San Franciscans want city to ‘maximize housing,’ according to new poll

On Tuesday, the San Francisco Chamber of Commerce released its annual City Beat poll, with unsurprising yet consequential results: By large margins, San Francisco residents favor more housing and more transit—and attitudes about the outlook of the city are bad and getting worse.

Conducted in January, the poll surveyed 500 San Francisco voters with a variety of questions focused on local housing, transit, and economic issues.

Among the dizzying array of results were calls for more housing, greater density, and support for most major transit initiatives facing the region:

• Most are pessimistic about the city’s fortunes. Only 41 percent of those polled said they believe the city is “going on the right direction.” Whereas 46 percent noted it was going the “wrong direction.” Two years ago those figures were 50 and 36 percent, respectively.
• Despite that pessimism, most still favor the city. Of those surveyed, 64 percent said that San Francisco is “a better place to live than most other places,” despite the fact that 52 percent say that the city is “getting worse” overall.
• Housing issues remain the top concern. Asked to rank their “top issues,” 64 percent cited homelessness, compared to 60 percent in 2017. The second most common response was “cost of rent,” cited by 41 percent of those polled, down from 51 percent two yers ago. Third was the cost of owning a home, cited by 30 percent and up seven points since 2017. When asked, 63 percent said availability of housing is getting worse; only nine percent said housing availability was getting better.

Photo by Brian Kinney

• San Franciscans want new transit projects. Almost every transit-related proposal considered for the city/region right now netted majority support in the poll, including a second Bay Bridge (50 percent), a second Transbay tube (77 percent), high-speed rail (80 percent), and new ferry service (84 percent). The exception: downtown tolls to reduce congestion during peak hours, favored by only 30 percent.
• More housing near transit favored. Similarly, 74 percent of those polled said they favor “higher density housing near transit developments.” An even larger majority—79 percent—said the city should “maximize construction of all housing types.”

It’s never wise to make too much of a single poll. Nevertheless, ambitions for more housing—coupled with general concerns about the cost and availability of current housing and a general dissatisfaction with the state of the city’s status quo on housing and transit issues—has remained a persistent trend in almost all public polling for the past several years.

• Perspectives From CityBeats [SF Chamber of Commerce]