Report: Bay Area rent most expensive in U.S.

(KRON) – How unaffordable is it to live in the San Francisco area? A new study by the National Low Income Housing Coalition says that in order not to spend more than 30% of your income on housing you’d need to make $61.50 an hour to rent a 2-bedroom apartment in the San Francisco-Marin,-San Mateo metropolitan area.

“That is atrocious. It is absolutely harming our region. It is holding us back,” said Louis Mirante, the vice president of public policy with the Bay Area Council.

The Bay Area Council is an association representing 300 of the Bay Area’s largest employers.

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“When companies are not able to attract workers because of the high cost of housing, the economy is absolutely going to suffer. Our companies, our region is going to suffer and our economic productivity is going to suffer,” Mirante said.

“Our health care workers cannot afford to live here,” added Corey Smith, with the Bay Area’s Housing Action Coalition. “Our first responders cannot afford to live here.”

The Bay Area’s Housing Action Coalition advocates for the building of more homes for residents at all income levels.

“We need to be building more housing, making it faster and easier to build more housing, supportive homeless housing, subsidized affordable housing and the market rate housing. The whole spectrum so people can afford to live in this wonderful place that we get to call home,” Smith said. 

And San Francisco is not the only place with an affordability problem. The report suggests you need to make $55.15 an hour to rent a 2-bedroom apartment in Santa Clara County, and $43.73 an hour in Alameda and Contra Costa counties. And while the pro-housing movement seems to be gaining steam, there’s a long way to go.

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“The state has about a two-and-a-half to three-and-a-half million homes shortage in our region," Mirante said. "We probably have between half a million and a million homes that we need to add tonight to get us down to where we can and should be at national averages for rent.” 

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