100% Affordable Housing

How do we get there?

As a candidate for Supervisor in San Francisco’s Richmond District, I am committed to preserving and strengthening rent control, fighting unfair evictions, transitioning those without homes into permanent and supportive housing, and addressing the extraordinarily high rents that push families and working people out of San Francisco. We need to build more homes so we aren’t displacing anyone. We need to see greater access to affordable housing available to a broad spectrum of incomes. The COVID-19 pandemic has made reliable access to safe housing more important than ever.

Some San Francisco politicians say they’re “for 100% affordable housing” but “opposed to market-rate housing.” It’s a winning line. But it doesn’t make sense.

You can’t be for one and against the other, if you want meaningful amounts of affordable housing to actually be created. In fact, I would go so far as to say that supporting “only” 100% affordable housing is tantamount to opposing inclusionary housing, which in San Francisco acts as the primary funding mechanism for 100% affordable housing.

Here’s how you can actually support 100% affordable housing.

“100% affordable housing” refers to a single housing development consisting entirely of subsidized homes (and, often, other services). The subsidy is paid for with a separate pot of money, which might be public or private.

Where does that other pot of money come from? Some comes from the Federal Government, but in the era of Trump tax cuts, not a lot. The same is true of the State of California in the era of austerity budgets. And as we head into what appears to be a historic recession — perhaps even an economic depression — the budget of the City and County of San Francisco is going to be squeezed more than ever. The public pots are strained. This is one reason the Richmond District hasn’t built measurable amounts of affordable housing for years.

Keeping the pot of money for 100% affordable housing full largely relies on the creation of private, market-rate housing. Sometimes the terms “market-rate” and “luxury housing” are used indistinguishably. But this housing isn’t expensive necessarily because of any fancy fixtures or appliances. It is expensive because San Francisco is a desirable place to live, and space is limited.

When someone rents a new market-rate apartment in San Francisco, they are (by law) paying a premium to subsidize affordable housing. We want this to happen. We need this to happen. And this mechanism doesn’t rely on increasingly uncertain tax revenue to function. Again, we want this to happen if we want to subsidize affordability in San Francisco.

The actual subsidy happens in one of two ways. Typically, a developer builds an apartment building with some market-rate units and some affordable units under San Francisco’s Inclusionary Housing Program. This is one of the best ways to preserve a healthy spectrum of incomes in a neighborhood. The developer uses the higher rents from the market-rate units to subsidize the lower rents in the affordable units. Inclusionary Housing is the law in San Francisco. Sometimes, a developer builds a fully market-rate building and uses the profits to pay a fee that is used by nonprofit and affordable developers to build 100% affordable housing on another site in San Francisco. This is a good thing. Opposing this activity means opposing affordable, rent-restricted units. Ideology is getting in the way of helping the people who need it the most.

To pay for affordable housing without depending on increasingly slim government resources, we need market-rate housing to subsidize it. This isn’t “build, baby build.” This isn’t a “giveaway.” Instead, this is simply how we fund enough affordable housing to make a difference in the lives of San Franciscans.

Take away these two funding options, and you take away meaningful affordable housing production in San Francisco. This is what has happened in the Richmond District over the past twenty years. By getting in the way of inclusionary housing, we have failed to allow the creation of significant affordable housing. We have let the perfect be the enemy of the good, with terrible consequences for affordability.

To be clear: there are mechanisms for funding a small number of 100% affordable units without using the process described above. These include:

• Identification of surplus publicly owned land (the subject of a ballot measure last November)
• Identification of “small sites” the City can purchase and transform
• Housing bonds! Mayor Breed and Board President Yee pushed the largest housing bond in our history last November, $600 million financed by the city
• Low Income Housing Tax Credits (LIHTC)
• Streamlining reform like Sen. Scott Wiener’s successful SB-35

All of these are important resources and there are certainly neighbors who have (or will have) the security of a home because of them. We can’t discount them totally, and I certainly approve of all of them. But let’s be clear: these methods require taxpayer dollars and often end up costing $800,000 per unit to build.

And none of these small solutions begins to address the depth and scale of the problem we are facing.

After years and years of promises, how many affordable units have been made available to Richmond District tenants? The answer is scandalous. Over a 15-year period from 2013 to 2028, we expect to build a total of just 5 affordable units and acquire 28 existing market-rate units to convert into affordable housing. In a neighborhood with nearly 60,000 residents, this is, simply put, a disaster. An abject failure.

“I’m in favor of building, but only if it’s affordable,” is one of those lovely things that sounds good, but means the opposite. Look at the data above. If the “100% affordable” mantra leads to next to zero affordable units built, what’s the point?

I am so tired of that brand of misleading politics. Aren’t you?

I wrote about this issue four years ago. Please have a look — the fundamentals of what I wrote then are still true. Essentially nothing affordable was built between then and now — worse than even I imagined. Every year we refuse to act, construction prices go up and more of our fellow neighbors get priced out of their homes. Here are some things we need to do right away to ensure actual affordable homes are built in the Richmond:

• Make the construction of this kind of affordable housing legal and “by-right” in the Richmond District, meaning that as long as it fits our extensive zoning criteria, it can be built.
• Get behind the inclusionary developments that are required to subsidize affordable units.
• Encourage our California elected officials to get behind increased funding for affordable housing.
• Push back on the narrative of “induced demand” offered by supporters of the status quo. Their argument, that building market-rate (even with inclusionary) generates displacement, is unfounded. Gentrification without affordable housing options leads to displacement, and gentrification is here in the Richmond because we haven’t done enough, not because we have done too much.

We can do better in the Richmond. There are suitable sites here that will enhance the character of our neighborhood, not least by demonstrating our commitment to equitable housing options for essential, underpaid members of our community — and all those who need it.

If you are tired of the status quo, please join our campaign.