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City presents draft economic strategy update, staff flag housing, inclusion and transit as top priorities
Summary
OEWD and partners presented a draft update to the city's economic strategy, highlighting the need for more housing, career pathways and transit capacity; analysts reported growth concentrated in high-wage and low-wage sectors and underperformance of local-serving industries.
City officials presented a draft update to San Francisco's economic strategy on Feb. 26, emphasizing housing supply, inclusive workforce pathways and transportation capacity as core priorities.
"The city's economy is really driven by its relationship to external markets," Todd Ruffo, director of the Office of Economic and Workforce Development, told the Planning Commission as he introduced the report and its framing of export and local-serving industries.
Laurel Arvanitidis outlined actions taken since the 2007 strategy, including sector-based workforce academies (construction, health care, IT and hospitality), broadband and digital-literacy initiatives for low-income neighborhoods, and small-business loan programs and one-stop assistance. Arvanitidis said the city has provided more than 200,000 hours of digital literacy training and extended fiber to public housing sites.
Ted Egan of the Controller's Office provided the report's economic analysis, showing the creative industries grew roughly 4 percent annually over a business cycle while local-serving industries lost jobs at roughly 1.5 percent per year. "The creative industries grew over 4% a year," Egan said, and he warned that many growing sectors either produce high-wage jobs that require college degrees or low-wage service jobs that pay far below what it costs to live in the city.
Commissioners and staff discussed several follow-up priorities: improving inclusion and job ladders for residents without four-year degrees; accelerating housing production to ease labor-cost pressures on local businesses; and updating impact-fee or funding mechanisms to pay for infrastructure such as transit improvements and affordable housing. Commissioner Hillis and others pressed staff on financing options, including bonds and regional measures to increase capacity at BART and other transit providers.
Staff said the update responds to Proposition I requirements to review the strategy and that the draft is intended to generate further public comment and interagency follow-up. The commission received public comment and questioned staff about raw job-change numbers and next steps for linking the strategy to planning and housing-element work.
