NYC Offers Warning for San Francisco’s Affordable Housing Plans

by Randy Shaw, Beyond Chron (reposted)

Wed, Jun 20, 2007 7:13AM

Wednesday, June 20, 2007 :A new report on the rising price of affordable housing in New York City offers a cautionary tale for San Francisco. “Hard Costs,” by Jarrett Murphy of City Limits Investigates, describes how mayoral projections about affordable housing fall prey to rising prices of land and materials, and how even newly-created units cannot keep up with the thousands of units leaving the affordable market each year.

Most troubling is Murphy’s finding that from 2002 to 2005, 27% of New York City’s rent-controlled housing was eliminated. Mayors of New York City and San Francisco over the past two decades have preached the importance of affordable housing, but market realities have frustrated city goals. San Francisco will either learn from New York City’s experience, or suffer the same affordability shortfalls in the years ahead.

After 30 years of publication, the New York City-based “City Limits” magazine revised its format and now produces quarterly issues that address a single subject of citywide importance. It’s first issue focused on the costs of affordable housing (see a synopsis at http://citylimits.org/content/articles/viewarticle.cfm?article_id=3336 ), and raises a number of issues that impact San Francisco but are rarely publicly discussed.

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