By Shanti Singh and Roisin Isner : 48hils – excerpt
SF won’t begin to meet its housing goals unless Breed commits the funding.
In the coming weeks, Mayor London Breed will present a $14 billion budget proposal that will shape the direction of affordable housing in San Francisco for years to come. This budget will choose to either invest voter-approved funding to expand the supply of affordable housing, or to scatter and spend that funding for uses not intended by the voters.
In 2020, a clear majority of San Francisco’s voters approved Proposition I, which increased taxes on the transfer of real estate worth more than $10 million. The official ballot arguments in favor of the measure explicitly stated that the new revenue should be dedicated to expanding affordable housing. Since then, Proposition I has generated more than a quarter of a billion dollars in new revenue for the City of San Francisco, and the Board of Supervisors unanimously approved an ordinance to commit Proposition I revenue to affordable housing upon its passage.
Proposition I became a model for Los Angeles’ Measure ULA, which also increased taxes on large property sales and was approved by voters last year. Following its passage, Mayor Karen Bass immediately committed Measure ULA revenue towards an ambitious and innovative plan for housing preservation and production. Yet it remains unclear whether Breed will follow our sister city’s lead…(more)