Jobs-Housing Balance Revisited: Trends and Impacts in the San Francisco Bay Area

Abstract

Regions in California have recently set jobs-housing balance targets, to relieve traffic congestion and improve air quality. Critics of such targets charge that many factors prevent people from living near their workplaces, and that market forces, left unobstructed, work to produce balance—that is, people and firms co-locate to reduce imbalances. This article examines changes in the ratios of jobs to employed residents in 23 large San Francisco Bay Area cities during the 1980s. Imbalances were found to have declined generally, mainly because dormitory communities in 1980 had attracted businesses by 1990. However, imbalances generally worsened in job-surplus cities, particularly in the Silicon Valley. The research also reveals little association between jobs-housing balance and self-containment. Several Bay Area cities are nearly perfectly balanced, yet fewer than a third of their workers reside locally, and even smaller shares of residents work locally. Restricted housing production, especially in fast-growing cities, has in many instances raised housing prices, displacing workers and increasing average commute distances. Eliminating barriers to residential mobility and housing production would allow more housing and jobs to co-locate in the future.