As the Mayor’s Office was starting to sweep homeless people off Division Street, the epic battle over affordable housing started to play out at City Hall around a Charter Amendment that would mandate developers build 25 percent affordable units immediately and allow the board to set affordability levels in the future.
The debate showed the sharp divisions on the board, between those who worry about the ability to developers to make an adequate profit (and who side with the mayor) and those who say that the private sector should pay a lot more for the right to build in this city.
Sup. Jane Kim started off the discussion by saying that every time activists, in the housing or environmental movements, have demanded better regulations, developers have said the rules would be job killers, would end housing construction, would be the end of the world. And it never turns out that way.
She said “it’s too simplistic” that we just need to build more housing. “What we have seen is that only building affordable housing can make the city more affordable.”
She pointed out that the fastest-growing population of homeless people is working families – people with jobs, who can’t come close to paying the rent for market-rate housing.
In 2012, at the behest of the Mayor’s Office, the city reduced the mandatory level of affordable housing to 12 percent, and put it in the Charter. That, Sup. Aaron Peskin noted, was a terrible mistake: The supes should have the flexibility to set the level depending on the situation in the city.
Sup. Malia Cohen, who indicated that she was working on behalf of the mayor, tried to get some amendments introduced that would require a feasibility study before the supes could increase the affordable housing levels. Peskin urged the board to reject those, saying that the most important thing was to get the 12 percent ceiling out of the City Charter.
There are discussions going on with the Mayor’s Office over how any future policy ought to be implemented – but for the moment, the fight is over whether the supes should have the ability to set affordable-housing policy.
The previous deal, which limited affordable mandates to 12 percent, allowed the mayor to get developers on board with the mayor’s affordable housing trust fund. But even some of the supporters of that deal agree that putting the low level in the Charter, where it can’t be changed by the supes, was a bad idea.
Mayor Lee has submitted his own measure for the June ballot that essentially says the board can’t set affordability levels higher than what an independent financial analysis says would be possible for developers to pay.
That’s a remarkable position: It’s saying, in effect, that if developers can’t make enough money building luxury housing, the city should back off its commitment to housing for everyone else.
The data shows that 25 percent affordable housing is barely a break-even level for the city: Every 100 units of luxury housing creates by itself a demand for between 23 and 40 affordable units by creating jobs to serve those rich people. In other words, if market-rate developers build less than 23 percent affordable housing the city is actually losing ground and making the crisis worse.
Cohen, on the other hand, said she wanted to keep this and the mayor’s measure both off the ballot. In remarks that seemed to be representing Mayor Lee’s position, she urged the board to accept changes that would make Kim’s measure echo what Lee was trying to do.
Peskin wanted none of it. “For the last four years, we have left hundreds, if not thousands, of affordable units on the table,” he said. “Those same developers who oppose this have made windfall profits” during the period of low affordable-housing mandates.
Not one developer has come forward with an alternative proposal, Peskin said.
And indeed, the developers who spoke against it only talked about the notion that higher levels of affordability might make their projects infeasible. But look at the numbers: If we can’t demand 25 percent affordable housing, the projects will ADD to the housing crisis anyway.
Cohen urged Kim to drop her measure, and then the mayor would drop his measure, and “we can get on with the getting on and move on to important issues.” As if this isn’t the most important issue the city is facing, and one of the most important is has ever faced.
As has become something of a Cohen pattern, she also talked about how everyone could just back off and “we can all go home.” At the start of the hearing, she told the people who had waited for hours to testify that “you have come for a show.” I have seen her repeatedly indicate that she thinks public comment lasts too long and that she’d be happier if the hearings took less time and she could get out more quickly.
In this case, the board, meeting as a Committee of the Whole, was unable to approve the measure and had to send it forward to the March 1 meeting. But along the way, the vote on Cohen’s amendment – in essence to gut the Kim proposal – gave some indication of how the supes will go on this.
She lost, 7-4, with only Sups. Katie Tang, Wiener, Cohen, and Mark Farrell in support.
There were some sharp exchanges between Wiener and Kim, who are both running for state Senate, and their differences will be a major issue in that race.
