Supervisor Jake McGoldrick: Affordable housing

Protecting tenant's rights, creating home-ownership opportunities for low- to middle-income families, and creating supportive housing for vulnerable populations like the homeless and mentally ill are critical to San Francisco's socioeconomic fabric. Shelter is not a privilege. It is a basic human right.

Luxury condominiums sprouting up, like those on Rincon Hill, are not solutions since most are unattainable for working class families. The only solution is to create new affordable housing.

San Francisco needs vigorous increases in housing subsidies to support the construction and conversion of existing housing to permanently affordable housing. During my first year in office, I led the board in passing an ordinance over Mayor Willie Brown's veto that regulated Tenancy in Common (TIC) conversions and provided an opportunity for existing tenants of multi-unit buildings to more easily convert those buildings to ownership units.

Since then, I supported an affordable housing bond that would provide $200 million in subsidies for the benefit of both renters and homebuyers, and I have supported virtually every effort to strengthen tenant protections in ordinances sponsored by colleagues on the Board of Supervisors. I supported the fight at the board to stop unfettered conversion of rent controlled buildings to market rate condominiums. These conversions would have displaced thousands of tenants, especially the elderly, disabled, chronically ill and families with children.

Currently, the inclusionary affordable housing program requires all residential developments of 10 units or more to either build a certain percentage of on-site or off-site affordable housing or to pay an in-lieu fee. I have proposed expanding the program's application to residential developments of five units or more, thereby expanding the affordable housing stock.

According to the SF Planning Department, approximately 249 developments of 3 - 9 units, totaling 1,124 units, were filed since 2001. Of this amount, 177 developments of 3 - 9 units, totaling 810 units, have been approved. This could yield a significant number of affordable units that are not currently captured in the inclusionary affordable housing program.

While these are some actions that have been initiated locally, a broader regional approach to the affordable housing crisis is sorely needed. San Francisco's housing market lost its elasticity when the housing demand outpaced the housing supply. This occurred when we became a white-collar downtown-jobs economy. Since the '50s, the culture of urban land use planning across the U.S. was based on the assumption that white collar workers are most productive in a dense (downtown) job core area.

Today, we are struggling through the throes of change as we continue to re-zone the eastern side of the City to residential uses. We now see the negative consequences as pointed out by the environmentalists, when people spend hours in traffic jams, when billions of dollars are spent on highways, thereby creating pollution, grid-lock, road rage and a tremendous loss of agricultural lands. It will take many decades to reverse the damage.

Since the '50s, San Francisco has opted for high property taxation uses, like high-density commercial areas, and left low property taxation uses like residential areas for our suburban neighbors. However, schools, public safety, transit and other services cannot be provided with a low property tax base. As a result, we have created regional problems.

Only through regional cooperation will we solve the problem of affordable housing. Not one of our nine Bay Area counties can solve our housing problem alone. Counties need to share their tax base in order to provide services in a balanced way. We need regional cooperation to create the coordinated development of affordable housing that is close to a mass transit system. This is being done throughout the world. It is called "smart growth" or "new urbanism."

A regional body could address affordable housing through state zoning laws and could actively earmark and stipulate money for affordable housing. A regional body could put together regional modes for affordable housing similar to the practice of creating regional transportation models.

Sen. Tom Torlakson has been attempting to create a regional coordination body for transportation and land use for the last five years. There have been challenges, including each county's interest in keeping its local land-use authority. However, until we have a regional coordinating body specifically dedicated to affordable housing, we will not fully solve our affordable housing crisis.

Supervisor Jake McGoldrick represents District 1.