The Bay Area is currently experiencing what many believe to be a housing crisis. Housing affordability in the region, for both rental and ownership housing, is at an all-time low. In 2005, only about 12 percent of Bay Area households could afford a median-priced home using their income alone. This percentage was even lower in some Bay Area counties: 10 percent in Contra Costa and Marin Counties, 9 percent in San Francisco, and 7 percent in Sonoma County. As the gap in wages for workers in highly skilled positions and in the retail and personal services sector has grown, lower wage workers have been left behind-particularly as housing costs have skyrocketed. All projections indicate that housing affordability is likely to remain a major regional issue for many years, with long-term economic repercussions and significant impacts on overall quality of life.

Between 2000 and 2015, the population in the Bay Area is expected to grow by nearly 950,000. Providing sufficient housing for this growth is crucial if we are to maintain the region's social and economic vitality. As the cost for housing near job centers has risen, workers have sought more affordable housing in communities farther and farther away from their jobs, compounding traffic congestion.

In 2000, the number of jobs in the Bay Area exceeded the number of employed residents by over 300,000. With the regional average of 1.4 employed residents per household, more than 215,000 additional housing units would have been needed to provide a regional jobs-housing balance. Estimates in Projections 2007, which are based on some local adoption of smart growth-related changes to land use policies, reveal that by 2035 the region's jobs will continue to exceed its employed residents by over 250,000.

The mismatch between the location of jobs and housing is already straining the region's roadways and environment. The most severely affected areas are the routes serving the Sacramento Region and the Central Valley, where many Bay Area workers now live due to a lack of more proximate housing choices. The lack of an adequate supply of housing to match existing and future job growth means that the number of in-commuters to the region will nearly double by 2030, if more housing is not provided.

Both private businesses and government agencies report increasing difficulty in filling vacant jobs; roadways are clogged with workers traveling increasingly long distances to get to work; and many young families, long-time residents, and other members of our communities are relocating because they can no longer afford to live here. If the crisis has not touched a family directly, it has affected friends, relatives, neighbors or co-workers. It is clear to most Bay Area residents that the housing situation in the Bay Area constitutes a regional crisis.