Living Expenses

Living expenses can be challenging for people who are struggling to find a place to live. Housing Expenses is the total sum of money that it costs to afford a shelter (house/apartment/etc). It is a huge issue in San Francisco specifically because SF is the second most costly place to live in the United States. The main reason it is so costly to live in San Francisco is not just because of the atmosphere, but rather the job opportunities and the proximity to Silicon Valley where all the top global tech companies are located. Due to lots of people flocking to live in San Francisco, there is high demand and low supply for the people who are even able to afford these skyrocketing prices. This leads to a cause of homelessness in the city. In this website, we will detail through the expenses while attempting to find helpful solutions that will make this less of a problem.

Change Over Time

In this image, the graph indicates the monthly cost of rent in SF yearly. We can tell that there’s an increase of 240.6% from 1994 to 2019. As pointed out earlier, there is a great increase from 2010 to the present day because tech companies are starting to see success with many more people turning to the internet as their main source. Since there are already lots of land being taken up by other residents, there are fewer apartments due to the lack of real estate which leads to rentowners upping the prices.

Comparison

As we look through this graph, it compares the average prices of home sales yearly in San Francisco, California, and the United States. In 2018, there is a 515.4% difference when comparing the prices of United States Houses and San Francisco Houses. You could buy 6 homes in the United States with the price of one San Francisco house. The average wage in San Francisco is about $36.30 hourly, but it takes a wage of $68.33 hourly to afford a two bedroom apartment which is about a difference of $31.93 hourly.

Impact on Society

As a result of high living expenses, other issues emerge. The main issue being homelessness. Since some people are not able to afford housing, they have to result in poor housing conditions or even none at all. The expenses of living in general are way too high and impossible to afford even with a minimum wage job. Eviction is something that plays a huge part in homelessness. The eviction notices increased 43% from 2021 to 2022.

True Story

As told by the San Francisco Chronicle, The Velasquez family has tried their best to survive through the pandemic of both Covid-19 and homelessness. Almost a year ago, Sandra Velasquez was hospitalized due to her autoimmune disorder flaring up. This led to her family being evicted from their apartment in SF because she missed too many paychecks from her restaurant cashier job. Their current living situation is in the hotel room that the city has leased out to homeless families who need a private space because of vulnerabilities to the coronavirus. Velasquez states, “Sometimes it’s hard, but you can’t really show it. You have to be strong for the kids. And most of the time, I really appreciate that I’m getting more time with them than I’ve had in many years.” Her plan is to stay as long as the city will let her, hope her job gets reinstated, and get a new apartment.

Conclusion

We chose to cover this topic of living expenses because we want to raise awareness (educate people) on why this is such a major crisis in San Francisco. Costly living expenses are still very much evident in SF. It's somewhat impossible for us to be able to convince the whole city of SF to lower rent / house prices, but there are still helpful solutions. The top solution would be to check out the San Francisco Human Services Agency which provides a mix of different support services for San Francisco Residents who are experiencing homelessness or are about to. Some of those services include extending eviction protection, providing help towards paying rent, possibly being eligible for long term housing, and emergency shelter. SFHSA can also help with food, health, jobs, money, protection, safety, child care, and family services. Another beneficial solution would be to turn to homeless shelters if you are still waiting for a response from SFHSA. They provide warm food, clean beds, and other services such as guidance, healthcare, etc.