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The idea was bold and controversial: Blanket the Bay Area with 35,000 new homes a year. Protect 300,000 low-income households that are on the verge of being displaced. Safeguard 30,000 units of existing affordable housing.

Assemblyman David Chiu estimates that the region needs about $2.5 billion annually to meet the terms of a compact that politicians and business leaders signed in January, designed to bring housing stock in line with demand. His bill allowing two government agencies to put tax measures or bonds on the ballot — which the Legislature passed Thursday by a knife-edge margin — is the first step.

The bill awaits the signature of Gov. Gavin Newsom.

Supporters celebrated the victory, but acknowledged challenges ahead. The fight over AB1487 points to a much larger debate over how to solve the housing crisis, and who decides where to build.

“Clearly, our piecemeal approach in the past of trying to solve this crisis city by city and county by county hasn’t worked,” said Chiu, D-San Francisco. He’s called for a more unified strategy that would recognize how deeply the 101 cities of the Bay Area are interconnected: if residents of North Berkeley or Brisbane obstruct development in their backyards, it puts more pressure on Oakland and San Francisco.

AB1487 would enable the Metropolitan Transportation Commission and Association of Bay Area Governments to put funding measures on ballots in the nine counties, generating sustained revenue for affordable housing — perhaps as soon as next year. The money would go toward tax credits and subsidies for affordable housing projects, updating of land-use or zoning plans, tenant services and assistance for cities to buy land parcels. It wouldn’t completely close the gap, Chiu said. He expects to raise between $1 billion and $1.5 billion annually, roughly half of what the region needs.

Still, AB1487 would be a “coordinated, regional approach” to a housing shortage that’s pushed people into suburbs and rural areas, forcing them to commute long distances to work. The by-products of land-use decisions have spread throughout the Bay Area, as traffic chokes freeways, greenhouse gas emissions increase and homeless encampments pop up in areas once insulated from in-your-face poverty.

Solving those problems will take the same “we’re all in this together” mind-set that voters applied to wetland restoration in 2016, or to transportation when they passed Regional Measure 3 last year. Chiu spent months meeting with city councils, county supervisors and nonprofit groups to pitch this concept, revising his bill again and again to ensure they all had input. He originally wanted to create an agency to raise funds for affordable housing construction, an idea he eventually scrapped. In the final version of the bill, Chiu also ensured that 80% of funds collected from a county would go back to that county. The other 20% would go into a regional pot.

But AB1487 still hit plenty of opposition. Some leaders said it would run roughshod over local control. Opponents in the Legislature worried that it would force their constituents to pay taxes that would ultimately benefit other cities.

“Right off the bat, 20% of the taxes that are collected and taken from a community are highly likely to not go back to that community,” said Assemblyman Marc Levine, D-San Rafael. He also disliked handing over land-use decisions to the Metropolitan Transportation Commission, calling it “an unaccountable bureaucratic agency with no track record of building housing.”

Berkeley Mayor Jesse Arreguín, who is vice president of ABAG, said proponents of AB1487 worked hard to ensure that all Bay Area cities “had a voice” in the legislation. Part of the reason Chiu divided control between MTC and ABAG was to create a system of checks and balances: ABAG is dominated by smaller cities and towns, while MTC skews toward bigger cities.

The changes failed to mollify Assemblywoman Rebecca Bauer-Kahan, D-Orinda, who voted against AB1487. She said large cities would see a return on their tax funds and small cities would not.

“If my constituents are paying these taxes, they should see the benefit of it,” Kahan said.

Similar criticisms dogged the original plan to build 35,000 homes, crafted this year by a panel of mayors, tenant advocates, tech executives, labor groups and others who don’t normally sit down at the table together. When proponents presented the 10-point “CASA compact” — CASA is shorthand for the Committee to House the Bay Area — to city councils, they sometimes got a cold reception, particularly from suburban leaders who saw the plan as an intervention from their big-city counterparts in San Francisco, Oakland and San Jose.

Though the plan stoked debate, its language percolated into a number of bills passed by the Legislature this session. In addition to AB1487, Chiu also sponsored AB1482 to prevent unreasonable rent increases. State Sen. Nancy Skinner, D-Berkeley, sponsored SB330 to suspend local obstacles to housing production. AB1486 by Assemblyman Phil Ting, D-San Francisco, expands access to surplus lands for affordable housing development. Newsom began using some of the terms associated with the compact — “production,” “preservation” and “protection” — in public statements.

To Chiu, it was no surprise that the Bay Area had so much influence over the course of housing statewide. “We were the epicenter of this crisis,” he said. “The evictions, the high rents, the homelessness. We saw all of that before everyone else.”

Rachel Swan is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: rswan@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @rachelswan

Tenancy in the Bay Area means huge rent increases, fighting others for attractive listings and constant uncertainty.

And that’s true even if you’re a big business.

With rents spiking, deep-pocketed companies and public agencies are increasingly buying offices, for some of the same reasons home buyers plunk down for a space to live: more certainty over the long term on what they’ll pay for a roof over their heads.

The latest dealmaker: BART, which owns a sprawling network of rail lines but not its Oakland headquarters at 300 Lakeside Drive. Facing a rent increase of more than 60% there, BART’s board of directors approved on Thursday the purchase of a nearby building at 2150 Webster St. for a new headquarters.

It won’t be cheap. BART expects to pay $140 million and an additional $87 million in construction and other costs to move in. But buying will save millions of dollars a year compared with renewing its lease or leasing elsewhere, said Sean Brooks, BART’s real estate director.

BART isn’t alone. Seven major tenants in San Francisco and Oakland have spent or committed to spend more than $2.7 billion on real estate since 2012, according to property records. Tech giants Google, Facebook and Apple have each spent billions of dollars to buy in Silicon Valley.

“Across the Bay Area, companies are looking to purchase mission-critical assets, headquarters locations,” said Tom Maloney of JLL, BART’s real estate broker.

Beyond escaping the unpredictable office market, ownership allows companies to control a building’s branding, design and security, Maloney said. Excess space can also be leased to other tenants for a profit. Government agencies like BART don’t pay property tax on buildings they own.

The biggest hurdle: Buyers must have cash, or the ability to borrow it cheaply.

BART will issue low-interest bonds backed by sales tax revenue, which made the purchase attractive, Brooks said. The bonds won’t lead to any tax increases and don’t require voter approval.

Tobacco giant Altria invested $12.8 billion in Juul last year, and the controversial vaping company bought 123 Mission St. for $397 million in June as it keeps hiring. Seller Northwood Investors made a significant profit after paying $290 million for the tower in 2018.

As with the residential market, timing matters. Companies that spent money on offices earlier this decade are now cashing out. Zynga’s South of Market headquarters more than doubled in value from 2012 to 2019, and the gaming company agreed to sell it this summer for $600 million. In 2017, Uber sold Uptown Station in Oakland for tens of millions of dollars in profit.

For the Metropolitan Transportation Commission, the region’s transit planning agency, buying a new South of Market headquarters at 375 Beale St. in 2011 was perfect timing, said Randy Rentschler, MTC director of legislation and public affairs.

A third of the nearly 500,000-square-foot building is leased to private tenants Conduent, Twilio and Degenkolb. The agency expects a net operating profit of more than $200 million over 30 years, enough to cover its costs.

“The public is going to get a free building. Our operating costs are going to be paid for by rent for the rest of our existence,” he said. “We feel the public is getting a pretty good deal.”

The commission’s building, a former post office, houses the Association of Bay Area Governments, a regional planning agency, and the San Francisco Bay Conservation and Development Commission, which oversees the bay and shoreline. That protects three agencies from rent increases and makes policy meetings more convenient.

“The issues we deal with all intertwine,” Rentschler said. “It’s just more efficient.”

Funding for the $263 million building came from a $1 billion capital reserve that can’t be invested in traditional funds, but can be used to buy offices, he said.

Unlike the commission, BART won’t have excess real estate that it can lease out in its new headquarters. But the building will still be a better deal for taxpayers than continuing to rent, officials said.

Roland Li is a Chronicle staff writer. Email: roland.li@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @rolandlisf