HOUSING
Mayor Breed is wholeheartedly pro-housing. As she says, “We need to create more homes for all San Franciscans: families, teachers, police officers, nurses, students, the elderly, and the homeless.” And she is a lifelong tenant in a rent-controlled apartment who knows we must preserve our most critical affordable housing stock — rent controlled units. Mayor Breed has seen too many of her friends and family pushed out of San Francisco by rising rents or unavailable homes. She pledged to build An Affordable City for ALL of Usby protecting tenants and rent-controlled housing, investing in affordable housing, building more housing including modular homes, and reforming the City’s byzantine approval processes. She is following through on this pledge.
Mayor Breed and Speaker Nancy Pelosi celebrate the newly renovated Sala Burton Manorin the Tenderloin, providing 89 units of supportive housing for seniors and disabled people. The project was made possible by the Rental Assistance Demonstration program, which Mayor Breed championed as Supervisor.
Mayor Breed celebrates the rehabilitation of 990 Pacific Avenue in Chinatown, providing 92 apartmentsfor seniors and disabled people. This is another project made possible by the Rental Assistance Demonstration programwhich she championed.
Our Mayor has:
- Announced a $300 million Affordable Housing bond to build and preserve badly needed affordable housing in San Francisco.
- Announced a Charter Amendment to remove the barriers and bureaucracy that get in the way of building affordable housing and teacher housing.
- Rebalanced the City’s budget to add $5.8 million for legal representation for tenants facing evictions. Tenants are far less likely to lose their homes when they have an attorney, and San Francisco is now the first city in California to provide full scope defense to tenants. Under Mayor Breed the City now spends over $10 million per year on tenant protections.
- Protected thousands of low income tenant families when a very large, unexpected deficit came to light at the independent SF Housing Authority. The Mayor made sure tenants were safe, then got to work monitoring and reviewing the Authority so this would not happen again.
- Signed her first City budget with an investment of over$800 million to build and preserve nearly 3,000 units of affordable housing, plus additional funding to create 430 new permanent supportive housing units.
- Wrote legislation to dedicate $181 million in unanticipated state funding toward major investments in affordable housing and homelessness programs.
- In her first two weeks in office, amended the City’s budget to add $1 million for residential care facilities to keep over 350 people with physical or mental disabilities housed and cared for.
- Wrote legislation enabling $260 million in loans to acquire and rehabilitate 1,500 affordable homes. An extension of 2016’s Prop. C, which the Mayor cosponsored, the program leverages unused bond funds at minimal cost to the City, and is already moving forward quickly to appropriate up to $75 million of this funding to purchase and preserve at-risk rent-controlled buildings.
- Invested $1.5 million to make the affordable housing projects at 88 Broadway and 735 Davis more affordable for very low-income seniors.
- Preserved at-risk affordable housing through the small sites program, which permanently preserves rent-controlled housing. Purchases include properties in the Excelsior, South of Market, and Richmond neighborhoods.
- Committed $100 million to purchase modular homes built in San Francisco by San Franciscans. The Mayor is helping to create a modular housing factory and partnering with the Building Trades Council to create quality union jobs while building affordable homes.
- Passed legislation to ensure thousands of proposed homes, including almost hundreds of affordable units, would get built instead of being derailed by the City’s own processes.
- Issued an Executive Directive to make City departments clear the backlog of 900 applications for new Accessory Dwelling Units (ADUs or in-laws) and act on any new applications within four months. ADUs are the only way to build new rent-controlled housing and Mayor Breed won’t let red tape slow them down.
- Created a new position called the Director of Housing Delivery who will report directly to the Mayor and be specifically tasked with speeding up housing approval processes. Mayor Breed’s goal to cut the permitting time after Planning Commission approval in half for larger housing projects.