Nearly everyone agrees that sky-high housing costs are a serious problem in the Bay Area. But there’s potent resistance to the notion that the region could — or should — try to build its way out of a deepening crisis.
A new survey by the Bay Area News Group and Joint Venture Silicon Valley shows a solid one-third of the region’s residents oppose building significant quantities of new homes. Opposition grows when the conversation turns to the kinds of construction advocates say are most desperately needed: Affordable housing, housing for the homeless, high-density housing around transit.
One of the clearest indicators in the poll that someone is likely to oppose new housing? They already own a home. How to make that opposition even stronger? Tell them the housing will be nearby.
With the Bay Area at a critical juncture in planning for future growth, this entrenched opposition – dubbed “Not In My Backyard” or NIMBY sentiment by its critics – helps drive local and state policies that alternately seek to cater to the resistance or break its influence. The poll provides a powerful look at how those efforts are playing out – and who’s lining up on which side of the battle.
“The folks who have the most political power, who are the loudest, are oftentimes your affluent homeowners,” said David Garcia, policy director for UC Berkeley’s Terner Center for Housing Innovation. “And so it creates challenges for lawmakers who would like to pursue pro-housing policies, but have to answer to this very loud slice of their constituency.”
According to the online poll – which surveyed 1,628 registered voters in the five core Bay Area counties earlier this month – 92% of respondents identified the cost of housing here as a very serious issue, the strongest consensus around any challenge confronting the region. When asked if they supported building “significant quantities” of new homes of all kinds to bring down costs, 52% agreed while 32% disagreed. The rest said they didn’t know.
The poll found that older, White and affluent residents were less likely to support homebuilding than younger residents, people of color and lower-income earners, all groups that bear the brunt of high housing costs. For example, 60% of Black respondents favored more building, compared to only 46% of White respondents.
But the largest gap in support for more housing was between renters, who largely favored much more housing (66% yes, 21% no) and homeowners who were deeply split (42% yes, 39% no).
“It’s a profound irony,” said Russell Hancock, president of Joint Venture, a public-private partnership focused on civic issues. “I have mine, but I don’t want you to have yours. That’s really what it says.”
For decades, homeowners have been at the forefront of housing resistance, pressuring big cities and suburban counties alike to block or delay new projects, and pushing rules that discourage dense development and increase building costs.
Experts agree that’s one of the main reasons the Bay Area has some of the most expensive home prices in the country – with the median cost of a single-family house reaching $1.1 million in August – and why nearly a quarter of the region’s renters spend over 50% of their income on housing costs.
For poll respondent Kanissia Davis, a 30-year-old teacher in El Cerrito, renting a room in a crowded five-bedroom home was one of the few options available because she said she’d struggle to afford her own apartment, despite earning nearly $70,000 a year.
“It’s crazy that older generations didn’t have to go through this,” said Davis, who is Black. “And it just feels so unfair.”
In hopes of easing the housing gridlock, the state has forged ahead with an effort to compel local governments to prepare for significantly more housing across California. In the Bay Area, municipalities are now in the process of submitting detailed plans for how they will approve more than 441,000 new homes for all income levels between 2023 and 2031, over double the region’s current eight-year housing goal.
And unlike in past housing cycles, state officials are threatening lawsuits, fines and the loss of land-use authority for local governments found out of compliance. Both California Attorney General Rob Bonta and Gov. Gavin Newson’s administration have created enforcement teams to ensure municipalities are following state housing laws.
“At the end of the day we need to see local accountability,” Newsom said just after signing two high-profile housing bills late last month requiring cities and counties to approve apartments and townhomes proposed for underused commercial property. “We will celebrate success, but we’re going to call out failure.”
But the mounting pressure – and the growing sense of crisis – has not stemmed the tide of opposition, the news group poll demonstrates.
Poll respondent Jay Maille, a longtime homeowner in Pleasanton, said he understands the Bay Area’s need for more housing. But he said he resents the state wresting away the city’s ability to “maintain the character” of the Alameda County suburb of around 70,000 residents.
He’s most upset about a state mandate requiring local officials to quickly approve a proposed 5-story affordable apartment complex planned for downtown Pleasanton because the city isn’t meeting its current housing goals. Maille, 67, raised his concerns directly to Pleasanton’s mayor, whom he considers a friend, but was told the city’s hands are tied.
“You shouldn’t force towns to become something completely different than what people like about the place,” Maille said.
The poll found 44% of respondents oppose state laws that dictate to local governments which housing projects they must approve, while 56% support them. Again, homeowner resistance is stronger, with 51% opposing such laws.
The state’s more aggressive approach in recent years has given rise to a new class of politically active neighborhood groups, some of which played a key role in killing California lawmakers’ most ambitious housing production bill in 2020.
The organizations say the state is ignoring the effect of new development on traffic, the environment, wildfire risk and other impacts, arguing decisions about where and how to build new housing should be left to local officials who best understand the needs of their communities.
Despite the pushback, San Francisco State Sen. Scott Wiener, the author of the failed bill and the state Legislature’s most vocal housing advocate, maintains Californians’ support for homebuilding is on the rise. He noted the new poll found all respondents favored more housing by a 20% margin.
“The public has really evolved on this issue because people have seen with their own two eyes what’s happening,” Wiener said. “Everyone knows someone who’s struggling.”
While a clear majority of poll respondents supported more home construction, support fell when residents were asked whether they would accept new housing in their own neighborhoods.
That was particularly true among homeowners.
When prompted to select the types of homes that are most important to address housing shortages, homeowners’ most popular choice was subsidized housing for low-income residents, selected by 47% of those respondents. But when asked to choose the kinds of housing that should be built within a half mile of their home, homeowner support for affordable housing fell to just 25%.
Renters, on the other hand, supported more low-income homes in their neighborhoods by a wide margin – 60%.
Wiener said localized opposition, particularly to affordable housing, is why the state has in recent years phased in policies to roll back city and county control over the planning process. “Cities have no choice but to approve subsidized housing and certain types of homeless shelters,” he said.
Gloria Bruce, executive director of the nonprofit East Bay Housing Organizations, said housing advocates have work to do if they hope to convince Bay Area residents that building more homes in their own backyards is a benefit to their community, and themselves.
She wasn’t surprised that support for homebuilding was split between homeowners and renters, as well as different age groups and races, given the realities of the Bay Area housing market. She said even many in Black and brown neighborhoods remain rightly wary of development after years of displacement.
“There’s just a long way to go in making the connection for people that if you’re feeling unhappy about the economy or homelessness, supporting housing is a really important way to address those issues,” Bruce said.
For Davis, the renter in El Cerrito, more housing can’t come fast enough. She is contemplating a move to the Sacramento region, where she might be able to afford a down payment on a home.
“We need to have more housing,” Davis said. “I don’t care where they build it as long as it’s affordable and meets people’s basic life needs.”
