Tag: funding affordable housing

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Proposition I Pushes City to Build New Type of Affordable Housing

by Madison Alvarado : sfchronicle – excerpt

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)

 

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New Melgar-Lurie plan for affordable housing is great; cutting other funding is not

By Tim Redmond : 48hills – excerpt

Expanding the Housing Trust Fund could bring in $125 million a year. Repealing Prop. I could wipe out almost as much

Anything that adds more money for affordable housing in San Francisco is, by default, a good thing. The Council of Community Housing Organizations is celebrating new legislation, originated by CCHO and and SF Community Land Trust, that would increase the city’s Housing Trust Fund to as much as $125 million a year.

It’s not an unusual approach, by historic standards: In essence, the Trust Fund would grow as part of what we used to call “tax increment financing.” The additional property tax money that comes in from the city’s radical upzoning would in part (a fairly small part) be dedicated to affordable housing. It’s also called “value capture.”

Sup. Myrna Melgar took on the legislation to make this new approach happen, and Mayor Daniel Lurie signed on, and it will wind up on the ballot in November. The plan is to make sure the trust fund is in the City Charter, so no future mayor or supervisors can divert the money to other purposes.

Since it’s a defined revenue stream, the city could issue revenue bonds against it, bringing in immediate money for housing.

All of that is good. As CCHO Executive Director Quintin Mecke notes:

“Today, more than 17,000 approved affordable homes sit in San Francisco’s pipeline — entitled, designed, and waiting. Ready for permits. Ready on zoning. Waiting only for funding.

The Housing Trust Fund, as currently structured, falls short of what that pipeline demands.

The proposed Charter Amendment can begin to change that. This is a transformation, and we should name it as one.”…

UPDATE: Melgar told me there is no deal involving Prop. I; the only deal was to reduce the amount of required affordable housing in new projects. She said she is not currently supporting the BUILD Act.

Former Sup. Dean Preston and his allies are circulating petitions that would make Prop. I permanent–and would mandate that the money go for affordable housing. Lurie will oppose that.

Some folks will say that Preston and SF’s chapter of the Democratic Socialists of America are undermining the “deal” that trades away Prop. I and inclusionary housing for this new, valuable, steady income source.

But Mecke told me that in his meetings with Melgar’s Office and Lurie’s Office, nobody said that the new trust fund hinged on everyone supporting the repeal of Prop. I and the cut in affordability requirements. “I was never asked to agree to a deal,” he said.… (more)

This continues to be one of the most convoluted way to operate an affordable housing plan. No matter where you look there is a “gotcha”. Perhaps when the dust settles one may be able to look at what options remain for the voters to respond to in November.

Meanwhile, what is being done to get the people who need housing into the thousands of empty units, some owned by companies that are or will soon declare bankruptcy and may well owe the city millions of dollars in back taxes.

We hear that Parkmerced is largely empty and the owners are broke. What can’t these properties, which can’t be in worse shade than some of the affordable housing projects we hear about, be turned into a temporary housing project for the people who are already signed up for housing?

RELATED:

How a CCHO idea became a $3 billion Charter Amendment — and why the fight isn’t over.  (By Quintin Mecke, SF CCHO : substack )

 

 

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S.F. eyes $125M annually for affordable housing, more than double current funding

By JOE RIVANO BARROS : missionlocal – excerpt

Melgar, Lurie also announce immediate $70 million injection to preserve housing

Existing affordable housing that needs protection. photo by zrants

Supervisor Myrna Melgar plans to introduce legislation Tuesday that would more than double San Francisco’s annual budget for affordable housing to some $125 million, part of a bargain she hammered out with Mayor Daniel Lurie.

Melgar said her proposal would vastly expand the city’s capacity to build affordable housing by allocating $125 million annually into the city’s Housing Trust Fund, up from the $52 million that goes into it today, while also extending the fund for another 30 years. That would be a total of at least $3.75 billion.

The increase would be funded by “allocating a portion of future property tax growth every year” to the fund, according to a press release sent by Melgar and Lurie.

“I cut a deal with the mayor,” Melgar said, to use property taxes “coming from the increase in the value of all properties in San Francisco” as a result of last year’s upzoning.

The proposal would take the increase in future property taxes and “put it aside” into the low-income housing fund, Melgar said.

“Housing is not getting built at the pace we need, and the consequences are all around us,” Mayor Lurie said in a statement. “Today, we’re jumpstarting affordable housing in San Francisco.”… (more)

It is good to hear someone mentioning the need to preserve the existing affordable housing as an immediate plan. Given the economic  reality that we are living in, it is naive to expect new housing will be built any time soon. That is no one’s fault, unless you want to blame the national condition we are living in, but, placing the blame does not solve the problem. Giving into reality and what is possible now does.