It takes us all, including Apple, to fix Bay Area housing crisis

The longest boom cycle in Bay Area history has the region facing its greatest housing crisis ever.

This is what happens when the Bay Area economy creates 367,000 jobs and builds just 57,000 new homes between 201015. The last three years only made things worse.

The extent of the problem hit home Thursday with Bay Area News Group reporter Marisa Kendall’s story saying home prices are so out of reach that even highly prized engineers working at Apple, Facebook and Google can’t afford a house here. Whoa.

If that doesn’t get the tech industry’s full attention, it should. We’ve known for years that retail businesses, schools and police and fire departments have a hard time competing with other regions for top-flight talent. But if Silicon Valley can’t attract and retain the brightest minds from around the world, it’s sayonara for the innovation economy.

The average software engineers at Google and Apple make about $200,000 a year, which isn’t enough to to get a standard loan for a median-priced home — about $1.25 million — within a 20-minute commute from their offices. That’s assuming, of course, that they can come up with the $250,000 needed for a typical down payment.

At least Google and Facebook are starting to recognize the need to do their part. Google is backing building of 10,000 homes in Mountain View to support its new office development. Facebook wants to build 1,500 homes on its expanded Willow campus in Menlo Park.

But Apple has done next to nothing in terms of housing to support its new spaceship in Cupertino, where as many as 12,000 employees will eventually work.

Apple is contributing $5.85 million to the city’s affordable housing fund. This from a company that is bringing home the vast majority of its $250 billion held overseas that it claims it would use to make a sizable investment in the United States. Making the situation worse was Cupertino Mayor Darcy Paul’s state of the city remarks indicating that the city’s housing shortage isn’t dire and doesn’t require drastic action.

The median home value in Cupertino is estimated at $2.2 million. And Cupertino, like most other Bay Area cities, is failing to make the affordable or market-rate housing goals set by California.

The problem isn’t exclusive to the Peninsula and South Bay. The trends there are mirrored in the East Bay, where Walnut Creek, Pleasanton, Fremont and Moraga all have median sales price of more than $1 million. Pockets of affordability still exist in eastern Contra Costa County, where the median price of homes is closer to $500,000.

The only way the Bay Area can address a problem of this magnitude is if all the crucial players — business, labor, government — work together for the greater good, rather than focusing only on their own needs.

There’s one other key player in addressing this crisis — you.

Business, labor and government can do their part, but if individuals in communities block every housing effort by demanding “Not In My Backyard” nothing will improve.

Counties and cities need to respect people’s fears, and work to remedy them. To make this work, the Bay Area is also going to have to build more densely near public transportation and improve its public transportation options.

A five-county poll of 900 registered voters in the Bay Area conducted Dec. 27-Jan. 9 by this news organization and the Silicon Valley Leadership Group offers encouraging news. It showed that 64 percent of residents support building significant quantities of new housing. And get this. A majority, 53 percent, said they would support construction even if it changed the character of their neighborhood.

Some of the pieces necessary to address the problem are in place and beginning to show promise. Gov. Jerry Brown signed 15 housing bills in September aiming at a sea change in how California address its housing challenge. Santa Clara County’s $1 billion Measure A bond passed by voters in November 2016 is beginning to bear fruit. And San Jose has 8,400 new homes in the pipeline with a goal of 25,000 in the next five years.

The county, working with the city of San Jose, awarded $39.9 million for the Villas on the Park project that will build a first-of-its-kind, six-story, 84-unit housing facility for the homeless in downtown San Jose. Five other projects designed to provide affordable housing and additional units for the homeless are in the works.

Everyone agrees about the extent of the problem. The question is whether the Bay Area can collectively work together to get something done about it.