June 28, 2022: Late last night, the Supervisors struck a deal with Mayor Breed’s office to fund a $114 Million affordable housing package that we have been fighting for. This is a big victory! Before we get to what was funded, a little back story:
In 2020, voters passed Prop I, which taxes big real estate transactions to fund rent relief and social housing. It is expected to generate $170 Million a year, based on the city’s 5 year projections. Since its passage, San Francisco has raised over $200 million in funding to build, preserve, and strengthen truly affordable housing in our city. In early May, and in time for the current budget deliberations, the Housing Stability Oversight Board released a balanced package of recommendations for spending these funds to strengthen existing programs and set the City up for trying out innovative, grassroots level, community-based strategies that can grow to achieve to achieve large-scale, and long-term solutions.
That’s a lot of money! So what are we doing with it?
- We have funded our local emergency rent relief program (which remains open while the state has shut its program down).
- The board allocated $74 Million to the city’s Small Sites and COPA acquisition programs to allow non-profits to buy properties where tenants are at risk of eviction and displacement, interrupting a speculator buy-up of property in the COVID recovery period.
What was agreed on last night?
While none of the $174M in projected Prop I funds was allocated for affordable housing in the Mayor’s budget proposal , a combination of “addback” funds negotiated by the Board of Supervisors and a Certificate of Participation (COP) revenue bond will fund:
- $30M for acquisitions in an API equity fund.
- $40M for a land bank and site acquisitions
- $20M for public and co-op housing rehab
- $12M to advance an educator housing project that is ready to go
- $10M for repairing or installing elevators in SROs
- $1.7M to fund infrastructure and capacity building for existing affordable housing programs and analysis for new social housing models
- A commitment from the Mayor’s office to release the $60M in unspent Prop I funds already committed to the Small Sites program this year.
We did not win everything we asked for, and we have a lot of work to do to ensure this money is spent in ways that center our communities, with tenant power and agency and community control at the heart of this agenda. Onward!