband, who grew up in New York, describe themselves as “urbanists.” They like the idea of raising their kids in a fairly dense, vibrant urban neighborhood — but one that’s got safe streets, good schools and parks.
And there is a ray of hope. There are a few good-neighborhood activists, affordable housing advocates and city planners who are working to make this not-so-fanciful urban dream a reality. They are proposing something called “transit-oriented development” along such corridors as Market, Geary, Taraval and Judah, and along the new Third Street light rail line.
The idea harks back to the transit-oriented neighborhoods before World War II. At street corners throughout western San Francisco you’ll often see two or three stories of housing above retail. Put enough of that together, stretching along several blocks, and you have yourself a medium-density, walkable environment where you don’t have to get in your car to get a loaf of bread or a pair of shoelaces. And for longer trips, to downtown or the East Bay, the higher-density housing and the transit work together.
Here’s the good news for Gillett’s family: Those higher densities make for more affordable housing because land values drive the cost of housing. The more housing you can get on a given city parcel, the less that housing is likely to cost.
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There is no dearth of ideas for dealing with the housing crisis in San Francisco, where only 8 percent of the city’s households can afford a median-priced house — now going for $800,000 — and where there are long waiting lists for affordable public and private rental housing. Real estate prices in the city are at the point where a family of four bringing in $110,000 a year qualifies for assistance in buying a home.
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If approved by the mayor and the Board of Supervisors this year, the plan [seven-year effort by neighborhood groups near Octavia and Market streets] would add housing along the Market Street transit corridor between the Safeway at Church Street and Van Ness Avenue. It would legalize in-law additions and eliminate minimum parking requirements for new housing, allowing developers to get more housing in each parcel. The city’s Redevelopment Agency is poised to add nearly 500 affordable housing units at the site of the old Central Freeway at Octavia and Market. The sweetest part of the whole deal is that the neighborhoods will get a bonus in the form of developer contributions to fund green spaces, streetscape improvements and affordable housing.
So is it, as some folks would like you to believe that multi-family housing chases away the families with children, or is it a host of other complex reasons that have some families chosing to live in places like Alameda, but some families chosing to stay in San Francisco. To over-simplfy San Francisco’s problem with families moving to other cities in order to prove a tenuous point about the evils of higher density housing is intellectually dishonest.
