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Tenants and anti-displacement organizations want San Francisco to use funds from an existing real estate transfer tax to develop mixed-income social housing and provide rent relief.
Amid skyrocketing rents, a flood of evictions and an additional $25.1 billion needed to reach San Francisco’s state-set affordable housing production goals by 2031, Proposition I has sparked fierce debate.
One of several housing-related measures on the ballot this November, the Affordable Housing Guarantee Act — which could dedicate an estimated $120 million annually toward affordable housing — could create hundreds of units a year in mixed-income developments and bolster displacement prevention services. Evictions are at an 11-year high, prompting Mayor Daniel Lurie to declare a rent emergency.
“With rent skyrocketing 30-plus percent, our city needs to do better,” Christin Evans, co-founder of Small Business Forward, said to cheers at an Aug. 16 rally celebrating the measure. “With 100 million per year in revenue that’s expected from this measure, we can take more housing off the speculative real estate market, build more affordable housing and keep tenants in their homes.”
Proposition I would redirect money from a transfer tax on the sale of properties, dedicating revenue from sales valued at more than $10 million to a new House SF Fund. Currently, revenue from the tax on these sales goes into the city’s general fund, where it can be spent more freely.
The measure would not raise taxes and includes a tax break for new multifamily developments but Lurie calls it an “unaccountable slush fund” — even though the Mayor’s Office of Housing and Community Development would control the money the tax generates. Supporters of the measure, who include affordable housing advocates and tenants rights groups, said they put it on the ballot because elected leaders have been ignoring the will of the people since 2020, when voters increased the real estate transfer tax on high-value sales and approved an ordinance allowing the city to buy and/or develop up to 10,000 units of low-income rental housing… (more)