Our Housing Priorities for 2019
2018 has been a big year for tackling California’s housing crisis and we’re expecting the coming year to be even more impactful. All eyes are on the state’s housing situation, and politicians and activists alike are taking advantage of the wave of public support. And so are we!
Today we’re announcing our housing advocacy priorities for 2019, and we’ve created the Housing Action Fund to materially support these efforts. If you’re able, please consider contributing what you can to back our work to make housing accessible and equitable in the Bay Area and across the state.
Donate Here!
What’s Been Accomplished in 2018
Last year around this time we announced our housing advocacy priorities for 2018 and we’re excited to say that major progress has been made on all four of them:
- We qualified Prop 13 reform for the 2020 ballot, thanks in part to the help of dozens of TechEquity volunteers.
- San Franciscans won the right to civil counsel in all eviction cases through a ballot initiative that passed in June.
- We secured funding for the Fair Chance Housing campaign, to remove barriers for formerly incarcerated people to public and private housing.
- We saw the introduction of Sen. Scott Wiener’s SB 827 to legalize dense housing development near transit, which didn’t pass but will be making a comeback, in new-and-improved form, in 2019 (more on that below).
We’re excited and motivated by all the moves made in 2018, and we’re ready to take on all that 2019 has in store for us.
What’s on Tap for 2019
In addition to continuing to see to completion some of our 2018 priorities, including building the campaign around our Prop 13 reform ballot initiative, we have identified four new statewide advocacy priorities we will be working on in 2019:
1. Legalizing denser development in exclusionary communities. Exclusionary zoning, the practice of making it illegal to build multi-family housing in certain residential neighborhoods, has a dark history in the US and in California. The persistence of segregation and the wealth gap between white and black families stems directly from racist housing policies of the twentieth century. Despite the federal government making explicit housing segregation illegal in 1968, as Richard Rothstein notes in The Color of Law, nothing has been done to rectify the harms of decades of enforced segregation which have reverberated through almost every aspect of our society — education, the criminal justice system, job opportunities and more. It is long past time to right those wrongs. We will support legislation that addresses exclusionary zoning, especially in areas that are close to transit and jobs, with an eye towards creating density in communities that have purposely shunned development of multi-family and affordable housing. This includes Sen. Scott Wiener’s follow-up legislation to SB 827 which failed to get past committee in 2018.
2. Enacting an anti-gouging rent cap to create stability for all California renters. We all know that rents in California are way too high. In the long term, the solution to this problem is to create enough housing stock to bring down costs. But in the meantime, tenants also need the added protection of there being some predictability around what their housing costs will be. There are too many horror stories of renters being hit with exorbitant increases and pushed out of their homes. An anti-gouging rent cap would build upon existing anti-gouging legislation that, in the wake of a disaster, limits the amount landlords can increase rent. It would apply to all housing in the state, regardless of what the current rent control regime allows, and would set limits slightly above the cost-of-living increase so as not to discourage investment in creating or maintaining housing units. In 2018, we worked with the Terner Center for Housing Innovation at UC-Berkeley to flesh out this policy proposal and will advocate for its passage in 2019.
3. Securing sustainable funding streams for affordable housing development. Since the elimination of redevelopment agencies in California, affordable housing developers in the state have lost about $1b per year in capital for new affordable units. This loss of funding is directly correlated to a deepening of the housing and homelessness crisis the state now faces. We’ve been filling the gap with funds from bond measures which, while necessary and important, are not a sustainable way to fund our housing needs. We desperately need to reinstate ongoing sources of funding for the development of new affordable housing units. San Francisco Assemblymember David Chiu has introduced legislation to re-fund this urgent need and we look forward to supporting it, and other bills in its spirit, in 2019.
4. Ensuring cities are planning for the housing needs of our growing workforce. Last year, Apple opened a new campus in Cupertino to house over 12,000 employees and including 9,000 parking spaces. The City of Cupertino has zoned for almost no new housing to go along with that corporate footprint, putting pressure on surrounding cities — who don’t reap the tax benefits that Apple pays to Cupertino — to house those workers. Cupertino is not alone. Across the Bay Area, since the beginning of this decade, we’ve created over four jobs for every new unit of housing. That growth is not sustainable. All cities in the region must be held accountable for providing requisite housing when new office space is approved. There are many ways to accomplish this — strengthening RHNA enforcement, enacting a cap-and-trade style system, and other ideas — to ensure that all cities are taking responsibility for housing our growing workforce. We’ll be working with lawmakers and advocates to explore possibilities for strengthening jobs/housing ratio requirements across the state.
We understand this is an ambitious agenda, and we’re going to need all of your support to push new policies through next year. Right now you can help us by donating to our Housing Action Fund so we’re well positioned to take these fights on next year.
Donate Here!
Stay tuned for updates as we continue to work towards a more equitable Bay Area!
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