What is “social housing”? It is Progressive talk about turning nice neighborhoods into slums. If they are going to do this in San Fran, the first street for the city financed slums should be the one San Fran Nan lives on. The good news is that this goal will force good people to flee the city. The bad news is that the value of homes will go down, meaning property taxes will go down—as the City raises its spending to create slums, its re4venues will go down.
Now you know why I call San Fran a dead city—maybe Newsom, the Mayor of San Fran that started the DOOM LOOP will give the euology
New report raises hopes for ‘social housing’ in San Francisco
By Keith Menconi, SF Examiner, 1/8/25 https://www.sfexaminer.com/news/housing/new-report-raises-hopes-for-social-housing-in-san-francisco/article_8716fdc6-cd52-11ef-a6ea-7b2f830abcd6.html
Under a mandate imposed by the state, San Francisco must create about 10,000 additional new homes each year through 2031.
San Francisco affordable-housing advocates are trumpeting a new city report that they say bolsters their case for the development of so-called “social housing” — a form of publicly backed housing development that in many cases aims to house not only the poor but also moderate-income earners as well.
While such mixed-income housing has yielded impressive results in a handful of cities around the world, so far, it has made little headway in the U.S. — in part because federal housing laws restricting funding for such projects make them difficult to finance.
But a new report produced by the Budget and Legislative Analyst for the Board of Supervisors suggests that San Francisco might actually be able to produce such housing on its own.
The report found that while social-housing projects would take a large upfront investment from The City to get started, once they’re up and running, the relatively high rental revenue generated by such a model would keep projects largely self-sustaining.
However, the report also found that those numbers will only pencil out if San Francisco is able to secure favorable loans for its projects. That means finding — or perhaps even creating — a lender willing to loan out capital at interest rates that are far lower than typically found on the private market.
“I think that the takeaway is that this is entirely doable,” and with less investment than many had thought, said outgoing Supervisor Dean Preston, a longtime champion of social housing.
Outgoing District 5 Supervisor Dean Preston: “I’ve always believed that [social housing] can work. It’s just a question of making the political and financial commitment to doing it.”
Preston said he views social housing as an important piece of the confounding housing puzzle that San Francisco will need to solve if it ever hopes to meet ambitious state targets for new homes, even as its budget deficit balloons in size each year.
Now, as he leaves office after losing his reelection bid in November, Preston said he is hoping this new report will help convince the incoming administration of Mayor-elect Daniel Lurie to give social housing a chance.
Under those state housing mandates, San Francisco must create about 10,000 additional new homes each year through 2031, about half of which must be publicly subsidized affordable developments set aside for low-income residents.
Two years into the current eight-year housing cycle, San Francisco has produced only about 3,800 affordable units — just one-third of what it needs to stay on track, according to preliminary figures from the Planning Department.
For the most part, San Francisco’s existing stock of affordable housing is made up of large apartment buildings, often owned and operated by nonprofit affordable-housing developers. Like most federally-backed public housing in the U.S., these developments are largely reserved for low-income residents.
In contrast, social housing developments seek to draw together low- and moderate-income earners alike. And while the supporters of social housing in San Francisco have not yet spelled out their plans in detail, often such projects are directly administered by governments, rather than contracted out to nonprofits.
Mixed-income social housing developments, backers say, often become rich communal hubs where people from all walks of life live shoulder to shoulder. In addition, with higher-earning residents, the mixed approach also avoids the common economic pitfalls associated with housing projects that concentrate poverty in a single neighborhood.
It’s seen as a good deal for middle-income residents, who often still struggle to afford market-rate housing. In turn, such tenants also pay higher rents, helping to subsidize the housing for less-affluent residents.
Inspired by the success of the social housing model in cities such as Vienna and Singapore — in the latter case, such developments house 80% of its population, the city report found — Preston in 2020 championed Proposition I, a successful ballot measure that raised the tax on the transfer of large buildings.
Preston said he had hoped to funnel that extra revenue into new social-housing developments. That position was affirmed by his board colleagues that same year when they unanimously passed a resolution calling for Prop. I funds to be spent for that purpose.
