Interactive maps

San Francisco’s Housing Crisis

This post may contain affiliate links. As an Amazon Associate, we earn from qualifying purchases.

San Francisco is known for having some of the highest rental and housing costs in the United States. The demand for housing greatly exceeds the supply, leading to skyrocketing prices. This makes it difficult for many residents, including those with moderate or low incomes, to find affordable housing.

Apartment buildings are illegal to build in 73.5% of San Francisco. San Francisco has enacted strict zoning regulations. Among other restrictions, San Francisco does not allow buildings over 40 feet tall in most of the city. Partly as a result of these codes, from 2007 to 2014, the Bay Area issued building permits for only half the number of needed houses, based on the area’s population growth. At the same time, there has been rapid economic growth of the high-tech industry in San Francisco, which has created hundreds of thousands of new jobs. The resultant high demand for housing, combined with the lack of supply, has caused dramatic increases in rents and extremely high housing prices.

San Francisco's Housing Crisis
Red means single-family or duplexes only. Orange means triplexes or fourplexes are legal. Green means larger apartment buildings are legal.

San Francisco has a complex set of regulations and considerations that influence high-rise construction within the city. These regulations are intended to balance the need for new development with concerns related to seismic safety, neighborhood character, environmental impact, and infrastructure capacity.

The city’s zoning code designates different areas for various types of land use and development. Zoning regulations can include height limits, setbacks, density restrictions, and other requirements that determine how tall a building can be in a specific area.

San Francisco has set maximum building heights for different zoning districts. These height limits can vary significantly from one area to another. The city uses a combination of absolute height limits and bulk and massing controls to ensure that new buildings fit within the context of their surroundings.

The downtown area and the Transbay district have specific zoning designations that allow for taller buildings. However, even within these districts, there are regulations in place to manage the density and scale of new development.

To help solve San Francisco’s housing crisis, Asheem Mamoowala compared actual building heights in San Francisco with their allowed building heights and created the map of unused building height allowance in San Francisco.

Unused building height allowance in San Francisco

Want to learn more about San Francisco? Then you might like to read:

0 0 votes
Article Rating
Subscribe
Notify of
guest

1 Comment
Oldest
Newest Most Voted
Inline Feedbacks
View all comments
Alex E
Alex E
6 years ago

Zoning laws are created for the rich

1
0
Would love your thoughts, please comment.x
()
x