New affordable-housing authority may be coming.
‘A regional approach is crucial to tackling our housing crisis in the Bay Area’
SACRAMENTO >> The Bay Area, widely considered the epicenter of the state’s housing crisis, could soon see the formation of a new, regional authority tasked with shoring up the supply of affordable housing — largely, by raising more taxes to pay for it.
A state proposal to create such a body, Assembly Bill 1487 by San Francisco Democrat David Chiu, passed out of the California Assembly on Friday, 42-18.
“A regional approach is crucial to tackling our housing crisis in the Bay Area,” Chiu said in a statement after the vote. “Our challenges are inextricably linked across our region, and we need to tackle them together. By generating more funding at a regional level, we are taking a significant step towards a more affordable and equitable Bay Area.”
The Housing Alliance for the Bay Area, as it would be called, was a key component of the CASA Compact, a regional initiative that yielded an array of proposed solutions to the region’s housing woes.
The proposed new body would be staffed and managed by existing regional transportation and planning organizations, the Metropolitan Transportation Commission and the Association of Bay Area Governments. Much like regional transit authorities, it would have the power to put parcel taxes, housing bonds, business taxes