San Francisco on Thursday took another step toward revamping its strategy to build more affordable housing in the city.
The plan now involves letting private developers focus primarily on market-rate housing, while the city invests more money in building affordable units.
“The two pieces of legislation are, one, lowering the fees that the city charges to developers of housing, market-rate housing, to incentivize them to pull permits and start building now,” Supervisor Myrna Melgar said. “And for the affordable housing developers, we are telling them there is going to be a whole bunch of new money coming your way so that you can start building affordable units again.”
The city is seeing home prices surge as artificial intelligence drives up incomes, creating an even bigger shortage of high-end housing as well as affordable housing.
“It is the entire spectrum of housing that is suffering,” Melgar said. “For working class people, we are committed to producing affordable housing and also to protect our rent-controlled housing stock.”