San Francisco’s $600M Affordable Housing Bond Approved by Voters

San Francisco’s record $600 million affordable housing bond was approved by voters, according to reports by the San Francisco Chronicle, as it has 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.”

Proposition A is nearly double the city’s last affordable housing bond—$310 million—that was approved by voters in 2015.

The bill would fund the creation and rehabilitation of around 2,800 affordable housing units. Each unit costs $700,000 to build, and taxpayers would contribute $250,000 to $300,000 per unit.

Additional money in Proposition A will be divided as follows: 

• $220 million to acquire, build and rehabilitate apartments for extremely low-income and low-income people and families.
• $150 million to repair and rebuild existing public housing developments.
• $150 million to acquire and build senior housing.
• $60 million to acquire, preserve and rehabilitate affordable rental housing and assist middle-income residents and workers to secure permanent housing.

The housing market in San Francisco, and California as a whole, has been plagued with affordability issues for most of 2019. A report by LendingTree last month found that the average home in the Golden Gate City is $1.19 million, which is worth 5.4 homes in one of the nation’s largest cities. 

Additionally, a median-prices home in San Francisco costs almost 10 times the area’s median-yearly income of $112,376. 

The study found that for what it costs to buy a home in San Francisco, one could purchase 23.2 homes in Detroit, Michigan. LendingTree states that Detroit has an average home price of $51,600.

Apple announced Monday a $2.5 billion plan to help address the housing shortage and affordability woes of the state. 

Of the allocated funds, $1 billion will be earmarked for an affordable housing investment fund, $1 billion will be used for first-time homebuyer and mortgage assistance funds, $150 million will be spent on a Bay Area housing fund, and $300 million is to be used to build affordable housing on Apple-owned land in San Jose. 

Apple joins Facebook, Google, and Microsoft, who have all made contributions in recent weeks to help fix the affordable housing crisis in California.