Families Feel Pushed Out of San Francisco

One side effect of the high cost of housing in San Francisco is that it’s pushing families out of the city.  "San Francisco notoriously has the smallest percentage of kids — 13.4 percent — of any city in the nation. But while San Francisco officials sweat and bicker over affordable housing, they rarely talk about family housing," reports Heather Knight for the San Francisco Chronicle.

Supervisor Norman Yee commissioned the city's planning department to come up with a report on the issue, and the results paint a grim picture for families. "Of all the homes across San Francisco with three or more bedrooms, just 30 percent of them are occupied by families with children. Many of them are inhabited by unrelated roommates, couples whose kids are grown or single people," writes Knight. The kind of demand that has families competing with singles that would break them up points to an extraordinary demand for housing of many kinds, Yee feels the problem is caused, in part, by what developers wish to build. "Yee said he’s tired of seeing plans for high-rises filled with studios and one-bedroom apartments and open spaces that are clearly designed for adults," Knight writes. It's also the case that there's simply a great deal of demand, some of which may be due to Yee and others opposing dense low-income developments.