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Million-dollar homes. Throughout the state of California, San Francisco residents are most troubled by exorbitant housing costs, according to a recent Public Policy Institute of California poll. Eight out of ten Bay Area inhabitants said that a lack of affordable housing is a serious concern, and nearly three-quarters cited homelessness as a big issue. That’s compared with seven out of ten people statewide who identified both as vexing problems. In 2022, the median cost of a single-family home climbed to $1.08 million in San Francisco. [The Mercury News]
Rising rents. With mortgage payments increasing in the San Francisco Bay Area, many residents are having to put aside the dream of owning their homes. Yet renting an apartment there has also become significantly more expensive. In late 2022, tenants paid an average rent of $3,224, an increase of 9.5% from the prior year. The Bay Area is among the top ten metro areas in the US with the highest rent-to-income ratios, according to Moody’s Analytics. [Axios]
An accelerating crisis. California is on track to become the fourth-largest economy in the world. However, it also hosts half of the unsheltered homeless population in the US, with a significant share in the San Francisco Bay Area. There, homelessness is the result of decades of systemic issues—such as historical redlining, reductions in affordable housing, and high housing costs—that have compounded and accelerated the crisis, assert McKinsey senior partner Alexis Krivkovich and coauthors.
Three distinct problems. In the Bay Area, the public conversation on homelessness can be challenging because commentators often refer to different aspects of the experience or journey. From our research, three distinct types of homeless experiences exist. Yet homelessness in the Bay Area is largely perceived and treated as a single problem. See potential strategies to support households at risk of homelessness and individuals who are unstably housed.
— Edited by Belinda Yu, editor, Atlanta
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