of neighborhoods were affordable to the same families in 2018

of Bay Area neighborhoods in 2012 were affordable to families making the equivalent of $100,000 today

The governor, who has proposed $1 billion in new spending on housing for low- and middle-income workers, added that he is eager to work with cities in the Bay Area and beyond to boost the supply of homes affordable to families of all economic backgrounds.

“Our state’s housing affordability crisis is undermining the California Dream and the foundations of our economic well-being,” Newsom said in a statement responding to this news organization’s findings. “Long commute times, inability to live near your work or family, being unable to save for priorities like higher education or retirement – these all are directly tied to the cost of housing.”

The rapidly rising cost of shelter in the Bay Area has become the defining issue for the booming region, dominating conversations, topping the policy agenda of California’s new governor, Gavin Newsom, and prompting mainstream proposals that once would have been thought radical, like the regional rent cap advocated by a Bay Area committee that includes big-city mayors, businesses and even a major developer.

“That’s what’s so messed up about the Bay Area,” said Eric Nytko, a tech-sector worker who has been saving for years to buy a small condominium in San Francisco. “I’m somebody who has an engineering degree and an MBA, I’m 35, I make good money, and I still have to rent. If I’m feeling the pinch and I have a lot of things in my favor, I can only imagine people who are really struggling, how hard it is for them.”

The governor, who has proposed $1 billion in new spending on housing for low- and middle-income workers, added that he is eager to work with cities in the Bay Area and beyond to boost the supply of homes affordable to families of all economic backgrounds.

“Our state’s housing affordability crisis is undermining the California Dream and the foundations of our economic well-being,” Newsom said in a statement responding to this news organization’s findings. “Long commute times, inability to live near your work or family, being unable to save for priorities like higher education or retirement – these all are directly tied to the cost of housing.”

The rapidly rising cost of shelter in the Bay Area has become the defining issue for the booming region, dominating conversations, topping the policy agenda of California’s new governor, Gavin Newsom, and prompting mainstream proposals that once would have been thought radical, like the regional rent cap advocated by a Bay Area committee that includes big-city mayors, businesses and even a major developer.

“That’s what’s so messed up about the Bay Area,” said Eric Nytko, a tech-sector worker who has been saving for years to buy a small condominium in San Francisco. “I’m somebody who has an engineering degree and an MBA, I’m 35, I make good money, and I still have to rent. If I’m feeling the pinch and I have a lot of things in my favor, I can only imagine people who are really struggling, how hard it is for them.”

San Francisco, long known for its pricey real estate, has become progressively less affordable each year since 2012.

Use our interactive map to see where you can buy or rent based on your income. More...

The comprehensive look at more than 225 ZIP codes across the nine-county Bay Area and Santa Cruz County since the tail end of the real-estate bust in 2012 reveals how rapidly the number of affordable options has evaporated for renters and buyers alike in the latest tech boom.

A first-of-its-kind analysis by this news organization in partnership with the real-estate analytics firm Zillow gives an alarming new view of the depth and breadth of the Bay Area’s unprecedented housing crisis: Even those earning $100,000 — roughly the region’s median household income, one of the highest in the United States — are being priced out of the California Dream.

To stay in the Bay Area on $70,000 a year, they have little choice but to make the kind of extraordinary sacrifices that have become ordinary for many families.

Jeneca Crump, right, prepares a sleeping area for herself and her husband as her son, Everett, 15, does his homework in the living room of their two-bedroom apartment in San Leandro.

There they sleep, ending another day in a place they call home but can barely afford.

VERY EVENING after they say goodnight to their teenage daughter and wrangle their two sons off screens and into bed, Trevor and Jeneca Crump steal a moment for themselves. They turn on the nightly news. She plays Candy Crush on her phone. Then they lower themselves onto a makeshift bed of camping pads on the living room floor.

26% of neighborhoods are affordable to these families as the steep increases in prior years begin to level off.

30% of neighborhoods are affordable to families with incomes equivalent to $100,000 today, as national mortgage interest rates drop slightly from 2015.

37% of neighborhoods are affordable to these families. In a dramatic shift, median rents now top $3,000 throughout most of the Peninsula and Marin County and $2,000 in much of the East Bay.

Monthly mortgage payments and rent in the Bay Area and Santa Cruz County have skyrocketed since 2012 — and even families with six-figure incomes are struggling. Here’s a look at the rise in median market rent and mortgage payments by ZIP code from 2012 to 2018, and the decline in who can afford them. We defined “affordable” as spending no more than 30 percent of pretax income on housing, a common threshold.

The shrinking number of affordable options is making its mark in every corner of the Bay Area.

“These are working families who are just trying to get as close to their jobs as possible,” said Michael Lane, deputy director for SV@Home, a San Jose-based organization that promotes affordable housing. “The rents are so high, this is the only way they can do that. People are just in survival mode right now in the valley.”

Some families are coping by doubling up or renting out rooms. In a densely populated, historically working-class area southeast of downtown San Jose that surrounds the Santa Clara County Fairgrounds, the number of households with three or more workers grew dramatically between 2012 and 2017, their share rising from 15 percent of all households to 22 percent in just five years, according to census data.

But what is affordable for any family varies greatly based on its income level and other fixed costs, from paying off student loans to child care, which can cost as much as a rent payment. It’s telling that the Crumps actually spend less than 30 percent of their income on rent, which makes their apartment affordable by this analysis. Yet it soaks up roughly half their take-home pay.

This news organization examined affordability using home-value and rent estimates provided by Zillow, along with income data, census figures and other publicly available records. The analysis defined “affordable” as spending no more than 30 percent of a household’s pretax income on rent or mortgage payments, a threshold generally recommended by financial advisers but commonly exceeded in the costly Bay Area. The estimates do not include property taxes, which in California are about 1 percent of a home’s purchase price, excluding any local taxes approved by voters. And they assume a 20 percent down payment, a formidable hurdle in one of the priciest real estate markets in the nation.

Click on the arrows to compare how they increased since 2012

Not one ZIP code went untouched by the transformation, our analysis shows, as the costly new reality ripples out from the Bay Area’s core, reshaping neighborhoods and cities across the region. Schools in the fast-growing and relatively affordable East Bay city of Dublin are overflowing with children. Artists and entrepreneurs are leaving Oakland and San Francisco to seek saner rents on the North Bay shores of Vallejo. And, much like in San Francisco, many of the dishwashers, servers and cooks in Napa’s fine restaurants and hotels — the economy’s backbone — have to make a life for their families outside of Wine Country.

Swelling rents and ballooning home prices have forced legions of residents to reorganize their lives or recalibrate their dreams. Some are staying put, splitting the burden and their living space with roommates or relatives. Others are fleeing the state or fanning out to cheaper bedroom communities farther from jobs, steering more cars onto already-clogged highways or spending hours each day on trains, buses and ferries.

New homes blanket the eastern hills of Dublin. The East Bay suburb is one of the fastest growing cities in California.

94568, Dublin To some families seeking top-rated schools, the neighborhood’s $3,670 median mortgage payment looks like a deal

With a median home value of over $900,000, the East Bay city of Dublin is not a steal by any standard. A household needed to earn at least $146,800 to afford the monthly mortgage for a median-priced home purchased there last year, our analysis showed. But the breathtaking price of real estate in other affluent suburban communities known for their strong public schools — the median home value was $1.3 million in Danville, $1.1 million in Fremont, $2.3 million in Cupertino and $3.2 million in Palo Alto — is driving families with children to Dublin and neighboring San Ramon, said David Kaitz, a partner with Davis Demographics, which began creating enrollment projections for the Dublin district in 2016. “People with tech jobs are looking at those areas as — it’s hard to believe — affordable,” he said. Now one of the fastest-growing cities in the state, the BART-connected suburb of 61,000 is awash with families moving into its many new condominiums or snapping up older homes from longtime residents with grown children who rode the real-estate wave skyward. So many kids are enrolling in Dublin’s highly rated public schools that the district can’t build new ones quickly enough. The number of children in the school system, 12,090 as of last fall, grew by 65 percent in just six years. And as new homes continue to go up, the district’s demographers say, the city’s schools will need to make room for an additional 4,700 students by 2024.

Dai Sugano/Bay Area News Group Families with young children enjoy the Emerald Glen playground in Dublin. The city has attracted so many families that its public elementary school enrollment is expected to grow by another 39 percent by 2024.

94589, Vallejo The Bay Area’s cheapest ZIP code is rebounding, luring new residents even as the median mortgage has more than doubled in six years

DAI SUGANO/BAY AREA NEWS GROUP Local singer/songwriter/producer Jovan Benson of Vallejo jams with locals inside the Snap U Clear studio during the city’s monthly Art Walk.

DAI SUGANO/BAY AREA NEWS GROUP A Friday evening in downtown Vallejo. DAI SUGANO/BAY AREA NEWS GROUP Home values in Vallejo, while still low by Bay Area standards, have risen steeply since the foreclosure crisis of a decade ago. DAI SUGANO/BAY AREA NEWS GROUP Vallejo’s relatively low cost of living has attracted artists such as Shannon O'Hare, right, co-founder of the Obtainium Works studio.

Just as families are flooding into Dublin, artists and entrepreneurs priced out of San Francisco and once-affordable Oakland have discovered Vallejo, home to the most affordable neighborhood in our analysis. Like the Oakland of decades past, this historic waterfront city of 122,000 in the North Bay — an hour ferry ride from San Francisco — has struggled to shake a reputation of blight and crime. It was so devastated by the foreclosure crisis that it declared bankruptcy in 2008, and its low-rated school district is fighting to stave off insolvency.



Featured stories

Home values in central Vallejo plummeted after the real-estate crash in 2008, our analysis showed. By 2012, the median mortgage payment on a new purchase there would have been just $570 a month. Today, it has nearly tripled — to $1,470. But that’s still a bargain by Bay Area standards. More interested in the city’s low housing prices than its reputation, artists Kathy and Shannon O’Hare bought a cheap house without functioning plumbing in Vallejo about a decade ago and moved their studio space out of Berkeley. Vallejo has not been the same since. The couple opened a maker space called Obtainium Works down the street and spearheaded the city’s steampunk-style Mad Hatter holiday parade and an annual summer festival featuring cars, bicycles and disability scooters transformed into swan boats, turtles, robots and other contraptions. Countless others have followed the same trail. They include Nicole Hodge, a chef and restaurateur who serves buttermilk fried chicken sandwiches, chocolate pot de cremes and alcoholic kombucha on tap in her new downtown cafe, Provisions. The former Berkeley resident’s foray into the city was initially to rent — very cheaply — a large kitchen for her catering business, shuttling back and forth to Oakland and Berkeley. But when she started selling meals to-go, she found loyal customers, including residents commuting by ferry to San Francisco. Hodge moved to Vallejo herself last year, renting a “cheap, beautiful apartment” with water views for $1,500 per month. “Never, ever, in a million years did I imagine when I rented this kitchen two years ago that this would be happening,” she said as she took a break at one of her tables one sunny afternoon. “I love this city. It reminds me of Oakland 20 years ago.”

Dai Sugano/Bay Area News Group Nicole Hodge, founder of the catering business League of Chefs, recently opened a cafe and market called Provisions in downtown Vallejo. She moved to town herself last year.

Get the latest on the housing crisis

Sign up for Full House, our free email newsletter, for the latest housing news from The Mercury News and East Bay Times

But for families, picking up and moving to a cheaper pocket of the Bay Area can be far more complicated. Such a move often comes with extended commutes, new schools and other unhappy trade-offs, as the Crumps discovered while contemplating an escape from the East Bay neighborhood near where they were born and raised. What’s more, prices are rising everywhere, even in the Central Valley. “A lot of our friends know of our situation, and they’re like `Move, move. Move to Tracy, Manteca,’ ” Jeneca Crump said. “But the thing is, you also have to have money to move. Deposit, and first and last. Money to rent a truck.”

94579, San Leandro Like many working-class neighborhoods, this one has seen giant rent hikes, with median costs jumping 66 percent from 2012 to 2018

Dai Sugano/Bay Area News Group The Crump family. With parents Jeneca and Trevor are (from left to right) Dayton, 11, Triniti, 17 and Everett, 15.

Trevor Crump, a Costco meat-cutter with a constantly shifting schedule, and Jeneca, a stay-at-home mom, also are loath to pull their children — 11, 15 and 17 — out of their schools. So the family of five pinches pennies to stay in their homey two-bedroom, one-bathroom apartment in San Leandro, a large suburb south of Oakland. They moved in nine years ago, and for a while their rent didn’t change much. Then the hikes began — a $200 increase in 2017, and another $140 last February, rising to $1,540. San Leandro does not have strict rent caps, so such increases are allowed. The median market-rate rent in their ZIP has swelled to $2,344. The Crumps can’t afford to rent a bigger place, and on $70,000 per year, there are just 10 ZIP codes in the greater Bay Area where they could afford the median mortgage, nearly all of them at least 45 miles away. But they don’t have money for a down payment, so buying isn’t an option either.

Dai Sugano/Bay Area News Group The Crump family has dinner together at their San Leandro apartment.

Jeneca Crump left the workforce years ago to get her son Everett, who has learning disabilities, situated at school. She doesn’t have a university degree, which — combined with her husband’s unpredictable work schedule — has left her with few prospects besides a low-wage retail job, which she said she would take if the rent gets much higher. To keep the family out of debt, she tracks expenses large and small, from groceries to haircuts, makes low-cost meals from scratch, and hunts for deals. She can tell you how much a day trip to the beach at Half Moon Bay costs ($35-$40 in gas, parking and tolls) and when they can spare the money to go. The family van has over 120,000 miles on it; Trevor keeps it running with the help of YouTube videos. The close-knit family occasionally goes to concerts — Jeneca has a knack for winning free tickets from radio stations — but it’s been years since they’ve taken a trip to the world-renowned city whose skyline they can see across the Bay. They haven’t been on a family vacation since 2009, when they went to Disneyland. Their youngest son, Dayton, now 11, doesn’t remember it.



Video: Jeneca Crump talks about her detailed system for managing the family budget.

