Breed’s Treasure Island developer bailout is a serious problem

By Steve Stallone : 48hills – excerpt

Peskin, Chan amendments offer accountability—but where is the affordable housing, and why are details still secret?

The supes will consider Tuesday/23 a risky plan to bail out the developers of the Treasure Island housing development. This so-called “Alternative Financing” plan, embodied in the Disposition and Development Agreement amendment, could leave the city on the hook for more than $200 million at a time when the city is already facing a huge deficit.

This should be taken seriously.

Alarmingly, many in the city, led by Mayor London Breed and Supervisory Matt Dorsey, have remained conspicuously silent about the plan’s obvious deficiencies, even in the face of the board’s own budget analyst’s dire warnings…

In accordance with the Sunshine Ordinance and the city’s commitment to transparency, the board should demand the release of the fiscal impact study the staff has cited to assure board members that the numbers will all work out. If it proves it, prove it.

The supervisors need to take the legislative analyst’s advice to “pause” the Alternative Financial Plan until that is done.

In the meantime, the board must demand a plan for when and how the promised affordable housing will be built, and tell anxious TI residents when it will be ready for occupancy…(more)