Last-minute attack may foil proposed S.F. housing law
An affordable housing advocacy group is trying to come between the moderate and progressive wings on the San Francisco Board of Supervisors, just as they close in on passing housing density legislation that has taken two years to craft.
The proposed law, which goes before the board on Tuesday, would allow developers to build taller structures in exchange for making 30 percent of the units in their projects affordable. It nearly died last year because of opposition from the progressive side of the board and from west-side homeowners who didn’t want new development in their districts.
But when the measure’s author, Supervisor Katy Tang, brought a final round of changes to the law last week, it seemed she finally had the votes to get it passed.
Then came a plot twist, when the Council of Community Housing Organizations stepped into the debate. The group is pushing for tougher regulations that would reserve San Francisco’s belowmarket-rate housing for lowincome people.
On Monday, the group stacked a meeting of the board’s Land Use and Transportation Committee with critics of Tang’s “Home-SF” program, which wasn’t on the agenda.
The critics homed in on a recent amendment to the proposed law, which makes it an alternative to another citywide affordable housing law that will go up for a board vote in June.
The amendment would allow developers to bypass the citywide affordable housing requirements that Supervisors London Breed, Ahsha Safai, Aaron Peskin and Jane Kim hammered out in a late-night deal last week — that 18 percent of the rental units in San Francisco’s new market rate projects be affordable, mostly skewed toward low-income populations.
Instead, Tang would allow developers to have a more even distribution of income levels, with a third of the affordable units going to lowincome populations, a third to moderate earners and a third to people who earn slightly more than the citywide median income.
Members of the Council of Community Housing Organizations and their allies attacked the amendment during public comment on Monday, calling it a “loophole” and a “workaround.”
“This process has been really sneaky and unethical,” said Jennifer Fieber, political campaign director for the San Francisco Tenant’s Union. She said that income disparities would get worse in San Francisco if developers are allowed to choose the density bonus program over the city’s affordable housing requirements.
Longtime housing activist Calvin Welch accused Tang of trying to gut the city’s affordable housing program and “making a mockery” of the consensus between the other four supervisors.
Tang thanked her critics for parroting the “wonderful talking points provided by certain individuals.” She said in an email to The Chronicle that she had been asked to adjust the income levels in the density program as part of the deal struck among the other supervisors.
Peter Cohen, co-director of the Council of Community Housing Organizations, said his group’s goal is to get Tang to adjust those levels again — so that they mirror the ones in the other law.
Supervisor Hillary Ronen, who shared the advocates’ skepticism about the affordability levels in the density law, said Monday that she was still unsure which way she would vote.
“In general, I believe that building taller and denser is an important part of the solution to our affordable housing crisis,” Ronen said. “But Home-SF is a big piece of legislation that rezones the entire city with the swipe of a pen.”
The density law has wide support from developers and their allies, who call it a sensible trade. They say Tang has offered just enough perks to get developers to commit to a large affordable housing ratio.
But the proposal could easily go south if housing advocates successfully pressure Tang to change the ratios and extract more from developers, said Tim Colen, former head of the build-it group the San Francisco Housing Action Coalition.
“The risk of tightening Home-SF is that it becomes much less attractive,” Colen said. “Developers will say, ‘Hey, if I’m going through all the brain damage of getting a project approved in San Francisco, I at least want a decent return.’ ”