Feds Cut Housing While San Francisco Advances Solutions

As the Bush Administration declares war on low-income housing, San Francisco has advanced solutions to homelessness with local funds. Care Not Cash is the most prominent example, but now the city has finally achieved tangible results through the Surplus Property Ordinance. This week, the effort to develop 150 Otis Street into housing for homeless seniors passed a critical milestone that will create over 100 units of housing. And yesterday, the Board of Supervisors Budget Committee voted to allocate the proceeds from the sale of City property to homeless and low-income housing. This won’t come close to filling the gap in federal cuts, but it does show that the City is advancing solutions.

“How dare the Bush Administration come to San Francisco to praise themselves for funding homeless assistance when they continue to decimate funding for affordable housing,” said Paul Boden, executive director of the Western Regional Advocacy Project. Last year, the federal government cut $700 million in the operating budget for public housing. George Bush’s proposed budget for 2008 calls for another cut of $400 million – and a whopping $736 million cut to Community Development Block Grants.

The Bush budget cuts are not only drastic – they go after the most needy of poor people. $112 million of the cuts are from housing programs for disabled people, $160 million from housing programs for elderly people, and $415 million from public housing capital expense funds – despite a more than $20 BILLION backlog in necessary expenses. San Francisco’s $2 million increase in McKinney-Vento funds for supportive housing might house a few people, but it pales in comparison to the cuts that the federal government has pushed at the same time.

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