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San Francisco’s Proposition E, which would cap office development if affordable housing measures are not met, looks to have passed by a 55% to 45% margin.
The city reports that 131,137 total votes have been cast on the proposition with 72,613 voting in favor.
San Francisco currently has a cap of 875,000-square-feet of office development annually, due to 1986’s Proposition M.
However, if San Francisco misses affordable housing targets by 10% annually, the existing office-space cap would fall 10% the next year.
The city’s economist, Ted Egan, though, released a report opposing the plan, saying it would hurt San Francisco’s economy and ultimately result in less affordable housing.
Egan says the issue lies within the city hitting its state-designated housing goals—a target San Francisco never hits.
He notes that Proposition E wouldn’t create any new housing or make it any easier to produce. Also, he said one of the primary sources for affordable housing funding is office development, since the city charges housing fees on construction, specifically to account for the jobs-housing imbalance.
The Association of Bay Area Governments reported that between 2015-2017, San Francisco permitted 1,200 homes prices for “very-low income residents, and 952 in the low-income range, 19%, and 21%, respectively.
A report by Curbed San Francisco states that in 2019, in 2019, Beacon Economics calculated that at current rates of development, it would take SF until 2080 to build enough affordable housing at some brackets to satisfy all of those benchmarks.
San Francisco’s record $600 million affordable housing bond was approved by voters in November, according to reports by the San Francisco Chronicle, as it garnered 69.5% of voter support.
The bill—Proposition A—needed a two-thirds majority to pass. San Francisco First reported that just over 23% of the city’s registered voters cast a ballot.
“This is something that almost every San Franciscan wanted us to address,” said Board of Supervisors President Norman Yee to the San Francisco Chronicle. “I’m thrilled that the message we sent out to the voters about the importance of this is being supported.”
