How San Francisco has transformed in the last decade, from rising rents to filthy streets

In 2009, San Francisco's median household income was less than $76,000 a year.

Today, it's more than $96,000 a year — an income that still isn't enough to everyday expenses, according to a recent analysis by GOBankingRates. The analysis determined that a San Francisco resident would need to earn $104,000 a year to afford to live in the city.

In 2007, the city's average gross rent (which includes taxes, insurance, and utilities) was less than $1,500 per month.

Ten years later, that rent had climbed to nearly $1,900 per month.

Much of the spike took place in the last five years.

The median home price in San Francisco was $600,000 in 2012 — the year Facebook went public.

Today, it's $1.4 million. As of last year, 81% of the homes in the San Francisco metropolitan area cost $1 million or more.

San Francisco had around 6,500 homeless residents in 2009.

Today, it has nearly 10,000 homeless residents. Around 42% of the city's current homeless population struggles with drug or alcohol abuse.

The crisis has led to mounting tensions. In September, residents of Clinton Park, an area close to the Mission District, raised money through a Facebook group to erect two dozen giant boulders along the sidewalk to bar homeless individuals from setting up tents there.

The action incited a tug-of-war: Activists tried to clear the sidewalk by pushing the rocks onto the street, but the city's public-works department lifted the boulders back onto the sidewalk via crane. The department eventually removed the rocks because Clinton Park residents were reportedly getting harassed in person and online.

On a recent visit to San Francisco, President Donald Trump said the city was in "total violation" of environmental regulations because of its homelessness crisis, which has left some blocks littered with feces and discarded needles.

The Tenderloin neighborhood has long been considered the heart of the crisis. Last year, the city's Public Health Department and Public Works Department collected hundreds of thousands of needles in the area.

Overall, San Francisco spent $54 million on street cleaning in 2018. The city even has a "poop patrol" — a group of five employees who earn more than $184,000 per year to clean up feces. In 2018, residents called the city more than 28,000 times to complain about feces on their streets — a 35% increase in complaints compared to the year prior.

San Francisco has more than 90 finished skyscrapers. Seventeen of those were built in the last decade and three more are under construction. The city's tallest building, the Salesforce Tower, was completed in 2018.

High-rise developments (buildings between 115 and 330 feet tall) have also sprung up in the city's downtown core. According to Curbed, 14 new high-rise construction projects have recently broken ground in San Francisco.

The 58-story Millennium Tower opened in April 2009. Since then, the building has sunk 17 inches and tilted another 14 inches to the northwest. Residents have also complained of mysterious odors, bubbling floors, cracked walls, and one giant fissure in a window on the 36th floor.

The tower's developers blame the sinking on nearby construction of the Salesforce Transit Center. The center opened to the public in August 2018 but closed a month later due to a cracked beam on the third-floor deck. It remained shuttered for 10 months.

In March, authorities also discovered two cracked windows at the Salesforce Tower. The skyscraper is located by the Millennium Tower and the Salesforce Transit Center.

A recent report from the American Lung Association placed San Francisco among the worst US cities for year-round particle pollution, which comes from dust and other tiny particles (usually carbon dioxide and methane).

Particle pollution has been linked to lung and throat cancers, as well as heart attacks. A recent study found that it may also increase a person's risk of developing brain tumors.

San Francisco's particle pollution has gotten worse in recent years, according to the report. That's likely because California's fire season is getting longer and more destructive.

In 2014, San Francisco's main transit system, BART, saw 26% more delays than it had two years prior. By 2017, the transit system counted nearly 26,000 delays that year alone.

The system has also gotten steadily more expensive since 2013, when its board of directors approved a series of fare hikes that expire in 2020. Another set of fare hikes is scheduled to go into effect in 2022.