To address housing crisis, expert says, consider housing a human right

While the pandemic is changing the way people work and socialize and has resulted in economic downturn, acquiring land and building remain expensive, and the Bay Area has long fallen short of its housing goals. Sarah Karlinsky, senior adviser at the San Francisco Bay Area Planning and Urban Research Association, a public policy think tank better known as SPUR, has published reports indicating that Bay Area municipalities should be constructing 45,000 units of housing per year. A paradigm shift to considering housing a human right and treating it like infrastructure would help achieve that goal, she said.