So where ARE we Supposed to Live, Then?

The Census Bureau, in addition to counting where people live, also counts where they work. City-by-city and county-by-county results are available from their website here. You can download it in MS Excel or ASCII format. It's pretty dry stuff--just a big table of numbers--but it helps answer very un-academic questions you might be asking, like "why am I stuck driving an hour to get to work every day?", or "why am I paying so much for rent on this dump?". Last August, I wrote a bit of a rant on this subject, and accused California cities of being all too eager to attract business, but equally eager to avoid providing housing for the people who work in them. Now I've got statistics to prove it!

First, here's a useful figures on what a good ratio of employment to housing should be. Nationwide, the Census counted 281,421,906 residents, of whom 128,168,928 were enployed; that's 2.19 residents per employee. In California, the figures were 33,871,648 residents, 14,506,499 emploeyees, or 2.33 residents per employee.

So that means that cities should, on average, provide room for 2.33 residents per person they create space for the employment of. How do local cities measure up? I looked at a sample of cities starting with San Francisco, and working down the Hwy 101/CalTrain corridor. I took population and employment figures from the Census spreadsheets, figured a population need based on the employment figures times 2.33, and a housing surplus/deficit by subtracting the actual population:

City	Population	Jobs	Housing Need	Housing Surplus/ Deficit
San Francisco	776,733	587,300	1,368,409	-591,676
Daly City	103,621	15,006	34,964	68,657
Colma	1,191	3,266	7,610	-6,419
South SF	60,552	41,084	95,726	-35,174
San Bruno	40,165	15,566	36,269	3,896
Millbrae	20,718	6,402	14,917	5,801
Burlingame	28,158	25,657	59,781	-31,623
San Mateo	92,482	46,512	108,373	-15,891
Belmont	25,123	7,043	16,410	8,713
San Carlos	27,718	17,857	41,607	-13,889
Redwood City	75,402	52,887	123,227	-47,825
Menlo Park	30,785	32,930	76,727	-45,942
Palo Alto	58,598	78,657	183,271	-124,673
East PA	29,506	2,796	6,515	22,991
Mountain View	70,708	59,293	138,153	-67,445
Los Altos	27,693	10,684	24,894	2,799
Sunnyvale	131,760	89,899	209,465	-77,705
Santa Clara	102,361	119,124	277,559	-175,198
San Jose	894,943	377,915	880,542	14,401
Campbell	38,138	23,146	53,930	-15,792
Milpitas	62,698	48,798	113,699	-51,001
Morgan Hill	33,556	12,866	29,978	3,578
Gilroy	41,464	15,507	36,131	5,333
Hollister	34,413	9,364	21,818	12,595

It's not surprising that San Francisco has a housing deficit, since its downtown has been developing as a commute destination from surrounding cities for over a hundred years now. But, whereas in times past, suburban "bedroom" communities provided enough of a "housing surplus" to offset the "housing deficit" of core cities, it's clear the peninsula and valley cities don't come close, and some--especially quintissential "Silicon Valley" cities like Palo Alto and Santa Clara, have developed into major commute targets themselves, while adding very little in the way of new housing. The result is a huge, region-wide, deficit of housing.

How big is the problem? Let's take a look at figures for the five counties that make up the urban core of the Bay Area:

County	Population	Jobs	Housing Need	Housing Surplus/ Deficit
Alameda	1,443,741	683,957	1,593,620	-149,879
Contra Costa	948,816	338,408	788,491	160,325
Marin	247,289	122,643	285,758	-38,469
San Francisco	776,733	587,300	1,368,409	-591,676
San Mateo	707,161	353,376	823,366	-116,205
Santa Clara	1,682,585	946,756	2,205,941	-523,356
Total	5,806,325	3,032,440	7,065,585	-1,259,260

So the Bay Area basically is short of housing to the point of needing to make room for about a million and a quarter more people. The average household in California (according to the Census Bereau again) is 2.93 people, so that works out to about a half million housing units.

If you're wondering where you can move to get away from this mess here's some figures for counties in the "greater Bay Area":

County	Population	Jobs	Housing Need	Housing Surplus/ Deficit
San Benito	53,234	15,460	36,022	17,212
San Joaquin	563,598	195,709	456,002	107,596
Santa Cruz	255,602	107,407	250,258	5,344
Solano	394,542	123,386	287,489	107,053
Stanislaus	446,997	153,956	358,717	88,280
Napa	124,279	59,875	139,509	-15,230
Yolo	168,660	86,301	201,081	-32,421

These figures reflect decades of bad planning and willful blindness to a growing problem. The result for most of us is choice between exhorbitant housing costs and nightmare commutes, or some "compromise" between them. As I wrote in the manifest that I opened this blog with, a solution to this problem will require leadership beyond the parochial interests of individual cities. Our state government should incent cities to provide housing proportionate to their commercial space--by whatever carrots or sticks will get the job done.