Mayor’s Office of Housing outlines scale of San Francisco’s affordability crisis, public housing redevelopment and inclusionary reforms

Matt Franklin, director of the Mayor’s Office of Housing, told the Planning Commission April 5 that San Francisco faces acute affordability challenges in both rental and ownership markets and outlined the office’s strategies for preservation, redevelopment and production.

Franklin said the city uses U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) area median income (AMI) bands to set program targets: about 60% AMI for inclusionary rental units and 100% AMI for many ownership units. He described a ‘‘dumbbell’’ income distribution with many households below 50% of AMI and many well above 120% AMI, leaving a relatively small middle.

On rentals, Franklin cited a median rent near $2,000 — roughly the 100% AMI affordability threshold for a three-person illustrative household — while the ownership market’s median home price exceeds $700,000, which he said effectively requires households near 200% AMI to afford median-priced homes under standard underwriting assumptions.

Franklin reviewed HUD cost-burden metrics and said the city counts roughly 65,000 households in HUD’s ‘‘worst case’’ category and about 25,000 in the ‘‘severe’’ category (households earning under 50% AMI and paying more than 50% of income for housing). He emphasized that…