As rents and housing prices across Silicon Valley and the San Francisco Bay Area continue to rise at exorbitant rates, activists in these areas are pushing to get rent control proposals added to the ballot in an effort to protect middle-class families and keep them from disappearing and being pushed out of their homes.
As The New York Times reports, it is not cities like San Francisco that the renters’ rights movement is focusing on. Instead, it is the surrounding suburbs and bedroom communities located just south of the city, places where rent prices have increased around 50 percent over the last half decade.
While the best option may be to build more homes, both single-family and multifamily, even many who are fully aware of the problems associated with rent control see it as a good tool to help middle-class families and lower-paid service employees who are unable to live close to work, even if it is only a relatively short-term solution.
Any tangible solutions are still covered in a fog typical of many San Francisco mornings, but the conversation and, more importantly, the actions that are beginning to take place are starting to help burn off some of that fog and make a solution to the affordable housing problems of the area more visible and attainable.
