By David M. Greenwald
Executive Editor
One of the problems with local funding schemes for affordable housing—the cost of building even a single unit is so expensive, most funding plans won’t even put a dent in the affordable housing needs.
But one that has promise is a $20 billion bond measure that the Bay Area region will put before the voters in November.
The nine-county region could gain as many as 90,000 affordable homes from the bond measure if the voters passed it.
The Bay Area Housing Financing Authority board—a regional body made up of local elected officials—agreed unanimously to put the measure on the ballot. It will be the region’s first housing bond.
“This is one of the most significant votes I’ve ever taken in my career, and that’s saying a lot,” said Hillary Ronen, a San Francisco county supervisor on the board—as reported in the Mercury News. “Housing should be a human right.”
According to the Mercury News: “Across the Bay Area, some 1.4 million residents — 23% of all local renters — spend more than half their income on rent, classifying them as ‘severely rent-burdened,’ according to regional officials. Meanwhile, an estimated 37,000 people in the region are homeless on any given night — more than the entire population of Menlo Park.”
While opponents suggested that the bonds would be paid for by a “painful tax increase,” the actual proposal seems relatively reasonable: “The finance authority estimates the average annual tax would be $19 per $100,000 of assessed property value, or about $190 a year for a home or business valued at $1 million. It is expected to last through 2078.”
What catches my attention with this is the scale of the bond measure. This is the first proposal that actually seems large enough to fund a significant amount of housing.
The city of Davis, for instance, is looking at the sales tax contributing perhaps $1 million to the affordable housing trust fund. Others have suggested that UC Davis should be asked to help instead. Either way, I think we are looking at a few million dollars at most, which even in a city as small as Davis is not going to make a dent the affordable housing problem.
At most, the city told me, the proposal in the revenue measure would help to subsidize housing rather than build housing.
A long-time local resident, who has made their career based on affordable housing, pointed out to me maybe a month ago just how much it costs to actually build affordable housing.
One million dollars to the affordable housing fund sounds like a lot, but right now with the cost of each affordable unit being about $650,000 to build, how much is $1 million (which is what they are talking about for the Housing Trust Fund) going to get us?
It wasn’t until I listened to the comments by Assistant City Manager Kelly Stachowicz at the forum a few weeks ago that I really recognized how intractable this problem probably is.
Redevelopment was kind of the holy grail of affordable housing funding. But Stachowicz pointed out that, at its height, the city was getting up to $2 million a year from redevelopment, which was funding through the increment tax.
Can the Sacramento Region do something similar to the Bay Area? Because once you start talking in terms of billions of dollars, you are finally getting to a level where you can actually build some housing.
Building 90,000 affordable homes is a great start.
This would be a lift for the Bay Area.
The Mercury News noted some of the anti-tax sentiment percolating in the Bay Area.
It’s also a huge electoral lift.
They report, “As it stands now, the bond measure would need a two-thirds majority of all Bay Area voters to pass. However, if voters approve a separate measure on the same November ballot to make it easier to pass certain tax increases, officials said the bond measure would need only 55% approval.”
Polling commissioned by the finance authority put the support at 54%—below the threshold needed. Moreover, “68% said local taxes are already high enough and would vote against any tax increase, though pollsters said some of those voters also expressed support for the bond measure.”
The key is “a recent string of successful city and county affordable housing ballot measures won voter support after officials and advocates campaigned for them.”
It is worth watching to see what happens in the Bay Area this November. If they can get this passed, it is something that the Sacramento Region ought to look into because the money we are looking at here would actually start making a dent in our affordable housing shortfalls.
I see you’re still looking to beg, borrow and steal your way to an affordable housing solution.
On a related note I saw this article recently that I found fascinating: Costco’s Bold New Plan for the California Housing Crisis
My only point was that if you are looking to fund affordable housing, this is the first proposal I have seen that is substantial enough to actually start to address it.
Way to celebrate Pride month Beth! Way to represent Davis!
Viral video shows California mom accosting drag queens. UC Davis, her employer, responded
I mean, I get wanting to have a conversation about trans athletes and how we can all make it work out. I can even understand if but not agree with actively protesting the issue. But we all suspected Beth was off her rocker. This incident has nothing to do with trans athletes. She just went off on these people minding their own business doing their own thing.
Beth keeps acting out her own family issues in public. One day she will go way too far and suffer the appropriate consequences. She lacks self-control, a common trait among Moms for Liberty members. She loves to draw attention to herself.
Hi folks,
These posts are off-topic for this article. Please make any comments on this topic over at the open topics thread.
I could not find the open topics thread. I’ve never posted there so I don’t know where to find it.
Here you go:
https://www.davisvanguard.org/2023/08/open-national-issues-discussion/
This blog post states, “The city of Davis, for instance, is looking at the sales tax contributing perhaps $1 million to the affordable housing trust fund.” That is how the tax is being marketed, BUT it is actually a general tax that would go to the general fund and there are no guarantees any of the tax would be used for affordable housing. Even if this council does use some fraction of the requested new tax revenue for affordable housing, there is no guarantee that future councils would do the same.
@Collin
You are correct. I for one one would prefer a minimum amount of the funds or a percentage be dedicated for the specific tax revenue’s intended use. In this case affordable housing. I’d even consider being flexible if the council were up front and said; we need the new tax revenue to right the city’s finances for the next couple of years. So we want to take that revenue to fix things and then the mandatory allotment of the tax revenue kicks in for it’s intended use.
@David
I know you’re only reporting the news here in regards to the state’s efforts to fund affordable housing. I’m just tired of continuously stating that I believe/KNOW that it’s futile to keep begging the state and tax payers for a long term solution for affordable housing in the community or statewide in CA. Non-Profit and government is a business like any other except that it doesn’t (in theory) have owners that pocket the profits and increase in asset value. Again, there’s no reason why government, local state…etc.. can’t get into the real estate business itself and use the profits to fund affordable housing. It allows the government to have a finger on the market rate housing scales for influence as well as directly contributing to the affordable housing market. This isn’t even a completely foreign concept in Davis. The city of Davis owns a market rate apartment complex. It uses the net revenue from it to fund it’s affordable housing initiatives. So while Davis didn’t develop the apartment complex; it’s using market rate funds to go towards affordable housing. Local municipalities should be building more city owned units with the plan to fund and create affordable housing. Sure you can look at state and federal programs to help seed fund this kind of thing but the long term solution is to look for profits to fund the below market rate units.