As being one of the fellows who serve in San Francisco / California, I struggled with housing issue myself, finding an affordable house in SF or Bay Area in general is almost ( an impossible mission). and there are many reasons and factors that impacted the housing prices in the last 50-20 years. In my blog, I’ll share some of these reasons.
Tech industry
California’s affordable housing crisis didn’t just happen. The affordable housing 
shortage was created by a series of factors, one of the main ones is the tensions between longtime San Francisco residents and the arrival of the tech industry.
Those tensions trace their roots back to the San Francisco Bay Area’s housing crisis, where people are going to ridiculous lengths to find an affordable place to live, including turning to boats, vans, and even cardboard boxes!! yes, cardboard boxes!!
San Francisco is the second-densest city in the US after New York City, with more than 870,000 people packed into about 47 square miles, about 18,580 people per square mile. That density, combined with a continuous influx of tech companies and entrepreneurs into San Francisco in recent decades, has led to an epic housing crisis. In 2017, the median house price in San Francisco was over five times higher than the median price nationwide.
The tech industry gets a lot of flak for exacerbating the crisis, with lots of young, well-paid people coming in and driving prices up for both rentals and home purchases. According to real-estate marketplace Zumper, San Francisco is the most expensive rental market in the US, with the median rent for a one-bedroom apartment going for $3,590.
Land prices
State lawmakers can try different ways to pass the bills, aimed at building more affordable housing. But they can’t repeal the fundamental law of supply and demand for desirable land.
The legislative analyst reported that materials, labor and government fees all are higher in California than the rest of the country. And regulations can tie up developers’ projects agonizingly for years, adding cost. As well as the transportation quagmire.
Land cost is one of the main factors who drives up housing prices and makes homeownership increasingly beyond the reach of so many Californians. Land prices on the coast are among the highest in the nation. A residential acre in the average U.S. metropolitan area is valued at $20,000, Along California’s urban coast, an average acre is worth more than $150,000.
The citizen could try live in cheaper areas like little towns off Interstate 5 in the San Joaquin Valley, but there aren’t much of job opportunities. Unlike the Bay area, where there are plenty of opportunities, but it’s practically impossible for a middle-class family to move. The median selling price for a single-family home in San Francisco during July 2017 was $1.4 million, according to the California Assn. of Realtors.