SF Mayor Set to Kill Affordable Housing

Consider the Market Octavia Area Plan. It’s been almost a decade in the works. When it finally made its way through the Planning Commission last year, it had gone from a neighborhood dream of 50% low-income housing to almost 6,000 units of market-rate condos with virtually no designated money for affordability.

That all changed when Supervisor Ross Mirkarimi began meeting with land use and affordable housing activists. At a February 25 hearing before the Board of Supervisors’ Land Use Committee, those activists testified that the proposed project needed more affordability than the city’s minimum inclusionary requirement of 15%. To address this concern, Mirkarimi offered an amendment proposing a $10 per square foot developer’s fee to increase the percentage of affordable units.

To their credit, Land Use members Jake McGoldrick, Gerardo Sandoval and Sophie Maxwell saw the wisdom of the arguments they heard that day and passed the measure, with the $10 fee, on to the full Board. The legislation has its first reading before the Board today. If all goes well, the bill will be voted on after its second reading next Tuesday, March 11.

Mirkarimi probably has the six votes he needs to pass the measure with the $10 fee intact, but he doesn’t have the eight he needs to override a mayoral veto. His other possible supporters, Chris Daly and Bevan Dufty, both have recused themselves because of personal conflicts.

Word from the mayor’s office is that he will veto it. He doesn’t like the $10 fee. He wants it lowered. Which of course would mean fewer affordable units. .

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