Lack of Bay Area housing prompts rise in ‘super commuters’
As the housing crisis has grown across California, the state has seen a rise in the number of “super commuters,” residents who commute longer hours to cities starved of affordable housing, including those in the Bay Area. While the number of jobs brought into the Bay Area has grown in recent years, the availability of housing has not matched this increase, according to State Sen. Nancy Skinner, D-Berkeley. People working in service-type jobs are not being paid wages that would allow them to afford housing in the cities where they are employed, forcing many to make long commutes to and from work each day, Skinner said. “Those are essential services, but then they’re driven out to living further and further away just to be able to afford somewhere to live,” Skinner said. Census data from 2015 reported San Francisco , Alameda and Contra Costa counties’ average commute times to be 31.7 minutes, 30.7 minutes and 35.3 minutes respectively — an increase from 2010, when the commute times for...