{"id":49803,"date":"2026-08-20T12:51:59","date_gmt":"2026-08-20T19:51:59","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/?p=49803"},"modified":"2026-08-20T12:51:59","modified_gmt":"2026-08-20T19:51:59","slug":"lurie-attacks-affordable-housing-plan-and-undermines-his-own-proposal","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/2026\/08\/20\/lurie-attacks-affordable-housing-plan-and-undermines-his-own-proposal\/","title":{"rendered":"Lurie attacks affordable housing plan\u2014and undermines his own proposal"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

By saying housing money hurts the cops, he may be undermining support for his own Housing Trust Fund.<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

By Tim Redmond<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

August 17, 2026 (48hills.org)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Mayor Daniel Lurie may well be undermining his own affordable housing bill by attacking another affordable housing measure\u2014one that doesn\u2019t conflict with his proposal.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The mayor has teamed up with Sup. Myrna Melgar to create an Affordable Housing Trust Fund<\/a> that will ultimately set aside as much as $125 million a year for non-market units.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

That measure, Prop. C, has widespread support at City Hall.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"
Lurie\u2019s attack on Prop. I may backfire on his own housing measure<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

But the mayor is attacking another measure, Prop. I, which would mandate that the existing tax on high-end property sales go where the voters intended\u2014for social housing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Since that measure, also called Prop. I, passed in 2020, the city has collected hundreds of millions of dollars in transfer taxes on the sale of properties worth more than $10 million. But former Mayor London Breed, who opposed the measure in part because she disliked its sponsor, Sup. Dean Preston, who defeated her hand-picked candidate for supe in D5, refused to allocate the money the way the voters intended.<\/a>  Lurie has continued that pattern.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The 2026 Prop. I would simply say: The voters wanted that tax money to go for social housing, so that\u2019s what the mayor and the supes have to do.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Lurie\u2019s message, released last week:<\/strong> If we set aside money for affordable housing, we won\u2019t have as much money to pay the cops. The SF Standard headline<\/a> says it all: \u201cAffordable housing measure would deprive cops of funding, Lurie says.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In his statement, Lurie said Prop. I would<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n

carve a massive, permanent hole in the city\u2019s general fund \u2014 the same fund that pays the firefighters, paramedics, and police officers who respond when San Franciscans call 911.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

(He also called Prop. I, the social housing measure, a \u201cslush fund\u201d with no accountability. As Joe Eskenazi points out in Mission Local, that\u2019s really odd\u2014since the Mayor\u2019s Office would control and allocate the money.<\/a> Is Lurie saying his own office lacks accountability?)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The problem here is that two affordable housing measures are on the ballot. They don\u2019t conflict; if both pass, the mayor will have his trust fund, and he will also have to allocate the high-end transfer tax money to housing, as the voters intended.<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

That would add up to about $250 million a year for non-market housing, enough over ten years to make a huge dent in the city\u2019s affordability gap. After Trump is gone, if a Democrat who cares about housing is in the White House to add federal matching funds, we could be talking about as many as 20,000 or more social housing units by 2036, enough to bring down prices across the city.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But the voters aren\u2019t going to be paying that close attention to the differences between Prop. C (the trust fund) and Prop. I (the transfer tax for affordable housing). They\u2019re just going to see \u201caffordable housing.\u201d And if the mayor is out there saying affordable housing money takes resources from the cops, he may be killing his own measure.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

There\u2019s a more important point here:<\/strong> The $125 million in revenue that comes into the city from Prop. I would not exist<\/em> if the voters hadn\u2019t believed it would fund affordable housing. A proposal for a \u201ccop tax\u201d<\/a> went down in flames.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So this isn\u2019t normal General Fund money. It\u2019s money that was, according to the Ballot Handbook, all of the political arguments<\/a>, and even a Board of Supes resolution, earmarked for affordable housing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Lurie is now trying to prevent the voters from confirming that this is affordable housing money\u2014so he can keep funding the cops at astonishing levels, even as some of them earn more than $500,000 a year.<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

That\u2019s the priority of the current mayor\u2014at a time when rents have never been higher and the need for non-market housing has never been greater. And it may backfire on him.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

48 Hills welcomes comments in the form of letters to the editor, which you can submit\u00a0here<\/a>. We also invite you to join the conversation on our\u00a0Facebook<\/a>,\u00a0Twitter<\/a>, and\u00a0Instagram<\/a>.\u00a0<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Tim Redmond<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Tim Redmond has been a political and investigative reporter in San Francisco for more than 30 years. He spent much of that time as executive editor of the Bay Guardian. He is the founder of 48hills.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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By saying housing money hurts the cops, he may be undermining support for his own Housing Trust Fund. By Tim Redmond August 17, 2026 (48hills.org) Mayor Daniel Lurie may well be undermining his own affordable housing bill by attacking another affordable housing measure\u2014one that doesn\u2019t conflict with his proposal. The… Continue reading → <\/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":[2087,1878],"tags":[2406,1955],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/49803"}],"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=49803"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/49803\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":49804,"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/49803\/revisions\/49804"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=49803"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=49803"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=49803"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}