Housing Charter Amendment Should Wait Until February

The City budget already has set-asides for park services, a Children’s Fund and library facilities – so doing so for affordable housing only makes sense.

But if we want this to pass, it’s not the best idea to put it on the ballot in November. With Mayor Newsom’s re-election in high gear – and eager to once again demonize Chris Daly – it makes more sense to postpone it to the February ballot, where it cannot become a proxy for the Mayor’s race and a higher turnout of Democrats, renters, and other progressives will help assure its passage.

“This is a Charter Amendment,” said Daly, “regarding the issue of funding for affordable housing.” While everyone agrees that we need more money for affordable housing, finding the right mechanism has always been a challenge. In 1996, San Francisco voters passed a housing bond – but with a daunting two-thirds requirement to pass such bond measures, subsequent efforts in 2002 and 2004 failed. Unlike a bond, Daly’s amendment is not new money – it just allocates current property tax revenue for a specific purpose. But the advantage is that it only needs a simple majority to pass, and would guarantee the City with a steady stream of affordable housing funds for the next sixteen years.

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