Promoting Family Housing

By Rob Black

How we can keep our City's most valuable resource -- our families -- in San Francisco

San Francisco must provide a diverse stock of housing if it is ever going to retain its residents, especially working families. The increasingly high cost of living forces families, workers, teachers, police and firefighters out of the City and discourages new job growth.

Housing must be available for San Franciscans of all income levels, yet we are currently not meeting the need for those individuals who can reasonably afford middle-income type housing like our firefighters, police officers and teachers. The housing stock structure in District 6 is severely flawed: imagine a ladder with the middle rungs missing. San Franciscans cannot move up the housing ladder without the middle-rungs of workforce/family housing.

As we plan for the future of District 6, it is imperative to create a variety of housing opportunities for our workers who are essential to our City. Some ways to begin to address our housing problems include:

• Prioritizing the City's budget and resources to create housing alternatives and opportunities for housing providers to help residents find affordable places to live.
• Learning from housing initiatives in other cities, such as equity caps for certain below market rate home ownership opportunities, limited equity cooperatives, and density bonuses for the development of family housing. We have the opportunity to create a model for large cities, cultivating a community that can both live and work in an area of strong economic growth.
• Expanding existing and develop new down payment assistance programs for first time home buyers.
• Implementing and adopting new programs involving inclusionary housing, developer bonuses and homebuyer education programs. We must be creative in how we diversify our housing stock moving forward.
• Developing stronger 1st time homebuyer programs, including education initiatives for developing good credit and savings. We have a great opportunity to provide housing to those at all income levels in District 6.
• Ensuring that the redevelopment of Treasure Island focuses on its current residents' ability to be prepared financially for the opportunity to obtain housing once the development has occurred, and not be forced out of a high-price development and into other communities in the Bay area.
• Encouraging new funding mechanisms such as evergreen leases and a locally-managed affordable housing trust fund through a private-public partnership.