Distribution of High Income Households (2024)

It has been argued that thehigh property values of dense central city neighborhoods demonstrate theattractiveness of such a living style to the market. The data above comparesthe distribution of high-income households in the San Francisco Bay Area, whichat its core has the city and county of San Francisco, the nation’s second mostdense major municipality. Generally property values and the cost of housing ishigher in this dense core than in the rest of the San Francisco Bay Area. Atthe same time, average densities in the urbanized portions of the San FranciscoBay Area are one-third that of San Francisco.

If higher density livingwere generally more attractive to the market, then it would be expected that ahigher density area, such as the city of San Francisco, would contain a higherpercentage of the higher income people able to afford the higher prices. Thisis not the case.

• The city of San Francisco contains 13.6 percent of the Bay Area’s households, but only 12.3 percent of the households with annual incomes of more than $100,000.

• Even at the highest US Census category of $200,000 and above, San Francisco has a smaller share of households than its overall share (13.4 percent).

What this suggests is thathigh density living is attractive to some people, and not others. In the SanFrancisco Bay Area, perhaps the nation’s best example of a high density vibrantcore surrounded by similarly vibrant suburbs, high density living is a nichemarket.