The mayors of San Francisco, San Jose and Berkeley joined housing advocates Thursday at a news conference in San Francisco’s Mission District to announce support for a proposed $20 billion housing bond that would finance regional housing goals.
Oakland Mayor Sheng Thao was also scheduled to appear at the news conference to voice his support for the regional measure, but was not present. a The house associated with her was raided by the FBI earlier in the day.
Thao released a statement endorsing the bond plan, which would finance 90,000 affordable housing units in the Bay Area. Her office did not respond to a question about whether the absence was related to the raid.
The mayors are trying to find ways to finance regional housing goals mandated by the state that call for the construction of hundreds of thousands of new affordable homes in the current housing cycle, which ends in 2031 in the Bay Area.
The regional Bay Area Housing Finance Authority, or BAHFA, will vote Wednesday on whether to place the measure on the November ballot. If placed on the ballot, it would have to be approved by 55% of voters in the nine counties of Alameda, Contra Costa, Marin, Napa, San Mateo, Santa Clara, Solano, Sonoma and San Francisco.
The state’s Regional Housing Needs Assessment, known as RHNA, calls for the Bay Area’s nine counties and 101 cities to collectively build about 441,000 new housing units by 2031.
Housing units must accommodate a range of income levels, including nearly 115,000 units reserved for very low-income residents. That is defined by the state as someone earning between 30% and 50% of the area Median Income (AMI). In San Francisco, the AMI is almost $105,000 for one person and just under $150,000 for a family of four.
San Francisco Mayor London Breed said the city had made a number of housing mistakes in the past, recounting that when she was younger she lived in a public housing complex that was demolished and the 300 units there were replaced with 200 units.
“We haven’t prepared for the future,” Breed said. “We haven’t prepared for a growing city, and housing is kind of at a standstill in terms of our ability to get more buildings,” she said.
Breed said there were several projects that could be advanced in the city if they had more funding.
The proposed general obligation bond measure calls for 80% of the money raised to be spent to provincial governments for housing allocations and the remaining 20% to the Housing Finance Authority for housing targeted to people experiencing homelessness.
San Jose Mayor Matt Mahan said the city is trying to end “the era of encampments.”
“Given the immediate, urgent, humanitarian, fiscal and environmental crises of homelessness, I see the most critical component of this regional housing measure as the flexible financing that will allow us to expand immediate solutions, provide transitional housing and help people from unsafe situation. and unmanaged conditions in our streets and along our creeks,” Mahan said.
Berkeley Mayor Jesse Arreguin, also vice president of the Association of Bay Area Governments (ABAG), said housing and affordability can only be addressed with regional solutions.
“The housing affordability crisis is not just a problem of big cities,” Arreguin said. “It affects every jurisdiction in all nine Bay Area counties. This is a regional problem that requires a regional solution, and cities large and small must rise to the occasion.”
If BAHFA votes to place the measure on the November ballot, the campaign in support of the bond measure would be led by the nonprofit Bay Area Housing for All.
