housing

The carpet in Maria Montes de Oca’s apartment is matted and discolored. She shows me how the base of the cabinet under her sink has collapsed from water damage.

Host Ethan Elkind sits down with Bay Area's Senator Scott Weiner to discuss legislation to address California's housing crisis.

Residents at the Westwinds Mobile Home Park in San Jose started this decade off with an unsettling surprise.

Oakland city officials estimate that more than 4,000 people are homeless. Activists are demanding the city do more immediately. A group called Moms 4 Housing are taking a stand by occupying a vacant home in West Oakland.

Lots of new affordable housing is planned in San José but will take five to 10 years to build. So San José is launching a project called Bridge Housing Communities. It will temporarily house people in cabins and help them find a permanent place to live. 

Apple is pitching in $2.5 bilion dollars to help ease California's housing crisis.

$2 billion will go toward an "open line of credit.” That will build new low and moderate income homes, as well as a mortgage assistance fund.

October 28, 2019: Next Tuesday, San Francisco voters go to the polls to vote on a slate of city officials -- many of whom are running unopposed -- and ballot measures that address housing, campaign finance, e-cigarettes and taxes on Uber and Lyft rides.

San Francisco’s public housing is in the middle of a huge transition. In 2007, the city rolled a plan to redevelop four of the city’s public housing sites in phases to avoid displacing any residents. Now, residents in Potrero Hill are in the first phase.

The median home sales price in San Francisco is $1.35 million. The median rent of a one bedroom apartment is $3,700 per month. It’s a lot of money.

Advocates warn that people who need nursing care may increasingly be sent far away from San Francisco in a developing shortage of affordable nursing home beds linked in part to the cost of doing business and the cost of living in the Bay Area. 

For few generations now Berkeley has been home to alternative living arrangements like communes and co-ops. There’s a new intentional community keeping this tradition alive.

Here, no one’s in charge and decisions are made by consensus. This place is at the forefront of the housing crisis — in fact, it’s the reason the people here came together in the first place. 

A real estate company recently proposed a big development plan for Alameda South Shore Center. It has residents talking about the need for more housing, potential traffic problems and future of the island’s culture. 

On Thursday, the city and county’s Planning Commission unanimously approved a proposal to designate a parking lot near Balboa Park BART Station for long-term parking and overnight camping in vehicles. This approach has already been tried in Oakland, Palo Alto, and San Jose, but it’s a novel move for San Francisco. 

San Francisco currently has 9,784 people living without a home.

That’s according to a “point-in-time” count last month. It’s more comprehensive than previous measurements — including not just people living on the streets and in parks, but also homeless people who are incarcerated, hospitalized, and in residential treatment facilities. 

On this edition of Your Call’s Media Roundtable, we’ll discuss coverage of this weekend's California Democratic Party Convention in San Francisco. Fourteen Democrats running for President will address delegates and hold a number of fundraising and policy events in the Bay Area. With California moving its primary to March, what role is the state playing in the 2020 race?

On this week's media roundtable, we’ll discuss coverage of the snap elections in Spain. The fractured political landscape handed the Socialist Party most of the parliamentary seats, and, for the first time, the far right anti-immigrant Vox Party, which was backed by Steve Bannon, won 10 percent of the vote. What’s next for Spain?

San Francisco’s Mission District was once a neighborhood known for being home to working-class immigrants. Now, it’s a hipster haven thanks to the tech boom. 

San Francisco approved a plan to build its largest homeless Navigation Center yet, against vehement opposition from some residents.

Karen Coppock of Home Match SF and Wendi Burkhardt of Silvernest highlight their services providing shared housing alternatives. 

On this edition of Your Call, how many millionaires can the Bay Area sustain? When Uber and Lyft go public this year, thousands of employees will become incredibly wealthy overnight. Home prices are expected to go up, making the Bay Area even more unaffordable for working class people.

On this edition of Your Call, we’ll discuss what resources are available for Americans facing a a housing, money or food crisis.

After a year and a half of negotiations, a diverse group of Bay Area officials, housing advocates, and other stakeholders have signed off on what they’re calling a “grand bargain” on housing.

On this edition of Your Call, we’ll discuss what it will take to prevent even more people from becoming homeless.

It’s no secret: the Bay Area has changed a lot in the last decade. But, El Sobrante, an East Bay town in Contra Costa County, hasn’t attracted the same attention as its neighbors. How long can that last?

Last fall organizers and volunteers set up a women-run homeless community in East Oakland’s Brookfield neighborhood. They called it the Housing and Dignity Village. About 13 people moved onto a vacant lot that was public land. The City of Oakland threatened to evict them. Advocates went to court.

There are a lot of things to blame for the housing affordability crisis in the Bay Area — we talk about a shortage of housing, we talk about predatory landlords and property flippers, we talk about why we have a for-profit housing system at all.

We’re introducing a new semi-regular segment—Bay Views. It’s a chance for you—folks from our community of listeners and makers—to share your thoughts about our changing city and region. 

At UC Berkeley rising tuition and a lack of affordable housing have created a student hunger crisis. Now, the University is working with faculty and staff to try and meet students most basic needs.

Housing costs have risen dramatically in Oakland the past few years and so has the number of people without homes. An Alameda County report estimates that as many as 9,000 people in Oakland are unhoused.

On this edition of Your Call’s Special Election Series, we'll discuss California's midterm elections results. Citizens voted on 11 statewide propositions, a slew of local measures and races, and the Governor's and Congressional races.  What's next?

Guests:

David Dayen, contributor to The Intercept, and author of Chain of Title: How Three Ordinary Americans Uncovered Wall Street's Great Foreclosure Fraud