San Francisco to Spend $500 Million to Create 3,000 ‘Affordable Housing’ Units

On Monday, San Francisco Mayor Ed Lee will offer a new proposal entailing the revival of moribund housing plans worth $500 million as he competes with Supervisor John Avalos, who announced a $500 million bond measure last week at the same board meeting in which Lee proposed a $250 million affordable housing plan.

Lee’s new proposal aims to resurrect projects shelved in 2012 when the state terminated redevelopment agencies, according to The San Francisco Chronicle. His plan would permit San Francisco to 3,000 affordable housing units to be built by 2030 in the Mission Bay, Transbay Terminal and Hunters Point Shipyard-Candlestick Point areas.

Both plans from Lee and Avalos would require the go-ahead from voters; Lee’s plan, to be announced on Monday, also needs the state legislature to vote for a trailer bill attached to Governor Jerry Brown’s $115.3 billion state budget for the next fiscal year.

Lee’s $250 million housing bond is designed to build or rehabilitate roughly 15,000 units for lower or middle class citizens by 2020. 15,000 more units would be offered at market rate. Lee’s office asserted that the trailer bill for his new proposal would allow San Francisco to siphon money from a Redevelopment Property Tax Fund that went defunct in 2012. Lee claimed, “If signed into law, this will provide the city with a powerful tool to build more affordable housing faster.”

Christine Falvey, Lee’s director of communications, said the proposal, which proposes for San Francisco to build 1,800 units of affordable housing by 2020, 660 units by 2025 and 540 units by 2030, only applied to San Francisco; other cities could not offer similar bonds.