|
Getting your Trinity Audio player ready...
|
The Bay Area Housing Finance Authority has decided to withdraw a $20 billion general obligation bond measure that was aimed at supporting affordable housing from the upcoming General Election ballot. The decision, made during a BAHFA Board of Directors meeting Wednesday morning, is supported by Alfredo Pedroza, chair of BAHFA, and Belia Ramos, president of the executive board of the Association of Bay Area Governments.
The measure, which could have funneled millions to local affordable housing efforts, found widespread support among local governmental boards, elected officials and housing groups up and down the Peninsula and across the Bay Area.
In June, the BAHFA unanimously placed it on the ballot in what BAHFA commissioner and Santa Rosa City Councilmember Victoria Fleming called the “best vote” she has ever taken in her six years in elected office.
But since then, concerns about the electability of the bond measure emerged from some of its proponents. Even before the agency voted to place the measure on the ballot, BAHFA’s polling showed that voters’ interest in the proposal had stagnated as they remained concerned with inflation and high taxes.
It was pulled amid concerns the wording of the bond may be misleading voters about its potential impact.
Its June polling showed that support for the bond was around 54% of voters, well below the two-thirds majority needed to pass the measure. BAHFA placed it on the ballot anyway, hoping the measure could sneak through if California voters in November also passed Proposition 5, a proposal to lower the voting threshold for general bonds in the state to 55% .
Concerns over its possible passage came to a head recently, as a mathematical error had led BAHFA to misstate the amount of money the bond would require to be spent annually by hundreds of millions of dollars. And last week, a coalition of Bay Area residents sued the board over the mistake, which could have led to a judge writing the language that would appear on the ballot next to the measure.
Opponents of the measure have seized on the error to illustrate concerns about BAHFA’s transparency and ability to oversee the money potentially generated by the bond.
But in a joint statement, Pedroza and Ramos emphasized that the decision was not taken lightly.
“The Bay Area’s housing affordability crisis has been decades in the making and is far too big for any one city or county to solve on its own,” they said. “This is the reason the state Legislature established BAHFA. A robust source of funding for safe and affordable housing across our diverse, nine-county region is essential to the Bay Area’s economic and environmental health and to its residents’ quality of life.”
The board highlighted the challenges in establishing a reliable source of funding for affordable housing and pointed to recent developments that influenced its decision.
Members of both the public and the BAHFA framed pulling the measure off the ballot as a way to solidify support for Prop 5 this election, paving an easier way forward for the bond measure to pass in 2026.
“The wise choice is to look ahead to another election season for a regional housing measure when there is more certainty and the voters have weighed in affirmatively on Proposition 5,” they added.
“It is a huge disappointment,” said Oakland Mayor Sheng Thao, who serves on BAHFA.”But, again, let’s take this energy and go fight for Prop 5.
BAHFA is jointly governed by the ABAG executive board and the BAHFA board, which shares the same membership as the Metropolitan Transportation Commission. Both Pedroza and Ramos also serve on the Napa County Board of Supervisors.
The proposed BAHFA bond measure had called for 80 percent of the funds to go directly to the nine Bay Area counties and to the cities of San Jose, Oakland, Santa Rosa and Napa, each of which carries more than 30 percent of their county’s low-income housing need.
Ali Sapirman, organizer and policy associate with the Housing Action Coalition, expressed disappointment over the decision not to move forward with the affordable housing bond. “This is a major setback, but even though the bond is not moving forward right now, we are certain the coalition’s and the authority’s momentum will continue,” Sapirman said.
Pedroza and Ramos reaffirmed BAHFA’s dedication to a regional approach to solving the Bay Area’s housing challenges. This includes initiatives like the Doorway Housing portal, which streamlines the process for tenants to find and apply for affordable housing and helps developers lease their properties more efficiently.
“When the climb toward passage of a regional revenue measure resumes, the Board looks forward to teaming with every one of the Bay Area’s nine counties and 101 cities, along with the hundreds of public, private, and nonprofit partners who have already invested so much energy into this effort,” Pedroza and Ramos said.
