The San Francisco Apartment Association, the city’s leading landlord lobby, will spend at least $50,000 to attack Proposition B, a consensus bond act aimed at improving San Francisco’s public health infrastructure.
Campaign finance records show the association’s political action committee has donated that money to the No on B campaign, potentially undermining a measure that’s a priority for Mayor London Breed and much of the leadership of the LGBTQ+ community.
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And the entire thing is just a vindictive move to punish the Board of Supes for adjusting very slightly the way landlords can pass through the cost of bond acts to their tenants.
It’s hard to get two-thirds of the voters to approve anything, so general obligation bond acts are a tough sell. Well-funded opposition from any group can be enough to sink a measure.
In this case, the losers would be people who rely on SF General Hospital, Chinatown Public Health Center, the City Clinic, and seniors at Laguna Honda Hospital.
Sinking the bond would also prevent $25 million in upgrades and improvements to Harvey Milk Plaza and $50 million for shelter for homeless families.
These folks are not involved in the pass-through discussions at City Hall; they are vulnerable communities that the landlords are ready to throw under the bus out of contempt and an effort to show off their power.
Here’s the back story:
In the 1970s and 1980s, landlords often opposed bonds because they city wouldn’t allow them to pass the increased property taxes on to their tenants. About 25 years ago, then-Sup. Tom Ammiano worked out a compromise: Landlords could pass along half of the tax increase. That ended the landlord opposition to all bonds.
For decades now, the city hasn’t issued new bonds until it pays off old ones, meaning there are no increases in property taxes anyway, so no pass-throughs.
But some landlords have figured out a loophole: As the city pays off the older bonds, where no pass-throughs are allowed, and replaces them with new bonds, where a 50 percent pass-through is allowed, tenants are facing rent increases.
A few months ago, Sup. Aaron Peskin passed legislation closing that loophole. The Apartment Association argued against it, and, Peskin told me, threatened to oppose all new G.O. bonds if the board went ahead.
That’s what this is about.
The total cost to all the landlords in the entire city of the loophole closure is at most a few million dollars. For that, they are prepared to block Prop. B.
If they succeed, they will use this as leverage in the future, preventing the city from borrowing money for affordable housing, parks, schools, or anything else.
Incredible.
