Though the statement that the city has a shortage of affordable housing is not news to anybody, they might still be wide-eyed by the numbers backing up that statement. San Francisco has a shortfall of 40,845 homes that are affordable to households in the very low-income and extremely low-income categories, according to an August report from the California Housing Partnership Corporation.
A rule of thumb (and one that is embedded in regulations and laws affecting housing in many parts of the country) is that households should not spend more than one-third of their income on housing costs. According to the report, 59 percent of very low-income households in San Francisco spend more than 30 percent of their income on rent, and 59 percent of very low-income households here spends more than half of their income on rent.
There are more than 59,000 renter households in San Francisco that qualify as extremely low income, according to the report.
More information is available at chpc.net.
