SAN FRANCISCO — The notoriously long process to build teacher housing and other subsidized homes could get shortened in San Francisco under a new ballot initiative launched this week.
The local initiative would make the approval of such projects an “over the counter” process not subject to public hearings or environmental lawsuits, further simplifying what it takes to get the green light. Projects that meet the city’s zoning rules would simply be approved.
Proponents say they hope the change will speed affordable housing development in a city where the average monthly rent for a two-bedroom apartment is $4,000.
“It is addressing the needs of the people in the city who do the day-to-day work that makes the city go,” said Todd David, executive director of the San Francisco Housing Action Coalition, a co-sponsor of the initiative along with the pro-development group YIMBY Action. “We have not built middle-income housing in San Francisco in the last 30 years.”
The initiative dovetails with a new state law, Senate Bill 35, that will temporarily impose the same sped-up approval requirements on local governments throughout California — including San Francisco — that have fallen short of their construction goals. It takes effect in January. The San Francisco ballot initiative would make the simplified approvals for affordable housing a permanent fixture.
In early 2016, the San Francisco Board of Supervisors passed similar legislation.
At least one prominent affordable-housing advocate in the city questions the purpose of the initiative, however, arguing that it mostly duplicates existing law and won’t address the biggest barriers to development: money, land and favorable public policy.
“It feels a little bit more symbolic than it does substantive,” said Peter Cohen, co-director of the Council of Community Housing Organizations, based in San Francisco. “The hard part is getting the money and land and building the darn thing.”
Cohen said his coalition of 25 nonprofit affordable housing associations was not consulted about the proposal.
The ballot initiative does have its own utility, said State Sen. Scott Wiener, D-San Francisco, the author of SB 35 and a former San Francisco supervisor. “When a local community changes its own approval process, that’s very powerful,” Wiener said.
The new rules would apply to projects entirely made up of subsidized housing units — not market-rate condos with a certain percentage of affordable housing. They also would cover affordable housing for teachers built on school district property, one of the many professions that have been priced out of the costly area.
The initiative’s backers must gather 51,000 registered-voter signatures by early February to get the measure on the June 2018 ballot.
The initiative comes as the Republican effort to overhaul the tax code threatens to take away tax credits and affordable housing bonds that states heavily rely upon to finance subsidized housing. In California, the hit could be over $2 billion per year.
“Affordable housing projects are already difficult to pencil financially and they might get harder,” Wiener said, “so we need to do everything in our power to remove barriers that make it more expensive.”
