Friends and Neighbors,
This week we won a resounding victory for social housing. With an 8-3 supermajority, the Board of Supervisors passed our plan to put $64m in Prop I funds toward an Emergency Housing Acquisition Program.
The voters gave us a mandate to tax the rich and invest in affordable housing, and on Tuesday we made good on that promise.It’s a game-changer for San Franciscans at risk of eviction in a rebounding real estate market. The investment allows the city to scale up its program to take multi-unit apartments off the private market, and turn them into permanently affordable housing. We are now poised to save the homes of more than 500 families citywide.
It’s also a game-changer for the long term picture for affordable housing in San Francisco.
Last November, 58% of voters approved Prop I, a tax we put on the ballot on high end real estate deals. Despite a unanimous commitment by the Board to use the revenue for rent relief and social housing efforts, Mayor London Breed defunded all efforts to direct Prop I revenue to housing in the most recent budget.
At the time, we vowed to continue the fight. And it took an incredible effort — we organized more than 40 organizations to get behind this proposal — but with the support of President Walton and Supervisors Chan, Haney, Mar, Peskin, Ronen and Mandelman, we emerged victorious on our effort to direct $64m to social housing, as the voters intended.
It’s a major victory in the near term, but make no mistake, it is an important precedent for Prop I funds to be used for social housing for years to come.
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