A new academic study is throwing cold water on the idea that letting developers crank out market-rate housing will quickly fix San Francisco's rent crisis. Even under what the authors call a strong growth scenario, their model suggests it could still take decades for a typical one-bedroom to become affordable to someone earning the median wage for non-college workers. In the slowest scenario, that stretch of time runs to roughly 124 years. The research is landing right as City Hall and Sacramento are locked in fights over YIMBY-style reforms and housing finance, and it reframes the problem as one driven just as much by earnings and geography as by the raw number of homes.
The finding was first highlighted by The San Francisco Standard, which linked to the authors' working paper. The study comes from a team at UC Berkeley, UCLA, the Georgia Institute of Technology and the University of Toronto. Max Buchholz is listed as lead researcher and, according to UC Berkeley's Department of City and Regional Planning, is an assistant professor there.
What the model says
The authors run a straightforward what-if scenario in which the Bay Area's market-rate housing stock grows by 1.5% a year, a pace they describe as ambitious. If rents respond quickly to that extra supply, the paper finds that the median one-bedroom could become affordable to a median non-college earner in about 18 years. If prices adjust more sluggishly, the timeline stretches all the way to roughly 124 years, according to the preprint posted on SocArXiv.
That projection comes against a tight local backdrop. San Francisco's Housing Inventory shows sluggish production in 2024, and one-bedroom rents climbed about 13.3% over the past year, according to Mission Local and city planning data. In other words, even as officials talk up new construction, the market is still moving in the wrong direction for renters in the short term.
Why supply might not be enough
The paper pins a lot of the problem on deeper structural forces. Widening wage gaps and the clustering of high-earning college graduates in a few metros keep pushing market rents higher, even when new buildings go up. Commentary drawing on the study argues that if policymakers do not also tackle income inequality and expand housing that is directly aimed at lower earners, relying on market-rate construction alone is unlikely to bring broad affordability any time soon, a point echoed in local discussions of the findings.
Local reaction
The study has already stirred the usual crossfire between pro-housing advocates and developers. As The San Francisco Standard noted, YIMBY Action executive director Laura Foote cautioned that many of the zoning and permitting changes her group backs will take decades to fully play out. On the development side, speakers at a BisNow conference said that construction costs would need to fall by roughly 10% before many projects in San Francisco start to pencil out again.
Where policy goes from here
The authors argue that cities and states need a wider toolkit, not just a bet on private development. Their recommendations include stronger rent stabilization policies, more targeted subsidies and substantial public investment in social housing. That vision overlaps with proposals already circulating in Sacramento. Housing California points to an Affordable Housing Bond measure (AB 736 / SB 417) that would send roughly $10 billion to voters, money that would be used to finance the construction, preservation and rehabilitation of affordable homes across the state.
