A recent poll identified homelessness as well as housing costs and availability as two of the most important issues facing California today. In fact, these issues are two sides of the same coin — we cannot address homelessness without also addressing the housing shortage across the income spectrum. This recognition should drive a common agenda for building the Bay Area’s future.
Today, it’s too expensive to live here. Young people can’t raise families in the communities where they grew up. Many families are forced to live in RVs. Communities suffer when commuting keeps families apart and ruins our environment. How do we overcome our different priorities and interests to develop common solutions?
California has done this before. Our economy is the envy of people around the world. Local industry invented technologies that have improved how people live. Our parents and predecessors built ports and highways, schools and university systems, that advanced our economy and supported our residents. This spirit of innovation and ingenuity can be directed to create a new model for our communities and economies that works for all.
We can do this — again.
We write this together because business, philanthropic and academic communities must work together to address the interconnected challenges of housing, transportation, climate change and economic opportunity:
• Facebook on Tuesday announced a $1 billion, 10-year investment, including a new partnership with the Newsom administration and the state of California for mixed-income housing on excess state-owned land in communities where housing is scarce.
• The University of San Francisco is constructing housing for students in San Francisco and working with interfaith leaders and peer academic institutions to unlock land and funding for housing to serve communities in need.
• The Silicon Valley Community Foundation is expanding its efforts to protect and expand housing for residents, especially the most in need.
Sadly, money alone cannot solve the housing crisis. By one estimate, 2 million new homes are needed in the five-county Bay Area by 2070. Our collective experience suggests six principles to guide future efforts:
1. The crisis is a regional problem and solutions must be addressed regionally. We must do more on a policy level to alter legal and regulatory systems that delay projects and incur huge costs.
2. Producing new homes, protecting people from evictions and preserving the existing housing stock must all be part of our solutions. No one approach will be sufficient.
3. Solving the crisis requires producing homes for Californians at every rung of the income ladder. This includes supportive and affordable housing, and housing for essential workers such as teachers, nurses and other public service employees who contribute to everyday functioning of their communities.
4. Housing and transportation planning must be integrated to meaningfully address climate change. Shortening commute times is not only good for the environment, but also expands the pool of housing alternatives open to those in need.
5. Initiatives to produce new homes should reflect our Bay Area values of inclusion, environment and economic opportunity. Metrics that inform planning and infrastructure investments should address affordability, rates of homelessness, carbon footprints and social mobility.
6. Solving California’s housing crisis requires new partnerships around a common vision and shared responsibility for our future. Governments at all levels, the private sector, labor, faith communities and voices traditionally not well represented in the housing policy arena must work together.
Our organizations embrace these principles and agree to coordinate our efforts going forward. Pope Francis’ encyclical, “Laudato Si: On Care for Our Common Home,” calls on us all to think about our shared home and address complex crises that are both social and environmental. We encourage leaders across all sectors — public, private and philanthropic, secular and those of faith — to take up this charge with us.
Elliot Schrage is a vice president at Facebook. Rev. Paul J. Fitzgerald is president of the University of San Francisco. Nicole Taylor is president and CEO of Silicon Valley Community Foundation.
