f{"id":41373,"date":"2025-05-21T13:15:40","date_gmt":"2025-05-21T20:15:40","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/?p=41373"},"modified":"2025-05-21T13:15:42","modified_gmt":"2025-05-21T20:15:42","slug":"the-housing-element-is-doomed-lets-fund-it-anyway","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/2025\/05\/21\/the-housing-element-is-doomed-lets-fund-it-anyway\/","title":{"rendered":"The Housing Element is Doomed: Let\u2019s Fund It Anyway"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">by\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/beyondchron.org\/author\/jeff-buckley\/\">Jeff Buckley<\/a>\u00a0on\u00a0May 19, 2025 (BeynndChron.org)<\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/beyondchron.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/05\/2nd-25-05-19.jpg\" alt=\"\"\/><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">A Housing Reality Check<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">This year in San Francisco housing policy, three things are clear: a version of the Housing Element will pass, the city has no real plan to fund it, and the city is set up to fail unless it figures the second part out.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">This is not to suggest we shouldn\u2019t move forward. No one wants a builder remedy unleashed in San Francisco except the anarchic wing of the YIMBY movement, relishing the chaos it will bring to our overly regulated system. The Board of Supervisors should keep the focus on small business displacement as they are a first-order effect victim of zoning changes, even if the city\u2019s ability to address small business displacement is limited by state government preemption. We all need to acknowledge the Housing Element will pass. But will it be built? Not without the money.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">For the last thirty years, the Eastern Neighborhoods Plans and the redevelopment areas fueled our meager housing pipeline. Our system for financing a union-made and largely luxury market relied on pension funds, and the fees it generated paid for affordable housing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Mayor Lurie prides himself on bringing investment to the city, but no one in the housing industry believes 80,000 units worth of public and private investment is there to fully fund our Housing Element as the state mandates. What about the 40,000 affordable target? Laughably unattainable.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Over the last five years, the city has averaged 1,128 units of affordable housing. Add in ADUs\u2013which are counted as affordable through some state mandated jiu jitsu\u2013and San Francisco will likely build only 10-20% of its state mandate. I challenge you to find anyone who thinks it\u2019s achievable who isn\u2019t paid to give you that opinion.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Why is it assumed that developers will have the money to build 80,000 units in the north and western part of the city? Developers are, after all, the middle men of the capital markets. Are&nbsp; their funders excited about investing in family housing on the westside? These areas will likely have a lower rate of return than the city\u2019s high rise waterfront condos they typically invest in.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">To achieve 80,000 units, we will have to see 10,000 new housing units a year for the next 8 years. Our city has averaged 3,620 net new units built in each of the last 10 years, and only 1,597 net new units were built in 2024. 64% of those units built last year were government financed \/ permanently affordable\u2013meaning market rate housing production is effectively dead. Developers, contractors, union construction workers know this already, but the rest of us should acknowledge this too.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">We\u2019ve been here before. Back in 2012, four years after a major economic collapse in the housing market, the city saw only 493 net housing units built. We are nearly at that point after the pandemic. Market-rate housing development is bottoming out. From here, we need to rebuild a broken housing development industry barely sustained by the city-funded affordable housing pipeline.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">We desperately should look at ways to beat our historical average, even if those ways could be controversial. The city should not only be a better regulator, but maybe a lender to largely market rate housing projects looking to construct today.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Instead of an inclusionary housing rate that stays rigidly in place and only changes when the politics of time dictate, it should move up and down with the housing market, increasing when indicators show a greater community benefit value and decreasing when the economy lags and dips. Affordable requirements can be reevaluated after construction, with an array of government loan products available to keep the cost of housing down.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Mayor Lurie has been dealt a tough hand. But through public financing and a few well-chosen investments, the city could show it is invested in housing, thereby attracting outside funders like pension funds and other steady, traditional investors. Peskin\u2019s&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/sfgov.legistar.com\/LegislationDetail.aspx?ID=6738959&amp;GUID=C530B5D1-82A4-4E4A-BE59-DA1F7112FAC6&amp;Options=Advanced&amp;Search=\">workforce housing revenue bond program<\/a>&nbsp;should be given an opportunity to work, as should Infrastructure Finance Districts (IFDs) and other complicated public finance schemes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The worst thing we could do is wait for prices to rise so high that market rate developers build again only for the most affluent. This is our pattern. This is what the Housing Element is designed to disrupt if we let it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">And if we fund it. After acknowledging we will ultimately fail our Housing Element goals, we can succeed by focusing on funding to produce more housing than we have ever produced in the last 100 years. Certainly more than 493 net new units. In failure, we can find success.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><em>Jeff Buckley was Mayor Ed Lee\u2019s Housing Policy Advisor<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\"><a href=\"https:\/\/beyondchron.org\/author\/jeff-buckley\/\">Jeff Buckley<\/a><\/h3>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><a href=\"https:\/\/beyondchron.org\/author\/jeff-buckley\/\">More Posts<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>by\u00a0Jeff Buckley\u00a0on\u00a0May 19, 2025 (BeynndChron.org) A Housing Reality Check This year in San Francisco housing policy, three things are clear: a version of the Housing Element will pass, the city has no real plan to fund it, and the city is set up to fail unless it figures the second&#8230; <a class=\"continue-reading-link\" href=\"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/2025\/05\/21\/the-housing-element-is-doomed-lets-fund-it-anyway\/\"> Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr; <\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-41373","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41373","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=41373"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41373\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=41373"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=41373"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=41373"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}