Opportunities for All

City Services Cohort

Who Are We?

  • Opportunities For All or OFA is a program that brings together many young and brilliant minds together to a six week program that teaches the participants about the city and allows for the development of workplace skills, and career exploration. This program allows for equal access to different career pathways and equal access to opportunities. 

  • Our cohort the City Services Cohort talks about the different types of services available to people in San Francisco. As a cohort, we talked about services available such as food assistance, housing help, job opportunities, public transportation, and other services that the city has. In addition, we also did some case studies in an effort to gain a better understanding of some city services we learned about.

  • For our project, we have designed a website to highlight the issues of housing and how services provided by the city can help those who are unable to find housing to obtain affordable housing. On the first page of our website, we show some of the statistics about the current housing market and different housing prices of different zip codes within the city. On the second page, we describe the current homelessness issue and how the city is working on fixing it. We talk about some of the statistics on homelessness and look into how the homeless and those who need food assistance can acquire it. In addition, we discuss some of the current affordable housing projects that are being worked on within the city. Lastly, we also came up with new city services that the City of San Francisco can provide to improve the well-being of residents and the city as a whole.

  • One of the biggest challenges that we can see within the San Francisco bay area is that housing is difficult to obtain due to the limited availability and price. This means that lower-income families would have an extremely difficult time finding houses. One of the ways that the city had tried to solve this issue would be the housing lottery which offers new and affordable housing to low-income families through the lottery system. Another way that we are trying to help the housing problem would be the Homelessness Recovery Plan Overview which would provide long-term affordable housing for the homeless and increase the capacities of homeless shelters to allow for more occupants.

  • Our cohort’s goal for this project is to bring awareness to the issue of housing within the city and try to bring some change to how people can gain access to housing.

Current Events: Housing in San Francisco

Housing: Rent

Rental prices in San Francisco are less expensive compared to pre-pandemic numbers, but rent in other parts of the Bay Area has increased. Despite these lowered prices, San Francisco is still one of the more expensive places to rent in the Bay Area. Currently, San Francisco’s asking rent is about $3,440 a month as of February 2023, a decrease of 3.7% from $3,570 in February 2020.

The rent prices differ depending on the zip code area; for example, the 94112 zip code rose about 20%, from $2,790 to $3,350. On the other hand, the 94102 zip code, which includes the Tenderloin and Civic Center area, saw a decrease of 10%, from $3,050 to $2,730. 

https://www.sfchronicle.com/bayarea/article/rent-prices-increase-pandemic-17884597.php#:~:text=San%20Francisco's%20typical%20asking%20rent,from%20%243%2C570%20in%20February%202020.

Overall, home prices have risen by 28% compared to pre-pandemic levels, driven by factors such as limited housing inventory, homeowners with fixed-rate mortgages holding back from selling, and the impact of high-interest rates, which have pushed prices beyond the reach of potential buyers. Multiple major cities in California, including San Francisco, San Jose, Los Angeles, and San Diego, have seen notable drops in home sale prices between June and September 2022, highlighting the volatility and regional variations within the housing market in the state.

Housing: Ownership

The real estate market in the San Francisco Bay Area has experienced a significant decline in home values, with the median sales price in San Francisco dropping by $220,000 compared to the previous year. This decrease represents a 13.4% loss in equity, making the Bay Area the fastest dropping real estate market in the nation. However, the housing market is complex, and while some areas like Danville and Fremont have seen an increase in single-family home prices after a period of decline, other regions like Richmond are still experiencing decreasing values.