S.F. housing bond is a step closer to ballot
San Francisco supervisors gave initial approval to placing a $300 million bond measure on the March ballot to fund affordable housing as the city faces a state mandate to build 46,000 affordable homes in eight years.
Supervisors voted to place the ballot in committee Tuesday and the full board is expected to discuss it in the coming weeks. The proposal would come four years after voters approved the largest housing bond in San Francisco history at $600 million. The bond won’t mean increasing property taxes: the city sells the debt, and only issues bonds when other debt has been retired.
The proposed bond is part of a deal struck between Mayor London Breed and the board this summer to move forward with reducing the share of affordable homes built in new market-rate developments from about 20% to between 12% and 16%, depending on the neighborhood and building type.
The bond could help San Francisco meet its housing goals as it continues to struggle to build homes amid one of the most expensive construction markets in the country. Building a single unit of affordable housing is about $1.2 million in some cases, and it can take up to five years or more to approve and build housing projects, in part because of the city’s slow permitting process, which state officials criticized on Wednesday.
Eric Shaw, head of the Mayor’s office of Housing and Community Development, said about $240 million of the bond would largely be used to build about 1,500 housing projects currently in the city’s pipeline.
Shaw said about $30 million would be used to provide 120 shelter beds for women who are survivors of domestic violence, street violence or human trafficking. The remaining $30 million would be used to preserve about 60 units of the city’s existing affordable housing stock, whether that’s for repairs or rehabbing units. The city would prioritize housing for seniors and placing affordable housing in wealthier areas, according to the proposed measure.
But the $300 million is only a fraction of the $900 million the city needs to build all the housing units in the construction pipeline, which is about 11,000 units. The city currently relies mostly on local dollars to construct housing since the flow of state and federal dollars can be unpredictable. Shaw said funding is falling short by the billions annually, and with increasing costs for land and construction, the figure will only climb going forward.
“Nineteen billion dollars in local funds is needed to achieve housing element targets based on current goals,” Shaw said. “High development costs, hard costs, are undermining our goals, so local funding is a critical source of dollars.”
Shaw said the city will likely spend about $120 million to get about half of the 1,500 projects moving in 2024, and then another $120 million in 2025-2026, but that’s contingent on voters approving the bond. Money set aside for preservation will be allocated in 2025-2026 and the 120 survivor beds would come online in 2027 or 2028.
Supporters of the bond will have to convince San Franciscans — who have approved various funding measures in recent years — to approve a multimillion dollar bond to solve the city’s affordable housing crisis. The bond needs two-thirds support for approval, a high hurdle.
Breed has already cautioned that the city is not on track to meet its housing goals.
Still, Supervisor Aaron Peskin touted the bond measure as a great collaboration between the supervisors and the mayor’s office, which have at times fought over policy in recent years.
“We still have a long way to go between now and March but we’re off to an auspicious beginning,” Peskin said.
Supervisor Ahsha Safaí applauded Peskin’s efforts to include amendments that prioritize seniors, women who have experienced violence and others.
“Calling them out specifically I think is an important point for the city,” Safaí said.