May 10, 2021Rethinking the SuburbsCCHO principal authors are Fernando Martí and Peter Cohen, with assistance from Maya Chupkov and Alexandra Goldman. Special thanks to UC Berkeley doctoral candidate Jessica Schirmer for research supporting this project. This piece concludes the Council of Community Housing Organizations’ series of essays on California’s complex housing affordability crisis, and…Housing26 min readHousing26 min read
May 5, 2021Will Luxury Condos Solve the Region’s Housing Affordability crisis?The short answer is no. Luxury homebuilding has been at an all time high in hot-market cities like New York City and San Francisco. And it’s left people behind in extreme ways. The New York Times reports the 2010s was “a decade of tremendous change and gentrification for the boroughs…Housing2 min readHousing2 min read
Feb 11, 2020Rethinking the Suburbs Part IIBy the CCHO Team “Rethinking The Suburbs” is an essay series started in 2018 by the Council of Community Housing Organizations seeking to advance the public understanding of housing conditions in the Bay Area suburbs. The series explores housing strategies in the context of the post-Great Recession period of the…Housing3 min readHousing3 min read
Jan 9, 2020The Landscape of Unaffordability, And What We Can Do About ItBy the CCHO Team (Maya Chupkov, Fernando Martí, and Peter Cohen) Cities across California and the country are grappling with a wide breadth of affordability challenges. We’ve identified some of the biggest issues, and followed each one with a recommended next step to get towards solutions. 1. Building for the upper income, but failing on affordability. Many cities are struggling…Housing6 min readHousing6 min read
Feb 10, 2019Demystifying the Development Process: How Housing Actually Gets BuiltBy The Council of Community Housing Organizations Last month, San Francisco Mayor London Breed hired the City’s first Director of Housing Delivery to expedite project approval and permitting, which should lead to more housing getting constructed, and more quickly. But, how does the development process actually work? The simple version…Urban Planning5 min readUrban Planning5 min read
Sep 26, 2018Tackling Exclusionary Housing Policy in CaliforniaThis continues a series of essays on California’s complex housing affordability crisis, and the need for regional, place-based solutions. The Missing Piece in the Housing Crisis: The Fall in Single-Family Homes Rethinking the Suburbs Is Integral to California’s Housing Solution How Do We Make Regional Housing Policy Equitable? The current…Housing10 min readHousing10 min read
Jun 1, 2018How do we make regional housing policy equitable?The answer is in place-based strategies There are two pushes in housing policy right now that keep butting up against each other. One is the push to make equity a more central part of policy, no longer just a window dressing or an afterthought. …Housing5 min readHousing5 min read
Oct 10, 2017Rethinking the Suburbs Is Integral to California’s Housing SolutionCouncil of Community Housing Organizations This is the second essay in a two-part series on the role of the suburbs in California’s housing crisis. Read Part One here. An important and often overlooked factor in the state’s affordability crisis is the dramatic drop in single-family housing production in California over…Housing11 min readHousing11 min read
Sep 28, 2017The Missing Piece in the Housing Crisis: The Fall in Single-Family HomesCouncil of Community Housing Organizations On Sunday Aug 20th, 2017, the San Francisco Chronicle posted a two-page editorial “On Housing” which included a very telling graph that, unfortunately, was glossed over in the editors’ simple narrative of deregulation and “build, build, build.”Housing5 min readHousing5 min read
Jun 7, 2017Brisbane Baylands — a model opportunity for a Jobs-Housing-FitBrisbane Baylands — a model opportunity for a Jobs-Housing-Fit Council of Community Housing Organizations The City of Brisbane has a huge opportunity with development of the Baylands site, situated immediately contiguous to San Francisco’s own master-planned development at the old Schlage Lock site. The developer — Universal Paragon Corporation (UPC) — has a pending proposal with the City of…Housing4 min readHousing4 min read
