Affordable Housing Measure Gathers Steam as Mayor Lurie Abandons Planned Real Estate Tax Giveaway

SAN FRANCISCO — Mayor Daniel Lurie’s signature housing policy, the BUILD Act, quietly died this week before ever receiving a hearing, proving unviable despite the Mayor’s ironclad supermajority on the Board of Supervisors and unlimited public relations war chest. 

Median rents in San Francisco have risen approximately 30 percent over Mayor Lurie’s time in office, evictions are at a historically high level and median home prices are up 21 percent in the last year alone. San Franciscans are well aware that the housing affordability crisis is getting worse, and that giving a tax break to real estate speculators won’t deliver the affordable new housing we sorely need.

We appreciate the Mayor’s good sense in pulling his bill out of circulation. But we are going a step further by presenting San Francisco voters with the Affordable Housing Guarantee Act, which takes the hundreds of millions of dollars that Daniel Lurie wanted to give to private real estate interests and dedicates it to housing the way voters originally intended. We are hearing a tremendous amount of support from voters as we gather signatures to put this measure on the November ballot. 

“San Francisco needs a massive investment in creative housing solutions to address our worsening affordability crisis,” said Scott Feeney, Social Housing Co-Chair, Democratic Socialists of America, San Francisco. “Our measure puts us on a path not just to build more affordable housing, but to make San Francisco a city that working people can afford to live in.”

What the Affordable Housing Guarantee Act does:

• Protects the luxury real estate transfer tax increase that voters passed with 2020’s Proposition I, which applies to the sale of real estate in excess of $10 million. 

• Dedicates Prop I revenues ($500 million since passage and a projected $100 million per year going forward) to housing affordability in the following buckets:

  • 60% toward the production of affordable housing with

    • At least half of that to the production of Social Housing, an alternative model of city-owned and -developed housing available to people with a range of incomes, with rent capped at 30% of income

  • 25% toward the acquisition of existing housing and its removal from the speculative market along with preservation of existing affordable housing

  • 10% to eviction defense, rental assistance and other tenant stabilization uses

  • Up to 5% for the administration of the programs listed above

Housing affordability is the most urgent issue our city government needs to tackle, and cutting taxes and fees to incentivize for-profit development simply hasn’t worked: thousands of approved units of housing remain stuck in limbo waiting for financing that won’t come unless the rent gets even higher or economic conditions change. San Franciscans can’t afford to wait and fortunately we don’t have to. 

“San Francisco rents are rising faster than anywhere else in the country, putting stable housing out of reach of the working class,” said Tuesday Rose Thornton, Tenant Attorney and Proponent, “The Affordable Housing Guarantee Act will make City Hall use Prop I money the way it was intended: to build new social and affordable housing, enhance rent relief and eviction protections, and purchase existing housing to remove it from the surging speculative market. And it does all that without raising taxes.” 

In 2020, San Francisco voters passed Proposition I, which doubled the transfer tax on the sale of buildings over $10 million. And we passed Proposition K, which committed the city to producing 10,000 units of social housing and provided the administrative infrastructure to do so. At the same time, the Board of Supervisors unanimously passed a resolution to use Prop I revenues for social and affordable housing. Unfortunately, City Hall never followed through. After six years of waiting, the Affordable Housing Guarantee Act puts the decision back in the hands of San Francisco voters. 

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The Affordable Housing Guarantee Act Campaign is a grassroots coalition of San Francisco affordable housing advocates and community organizers, mobilizing to make the city more affordable for everyone, not just the wealthy. Find out more at www.fairhousingsf.com.