GOP budget dashes affordable housing plans in Bay Area

Just when Bay Area counties, cities and housing advocates thought they had the money to start getting a grip on the region’s affordable housing crisis, along came the House Republicans’ proposed tax-cut bill to deliver a kick in the teeth:

It would eliminate the combined tax credit and tax-free bond program that is the linchpin of most affordable housing projects in California in order to offset tax breaks to the rich.

The Private Activity Bond Program has to be restored before this bill goes to a vote. And the GOP congressional delegation, headed by House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy, has the power to save it.

California is 1.5 million homes short of what it needs to house its workforce — a number that’s growing by 60,000 units a year — and has a fifth of the nation’s homeless. In 2016 alone, the state received $2.2 billion worth of tax credits and leveraged $6 billion from the related tax-exempt bonds to build or rehab 20,600 affordable homes. Losing the program would be a problem nationwide, but California relies on it most heavily.

Voters in Santa Clara and Alameda counties passed housing bonds last year for a combined total of $1.5 billion, taxing themselves to help solve this crisis. But projections for the numbers of homes — in Santa Clara County, 5,000 mostly supportive-housing units for the homeless — could be cut in half if the tax credits and bonds are gone, state officials say.

Central California has its own housing problems — but Bay Area prosperity is making them worse. Leslye Corsiglia, founder of the advocacy nonprofit SV@Home, says Silicon Valley workers who can’t afford homes nearby move to communities such as Modesto, which drives up prices there.

“It’s one of the unintended consequences of success,” she said. “Creating homelessness two hours away.”

These are largely Republican areas, and California Treasurer John Chiang, whose office administers the federal programs, is taking the fight directly to the GOP congressional delegation. His office has sent letters to every member listing tax credit projects in their districts. At a press conference Thursday, he laid out the big picture: More than $2 billion from these programs has gone into the 14 Republican districts since 2013, funding some 9,400 homes.

There’s a long list of provisions in this tax cut bill that should be deal killers for anyone representing California, but the affordable housing hit could be the cruelest.

Eliminating deductions for state and local taxes and some mortgage costs is bad enough. It would wallop California’s middle-income families. But sabotaging the state’s capacity to provide housing for the poor will leave more people homeless, more working families living in squalor and more children denied a safe, healthy upbringing. Surely it’s not what California Republicans intended.

U.S. Rep. Darrell Issa, RVista, on Wednesday became the first to say he’s voting no on the tax plan. Next?

“It’s one of the unintended consequences of success. Creating homelessness two hours away.”

— Leslye Corsiglia, founder of the advocacy nonprofit SV@Home