A 216-unit complex called the Reserve Apartments will be demolished next year to make way for a development of market-rate housing, displacing roughly 670 tenants living in affordable housing. Per The Gaurdian:
According to the article, market-rate housing is replacing the apartments, which will be 4 miles away from Google and 20 miles away from Facebook.
From the article by Sam Levin:
Residents of the Reserve recently learned they would all have to move out by April of next year so that developers could move forward with construction of new housing that many of them will not be able to afford.
All of the modest apartments at Reserve are protected by rent control laws, which means the landlord is barred from increasing rents beyond 5% each year.
The developer, Greystar Real Estate Partners, intends to build 640 new apartments on site, along with 8,000 square feet of commercial space. “We believe for the long term, the best way of brining rents down is to increase supply,” said Dan Orloff, spokesman for Greystar.
This story is the largest eviction rent-controlled apartments to date, but unfortunately, it’s only the latest sign in a growing problem.
In the article, Levin included the that fact between 2000 and 2013, the number of low-income households in the Bay Area increased by 10%, but the region lost 50% of units defined affordable for this population.
Frederick Kuo, a San Francisco-based real estate broker, recently echoed similar concerns in an article in Quartz.
In his piece, Kuo explained that as more people prosper in Silicon Valley, it pushes more people out who can’t afford the outrageous, and growing, costs of the city, leaving behind an “alarming housing crisis and astronomical rise in socio-economic inequality.
And the tough news doesn’t end there. The city commonly makes the lists of hottest housing markets in the country, with nearly