Expanding access to affordable housing and finding ways to develop more affordable housing is a priority for officials in South San Francisco as they seek to improve social justice by lowering the cost of living.

The South San Francisco Commission on Social and Racial Equity discussed Wednesday, Jan.

The housing debate is the latest in a series of efforts by the commission formed last summer amid the social justice movement to ensure that city officials adequately support those in need of help the most.

City Manager Mike Futrell said the various approaches taken by the commission, including its recent focus on housing affordability, are intended to empower all residents and “really hit poverty in the nose”. To accomplish this goal, he described the various commitments, valued at more than $ 6 million, that officials have made to launch social justice programs.

These initiatives include the South San Francisco City Council allocating $ 2 million to a direct grant program for residents, $ 2.2 million to establish a downtown human resource development center, and $ 2 million to closing the digital divide, including handing out free laptops to qualified residents.

Given the diversity of the programs, Futrell shared the officials’ eagerness to attack the critical issue.

“The city staff and the city council are very excited about this opportunity, this promise that with this strategy – well-equipped and sustainable – we can make a really positive difference in South San Francisco,” he said.

To expand these efforts, officials discussed ways to develop more affordable housing and examined the challenges that may hamper these efforts.

A key common interest of the commissioners is to facilitate the construction of more units accessible to those who do not earn the high salaries offered in the local technology or life science industries.

But home builders are often reluctant to build extremely affordable units in their projects, said Commissioner Norm Faria, who noted that developers tend to only tend to build moderately affordable units.

Faria said it was “like pulling teeth” to get builders to move from units reserved for those earning 80% of the region’s median income to the 30% -40% level. Vice Mayor Mark Nagales said officials should continue to focus on working with nonprofits and other similar agencies that can use tax credits or other financial incentives to build affordable housing.

In addition, Nagales and Faria agreed that officials should translate affordability more clearly, as the technical definition is different than most expected. Officials measure affordability by the percentage of the median income in the area, which last year was $ 139,000 a year for a family of two. With salaries this high, even those considered technically affordable are often out of reach for most.

In terms of communications, many officials should step up their reach to ensure those eligible for housing assistance programs know what assistance the city can provide.

Working with the local school district, working with the community navigators proposed by the commission, and using the upcoming downtown human resource development center as a hub for information sharing were among the ways identified to raise awareness.

“There is never enough communication. Whatever we can do to reach the public, we’ll focus on it, ”said Faria.

Commissioner Kayla Powers also asked what accountability measures could be taken locally to ensure that South San Francisco meets its affordable housing development goals. There are supposedly government programs aimed at enforcing development standards, but even those programs are limited in scope, so Powers urged South San Francisco officials to take responsibility.

Looking ahead, the South San Francisco City Council is expected to attend a study session on Tuesday, Jan.

“I think it was a very rich, in-depth conversation,” said consultant Kym Dorman, who moderated the conversation.

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SAN FRANCISCO – Democrats across the country say there is a solution that can help resolve the housing affordability crisis, which is what is known as social housing.

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From the state capital’s dome to the San Francisco City Hall, 2021 has sparked all sorts of conversations about the concept of social housing, but there is one problem: most people don’t really know what it is.

“How do I explain this as simply as possible?” State Assembly member Alex Lee thought out loud before landing: “Social housing is a publicly serviced housing estate.”

“Basically, social housing is human-controlled housing,” said Dean Preston, a supervisor for San Francisco.

Both Preston and Lee recently passed laws promoting social housing. Both also point to the success of social housing in Vienna, where 62 percent of the population live in this type of housing, and in Singapore, where that figure is 82 percent.

“It’s something in Europe and Asia that they have had for a very long time. We can derive successful models from it,” said Lee.

It can take many forms, but at its core, social housing means removing a property from the speculative real estate market so that it either belongs to the building’s tenants as a collective or to the government.

Supervisor Preston says San Francisco voters made social housing a reality by passing Proposition I in November.

“What we have taken upon ourselves in San Francisco is that people are not fighting for the same pot of money to actually grow that pot, generate new income and dedicate it to social housing,” said Preston.

Prop I doubles the transfer tax on commercial and residential real estate valued at over $ 10 million, so the fee for transferring ownership of a property to a new buyer goes into a residential stability fund.

This year, that money will be split between the COVID-19 rent relief and a social housing fund. By 2023, 100 percent of the funds will go into social housing. San Francisco’s controller estimates this could generate $ 196 million annually.

To live in social housing in San Francisco, renters would have to earn less than $ 71,700 a year, on average, or less than 80% of AMI.

“I’m 100 percent for social housing,” said Kristen Panti, an educator who lives in the San Francisco Mission District.

Panti is a unicorn in that she has lived in her building since 1989, taught on the street and just had her first second-generation student.

“I’ve been in my job since ’91, my first year I had a child whose son was in my class 2 years ago,” said Panti.

When her landlady decided to sell her building a few years ago, she thought she would be evicted.

“I was a wreck,” said Panti.

Instead, the Mission Economic Development Agency (MEDA), a nonprofit organization, stepped in and bought them with the help of the city’s small site program. If the city owns the building instead of a not-for-profit, this would be an example of public housing.

“For teachers, something has to be done for all workers who are low-income people,” said Panti.

Many people have a bad relationship with what was formerly called “The Projects,” a form of public housing in the United States. Public housing failed because it was largely defused and extremely separate.

“Many homes were designed for the storage of color communities and the storage of the poor, and they were doomed to sabotage,” Lee said.

Preston and Lee say that public housing is not doomed, it just needs to have a variety of incomes and enough money to make it work.

“Fund it to start with, right? I mean, part of the reason people have a negative relationship with public housing is that it has been underfunded for generations, ”said Preston Said.

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The post Social Housing Could Be A Repair For San Francisco’s Housing Affordability Disaster appeared first on Los Gatos News And Events.

The distortions caused by the shift to work from everywhere hit households that can least afford it.

By Wolf Richter for WOLF STREET.

For months we have seen the data how the big shifts due to the pandemic have affected property markets across the country. In terms of rents, tenants have left large, expensive places like San Francisco, Silicon Valley, Boston, or Manhattan, leaving high vacancy rates, falling rents, and a massive churn in stayers seeking this free upgrade to a nicer apartment as the landlords try to keep their units filled.

And we saw in the data that this outflow, conversely, has resulted in large inflows in destinations, usually less expensive markets, and driven up rents in those markets.

This shift has a troubling component, however. Rents are falling in places with some of the highest household incomes and they are rising in places with much lower household incomes, shifting the affordability crisis from housing to people who can least afford it – in a matter of months.

The following table lists the 16 districts (of the 100 largest districts) whose rents fell between 10% and 24% year-on-year in February. It also shows the median 1-BR asking rent and median household income, based on a new study by Zumper of the affordability issues that caused the shifts.

To point out that nothing is universal, there’s also one county on the list with a sharp year-over-year rent decline and one of the lowest rents and household incomes in the U.S. ($ 41,800): Hidalgo County, Texas.

When it comes to median household income, San Francisco ($ 124,000) and Silicon Valley Counties of Santa Clara ($ 133,000) and San Mateo ($ 138,000) top the list, and they also top the list for rental declines . For these lagged folks, renting has become, so to speak, a lot less unaffordable. (If your smartphone cuts off the sixth column on the right, hold your device in landscape orientation).

And most of the 16 boroughs that recorded rental income between + 10% and + 22% year-on-year have a relatively modest median household income compared to the wealthiest boroughs. The 22% increase in rents is particularly impressive in Detroit and Indianapolis, where median household incomes are on the lower end of the spectrum, and this will hurt.

There is another element here. Some of the counties on this list are geographically located near very expensive, high-household income housing markets, such as Counties of Kern and San Bernardino in the urban areas of Los Angeles and San Diego. or Sacramento and Fresno counties to the San Francisco Bay Area, indicating that people are moving to cheaper cities just a few hours’ drive from their former location.

Given the large population like New York City, Los Angeles, or the Bay Area, they can easily skew rents in smaller, less expensive markets. And as rents go down in expensive cities and go up in cheaper cities, the difference between the two collapses where at some point it’s no longer worth moving.

The graph shows the difference between the 50% decrease in 1-BR rents in San Francisco and Sacramento and the 1-BR rents in San Francisco and Fresno, which fell 46%:

What has essentially taken place is a shift in tenants from the wealthiest to the less affluent districts, and once that shift has picked up, rents have increased in the receiving districts.

Some of these people who had moved kept their jobs but moved to work from everywhere. and they brought their high household incomes with them and they are used to the much higher rents in their expensive markets and they offer the rents and still think they are getting a deal.

At the receiving end of these shifts, however, are tenants with relatively modest household incomes who are now competing with an influx of high-income tenants, and they are now facing massive and unaffordable rent increases.

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The post How the “Affordability Disaster” Migrated from Excessive-Revenue Rental Markets, as Manhattan & San Francisco, to Decrease Revenue Markets, as Detroit & Fresno appeared first on Los Gatos News And Events.

Home care workers are employed by more than half a million California residents. However, many are finding it increasingly difficult to pay for these services, according to a report from the Labor Center at the University of California at Los Angeles (UCLA).

A pilot program in San Francisco County, called Support at Home, is addressing this issue by making home care available to local residents and ensuring that carers receive fair and decent wages.

The program was launched by an alliance of community groups including the Bay Area Care Council and the Long Term Care Coordinating Council. The initiative is also supported by local organizations such as the domestic employer network Hand in Hand and Senior & Disability Action, a group that advocates for seniors and people with disabilities.

A catch 22

For more than 14,000 older adults and adults with disabilities in San Francisco, paying for home care can be a “financial catch,” according to Jessica Lehman, executive director of Senior & Disability Action.

Many of these citizens make too much money to qualify for the state’s low-income health plan, Medi-Cal, but don’t have enough incomes to pay for home care services out of pocket, she said.

“As a result, thousands of San Francisco residents are paying out of pocket for home care and their companions cannot earn a living wage,” Lehman said in a press release.

Support at Home addresses both of these issues by providing vouchers to pay for home care services– –such as cooking, shopping, cleaning and bathing – for eligible residents who earn up to 100% of the regional median income, but cannot exceed it.

The pilot is managed by the San Francisco-based nonprofit Institute for Aging Research. Funding is provided by the City and County of San Francisco through the Seniors and Adult Services Division. In total, Support at Home will provide financial assistance to 175 to 250 San Francisco residents in need of home care, according to a press release.

The program has had more than 50 participants since it started in late August, Hand in Hand organizer Lindsay Imai Hong told Home Health Care News.

Now the group is working to mobilize and raise awareness of the program in hopes of creating a viable proposition for citizens in need of home care.

“We hope it will be a permanent program,” said Hong. “We have received approved funding [from the City and County of San Francisco] for two years, and so the hope is that within those two years we can begin to address the need [and] Make sure the program delivery goes smoothly. “

A worthwhile wage

Another component that the program addresses is the home care worker pay gap.

The voucher program ensures that participating caregivers are paid fairly and receive a standard wage of USD 15 per hour.

“This is a subsidy program, so home care customers or consumers must pay part of the wages,” said Hong. “In the agency model, it looks like the consumer pays the agency for a portion of the care wages, and then the Support at Home program supports a portion of the wages for that home care agency.”

Hong said the program also provides training for caregivers to understand their rights as domestic workers.

“The National Domestic Worker Coalition and the California Domestic Worker Coalition have jointly agreed with the Institute on Aging that every employee who is hired directly as a direct recruiter rather than an agency should complete a training course in which they can learn their rights as a domestic servant, ”she said. “It’s just another way of making sure they’re treated well, but also [a way for them to] know how to stand up for yourself. “

For Lourdes Dobarganes, a member of La Colectiva de Mujeres, the pilot program ensures fair justice for home care workers like her. La Colectiva de Mujeres is a group that advocates for migrant women and connects them with professional resources and jobs.

“I take pride in my work and my work enables me to meet my basic needs and those of my family,” Dobarganes said at a press conference announcing the pilot program. “The Home Assistance Program will allow care to be valued in decent working conditions, while those in need of home care receive these services and live their lives with dignity.”

Written by Carlo Calma

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