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http://www.sfgate.com/realestate/article/San-Francisco-real-estate-Pacific-Heights-11129836.php

By Amy Graff, SFGATE

Updated 5:42 am, Wednesday, May 10, 2017

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Affordable in Pacific Heights: one-bedroom condo, $649,000

A top-floor, 623-square-foot condo in Pacific Heights at 1819 Lyon St., Apt. 3, has loads of charm. 

Affordable in Pacific Heights: one-bedroom condo, $649,000

A top-floor, 623-square-foot condo in Pacific Heights at 1819 Lyon St., Apt. 3, has loads of charm. 

Photo: Open Homes Photography

Pocket doors separate the living and dining areas in top-floor condo in Pacific Heights at 1819 Lyon St., Apt. 3

Pocket doors separate the living and dining areas in top-floor condo in Pacific Heights at 1819 Lyon St., Apt. 3

Photo: Open Homes Photography

The kitchen in a top-floor condo in Pacific Heights at 1819 Lyon St., Apt. 3

The kitchen in a top-floor condo in Pacific Heights at 1819 Lyon St., Apt. 3

Photo: Open Homes Photography

A top-floor, 623-square-foot condo in Pacific Heights at 1819 Lyon St., Apt. 3, has loads of charm. 

A top-floor, 623-square-foot condo in Pacific Heights at 1819 Lyon St., Apt. 3, has loads of charm. 

Photo: Open Homes Photography

Affordable in Pacific Heights: two-bedroom, $3.5 million

This classic Arts-and-Crafts home at 3157 Jackson St. has two bedrooms, two bathrooms and a beautiful garden designed by celebrated landscape architect Thomas Church.

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Affordable in Pacific Heights: two-bedroom, $3.5 million

This classic Arts-and-Crafts home at 3157 Jackson St. has two bedrooms, two bathrooms and a beautiful garden designed by celebrated landscape architect

… more

Photo: Open Homes Photography

This classic Arts-and-Crafts home at 3157 Jackson St. has two bedrooms, two bathrooms and a beautiful garden designed by celebrated landscape architect Thomas Church.

This classic Arts-and-Crafts home at 3157 Jackson St. has two bedrooms, two bathrooms and a beautiful garden designed by celebrated landscape architect Thomas Church.

Photo: Open Homes Photography

This classic Arts-and-Crafts home at 3157 Jackson St. has two bedrooms, two bathrooms and a beautiful garden designed by celebrated landscape architect Thomas Church.

This classic Arts-and-Crafts home at 3157 Jackson St. has two bedrooms, two bathrooms and a beautiful garden designed by celebrated landscape architect Thomas Church.

Photo: Open Homes Photography

This classic Arts-and-Crafts home at 3157 Jackson St. has two bedrooms, two bathrooms and a beautiful garden designed by celebrated landscape architect Thomas Church.

This classic Arts-and-Crafts home at 3157 Jackson St. has two bedrooms, two bathrooms and a beautiful garden designed by celebrated landscape architect Thomas Church.

Photo: Open Homes Photography

This classic Arts-and-Crafts home at 3157 Jackson St. has two bedrooms, two bathrooms and a beautiful garden designed by celebrated landscape architect Thomas Church.

This classic Arts-and-Crafts home at 3157 Jackson St. has two bedrooms, two bathrooms and a beautiful garden designed by celebrated landscape architect Thomas Church.

Photo: Open Homes Photography

This classic Arts-and-Crafts home at 3157 Jackson St. has two bedrooms, two bathrooms and a beautiful garden designed by celebrated landscape architect Thomas Church.

This classic Arts-and-Crafts home at 3157 Jackson St. has two bedrooms, two bathrooms and a beautiful garden designed by celebrated landscape architect Thomas Church.

Photo: Open Homes Photography

This classic Arts-and-Crafts home at 3157 Jackson St. has two bedrooms, two bathrooms and a beautiful garden designed by celebrated landscape architect Thomas Church.

This classic Arts-and-Crafts home at 3157 Jackson St. has two bedrooms, two bathrooms and a beautiful garden designed by celebrated landscape architect Thomas Church.

Photo: Open Homes Photography

This classic Arts-and-Crafts home at 3157 Jackson St. has two bedrooms, two bathrooms and a beautiful garden designed by celebrated landscape architect Thomas Church.

This classic Arts-and-Crafts home at 3157 Jackson St. has two bedrooms, two bathrooms and a beautiful garden designed by celebrated landscape architect Thomas Church.

Photo: Open Homes Photography

This classic Arts-and-Crafts home at 3157 Jackson St. has two bedrooms, two bathrooms and a beautiful garden designed by celebrated landscape architect Thomas Church.

This classic Arts-and-Crafts home at 3157 Jackson St. has two bedrooms, two bathrooms and a beautiful garden designed by celebrated landscape architect Thomas Church.

Photo: Open Homes Photography

This classic Arts-and-Crafts home at 3157 Jackson St. has two bedrooms, two bathrooms and a beautiful garden designed by celebrated landscape architect Thomas Church.

This classic Arts-and-Crafts home at 3157 Jackson St. has two bedrooms, two bathrooms and a beautiful garden designed by celebrated landscape architect Thomas Church.

Photo: Open Homes Photography

This classic Arts-and-Crafts home at 3157 Jackson St. has two bedrooms, two bathrooms and a beautiful garden designed by celebrated landscape architect Thomas Church.

This classic Arts-and-Crafts home at 3157 Jackson St. has two bedrooms, two bathrooms and a beautiful garden designed by celebrated landscape architect Thomas Church.

Photo: Open Homes Photography

This classic Arts-and-Crafts home at 3157 Jackson St. has two bedrooms, two bathrooms and a beautiful garden designed by celebrated landscape architect Thomas Church.

This classic Arts-and-Crafts home at 3157 Jackson St. has two bedrooms, two bathrooms and a beautiful garden designed by celebrated landscape architect Thomas Church.

Photo: Open Homes Photography

This classic Arts-and-Crafts home at 3157 Jackson St. has two bedrooms, two bathrooms and a beautiful garden designed by celebrated landscape architect Thomas Church.

This classic Arts-and-Crafts home at 3157 Jackson St. has two bedrooms, two bathrooms and a beautiful garden designed by celebrated landscape architect Thomas Church.

Photo: Open Homes Photography

This classic Arts-and-Crafts home at 3157 Jackson St. has two bedrooms, two bathrooms and a beautiful garden designed by celebrated landscape architect Thomas Church.

This classic Arts-and-Crafts home at 3157 Jackson St. has two bedrooms, two bathrooms and a beautiful garden designed by celebrated landscape architect Thomas Church.

Photo: Open Homes Photography

Shockingly high-priced listings get San Francisco’s Pacific Heights neighborhood a lot of attention. The $40 million mega-mansion at 2712 Broadway on the neighborhood’s most coveted three-block-stretch known as the Gold Coast was covered by media outlets across the country including SFGATE.

And so it comes as no surprise that Pacific Heights was named the city’s most expensive neighborhood in a recent report. Real estate analysis company NeighborhoodX teamed up with Curbed to generate a ranking of the city’s neighborhoods by real estate prices based on the average price per square foot and the range of prices per square foot. The affluent enclave known for its for its stately manses, billionaire residents and sweeping views of the Bay came out on top—where it has likely been for decades.

We thought it would be interesting to take this news and give it a twist by looking at properties on the lower end of the neighborhood’s price range. While multi-million-dollar mansions dominate the zip code, it’s possible to squeeze into the neighborhood for under $1 million by purchasing a one-bedroom condo.

Above, we highlight two of the more affordable properties on the market in Pacific Heights right now. The first is a one-bedroom, one-bathroom top-floor condo that packs a lot of charm into 623 square feet with bay windows, 12-foot ceilings, crown molding and pocket doors separating the dining area and kitchen.

After a recent price cut of $50,000, the property at 1819 Lyon St., No. 3, is on the market for $649,000, and according to Zillow, the least expensive property on the market in Pacific Heights right now.

The second is a two-bedroom, two-bathroom Arts and Crafts-style home at 3157 Jackson St. on the market for $3.5 million. The backyard is spectacular with original landscaping by celebrated Bay Area landscape architect Thomas Church, who’s recognized for introducing the idea of creating living spaces outdoors. 

• 
  San Francisco’s most expensive house: This $40 million modern masterpiece
  

Article source: http://www.sfgate.com/realestate/article/San-Francisco-real-estate-Pacific-Heights-11129836.php

Take action for affordable housing in the Bay Area

By Amie Fishman and Matt Schwartz

May 6, 2017

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}

If Bay Area voters deliver a clear message to elected leaders about the need for affordable housing, change is possible in 2017. In fact, change is already brewing.

Last year, Bay Area voters told pollsters for the first time that housing was their top concern. Then voters around the state showed they were prepared to take action to address it, passing 12 of 13 affordable-housing funding measures to create affordable housing and support our communities.

But the Bay Area can’t go it alone. Even with increased local funding, we face a significant funding shortage for affordable housing. New data out this month from the California Housing Partnership show that Bay Area counties have lost almost 70 percent of direct funding for housing over the past 10 years. In 2011, after the state dissolved redevelopment agencies, California suffered a loss of $1.5 billion annually.

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Bay Area residents can build off our momentum from the November election by calling on state leaders to re-invest in our communities and identify funding for new, badly needed affordable housing.

Two proposals in Sacramento seek to do just this:

1 The Building Jobs and Homes Act (SB2) would establish a sustainable funding source through a nominal real estate filing fee, generating hundreds of millions of dollars annually for affordable housing programs and local investments.

2 The Bring California Home Act (AB71) would eliminate a state mortgage interest deduction for vacation homes and redirect those savings to directly fund more than 3,000 new affordable homes each year.

Together, these bills would yield significant benefits for our communities, creating new affordable housing for our seniors, veterans and chronically homeless, and funding housing programs and opportunities for our teachers, nurses, essential workers and families.

It’s good for all of us when we have the resources we need to create affordable housing, retain our teachers and workforce, and care for our most vulnerable.

Solutions are within reach, but it is going to take effort from all of us to provoke the change we want.

Amie Fishman is the executive director of the Non-Profit Housing Association of Northern California. Matt Schwartz is the CEO and president of the California Housing Partnership.

Weigh in

Learn: Read the California Housing Partnership’s new housing needs assessment for four Bay Area counties for a snapshot of where we are and how solutions fit in: http://chpc.net

Get involved: Unearth opportunities to put action behind housing solutions: http://nonprofithousing.org/ahw2017

Speak out: Urge your state lawmakers to create permanent funding for affordable housing investments by supporting SB2 and AB71.

Article source: http://www.sfchronicle.com/opinion/openforum/article/Take-action-for-affordable-housing-in-the-Bay-Area-11127300.php

SAN FRANCISCO, May 08, 2017 — Zephyr Real Estate has annually produced a themed calendar based on local culture and lore since 1993. A few years ago, Zephyr upped the ante by including a charitable contribution to those organizations connected to the features in the calendars.

ArtSpan Art Bridge Benefit Auction at SOMArts

ArtSpan Art Bridge Benefit Auction at SOMArts

ArtSpan Art Bridge Benefit Auction at SOMArts

Photos accompanying this announcement are available at http://www.globenewswire.com/NewsRoom/AttachmentNg/f21b3f8e-9c66-45b2-ac0f-2d95b9bb3aca

http://www.globenewswire.com/NewsRoom/AttachmentNg/24d2d25e-5cbc-44a5-a98c-e9ca7c94b0fe

http://www.globenewswire.com/NewsRoom/AttachmentNg/b84a1188-8074-4c99-8d40-48c075f8c5bd

For the 2018 calendar, an alliance has been formed with ArtSpan to feature local art and artists. ArtSpan, a non-profit organization, is dedicated to developing a world-class art community in San Francisco. Artists are given opportunities to display their work and make connections with those who appreciate art and those who want to support it.

In its 42^nd year, ArtSpan’s is the oldest open-studios program in the U.S., and displays the works of over 800 up-and-coming artists in their annual art event spanning five weekends in October and November. Within that broader scope, ArtSpan also offers Youth Open Studios for artists under the age of 18 years. Sites include Boys Girls Clubs, Kids Art Foundation, Ruth Asawa School of the Arts, and Public Glass. ArtSpan Art Bridge Benefit Auction at SOMArts was held in March, and Zephyr proudly stepped up as one of several sponsors for the event, and thus the alliance was formed.

“We see this partnership as a great opportunity for ArtSpan artists to get their work seen by a new population of San Francisco homeowners – particularly those in need of artwork for their new walls. In line with our ‘Art Builds Bridges’ theme, it is our hope that this partnership will be a means of connecting local artists with art buyers and new clientele. ArtSpan artists come from a variety of backgrounds, and create artwork with a wide range of mediums and themes,” commented Joen Madonna, Executive Director of ArtSpan. “Sourcing the 2018 calendar artwork from ArtSpan promises to produce a quality collection of intriguing imagery for Zephyr clients all year round. We hope that this will encourage new residents and homebuyers to purchase locally when seeking artwork, and will act as a guide to finding local artwork to match their new home decor.”

At Zephyr, once a theme is chosen for the calendar, the real work begins with research, photographer schedules, permits and countless details to be arranged. This year, ArtSpan will provide the art, artist and professional photography for the calendar, resulting in a reduction of production costs for Zephyr. Zephyr, in turn, will pass those savings along to ArtSpan to augment the contribution.

“We are very excited about this opportunity to work closely with local artists and support their endeavors in our community,” commented Melody Foster, Vice President of Marketing for Zephyr. “We are already planning an increase in the production quantity as we anticipate a high demand for this calendar.”

The 2017 calendar featured Secret Gardens of San Francisco, and the beneficiary of the donation was Neighborhood Beautification Program (Community Challenge Grant Program), which donates funds to communities, businesses, schools and nonprofits to help improve their neighborhood’s public spaces. In 2016, the Forgotten Monuments and Landmarks calendar resulted in a donation to the San Francisco Museum and Historical Society. Love Your Parklets, the 2015 calendar, benefited the San Francisco Parks Alliance. In 2014, Mosaics generated a donation to the San Francisco Arts Commission.

About Zephyr Real Estate
Founded in 1978, Zephyr Real Estate is San Francisco’s largest independent real estate firm with nearly $2.3 billion in gross sales and a current roster of more than 300 full-time agents. Zephyr’s highly-visited website has earned two web design awards, including the prestigious Interactive Media Award. Zephyr Real Estate is a member of the international relocation network, Leading Real Estate Companies of the World; the luxury real estate network, Who’s Who in Luxury Real Estate; global luxury affiliate, Mayfair International; and local luxury marketing association, the Luxury Marketing Council of San Francisco. Zephyr has six offices in San Francisco, a new office in Greenbrae, and two brokerage affiliates in Sonoma County, all strategically positioned to serve a large customer base throughout the San Francisco Bay Area. For more information, visit www.ZephyrRE.com.

Contact: Melody Foster
Zephyr Real Estate
San Francisco, CA
415.426.3203
melodyfoster@zephyrsf.com

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Article source: http://www.econotimes.com/Zephyr-Real-Estate-Partners-with-ArtSpan-to-Showcase-Local-Artists-in-2018-Calendar-687060

After more than 20 years as a real estate broker in the Bay Area, Daniel Winkler has sworn off Berkeley.

“I don’t want to own rentals in Berkeley, I don’t want to own an office in Berkeley and I don’t want to build in Berkeley ever again,” Winkler said.

In February 2015, Daniel Winkler Associates helped CS Development Construction buy a property at 1310 Haskell St. The developer had planned to replace the site’s existing single-family home with three 2-story units.

The development was in compliance with the city’s zoning ordinance, according to Winkler, and was approved by the Zoning Adjustments Board in March 2016. Berkeley City Council, however, has rejected the development twice after hearing concerns from surrounding residents that the new housing would be out of scale and cast shadows on their neighborhood.

“I can’t imagine someone coming to my house and saying, ‘You should move because the place you live casts a shadow over my house,’ ” said Sonja Trauss, founder of the San Francisco Bay Area Renters’ Federation, a coalition of approximately 600 pro-density renters. “There’s a reason for which people live in Berkeley. Their needs are way more important.”

After City Council first rejected the project, the California Renters Legal Advocacy and Education Fund, an organization dedicated to suing California cities that disregard state housing law, filed a lawsuit alleging that the city had violated the California Housing Accountability Act. The law makes it difficult for local governments to reject housing that complies with local zoning laws and cities’ general plans.

Aslesha Kumar/Staff

The city of Berkeley settled the case, agreeing to hold another public hearing on the 1310 Haskell St. development. But at the hearing Feb. 28, the council once again rejected the development, claiming that the Housing Accountability Act did not protect certain parts of the development plan, such as the demolition of the already existent house on the lot.

Winkler alleged that City Council was exploiting a legal loophole. The developer disagreed with the council’s interpretation, but he chose not to file another lawsuit to avoid high costs, Winkler said.

“Right now you have a derelict lot with a dilapidated house that no one can occupy,” Winkler said. “That’s better than three homes that are two-story that are well within the zoning guidelines?”

Like the developers of 1310 Haskell St., many others have become involved in prolonged administrative processes with the city while trying to get their developments approved.

In January, the Pacific School of Religion actively abandoned a development project on its campus, citing the “changes in the (city’s) political landscape.” At the beginning of the year, the developers of the contentious Harold Way project, located in Downtown Berkeley, announced that they were selling their permit for the 18-story development.

Last December, Mayor Jesse Arreguín took office alongside a new group of several self-proclaimed progressive city councilmembers, many of whom emphasized community inclusion and housing justice as part of their campaign platforms.

But Arreguín has garnered an anti-development reputation among some. Arreguín said this might be because, unlike his predecessor Tom Bates, he evaluates construction projects on a case-by-case basis instead of automatically approving them.

In the five months since Arreguín took office, seven developments have been brought before the council. Of these projects, one was denied, five were approved by the council and one was approved by default after the council failed to come to a decision. Among the projects that passed, however, three were approved only after their decisions were delayed up to three times.

Projects such as 1310 Haskell St. are part of a larger ethical and economic debate about how the community should address development.

Most recently, City Council approved a long-disputed development at 2902 Adeline St, a proposed 14,065 square-foot apartment complex. The finalized agreement, a 50-dwelling unit project, allocates four units to very low-income housing and four units to low-income housing.

While most parties agree that there is a need for more housing, there has been much controversy as to what types of development are justified. Some argue the city’s housing shortage must be addressed by building as much housing as possible, but others call for a focus on housing regulations and affordable housing development to ensure that new developments are accessible for the city’s most vulnerable residents.

The crisis

Between 2010 and 2016, Berkeley’s rents have risen more than 65 percent, according to lead Rent Stabilization Board staff attorney Matt Brown.

Since about 1995, the Bay Area has generally experienced economic prosperity. Silicon Valley employees have moved to Berkeley, and housing supply hasn’t been able to keep up with demand, driving up costs, said Robert Edelstein, campus professor emeritus from the Haas School of Business and co-chair of the campus Fisher Center for Real Estate and Urban Economics.

Between 1980 and 2000, Arreguín said, the city of Berkeley saw very little market-rate development — a trend he attributed to the city’s passage of the 1973 Neighborhood Preservation Ordinance, which placed stricter regulations on development.

Additionally, the city has a long-standing tendency to protest new development for reasons such as ugly designs, hasty approval, transportation issues and demand for more affordable housing units, said campus geography professor emeritus Richard Walker.

But amid the housing crisis, Arreguín said, the city must build more units — specifically those that are affordable — in order to prevent people from being pushed out of Berkeley.

Berkeley is no longer a suburb, but part of the urban core of a large metropolitan area, according to Walker. He added that as the Bay Area grows denser, developments are needed to provide more housing, offices and other amenities — Berkeley can’t stay the same.

Playing “musical chairs”

Numerous projects being built in Berkeley are priced between $2,500 and $4,000 per month, and are affordable only to those in upper income levels, Arreguín said. He added that Berkeley is currently subject to speculation by out-of-town real estate agencies that acquire properties as investment opportunities, thus displacing people from their homes.

“It’s like musical chairs. People are going to fight over housing. … People who are rich are going to get it. So if there are more people than housing, the ‘extra’ people are going to be poor people.”

— Sonja Trauss, founder of the San Francisco Bay Area Renters’ Federation

Berkeley Student Cooperative, which aims to provide affordable housing for students, shares the same concern. BSC operates at a full capacity of 1,260 beds and had to wait list 1,400 students last semester, according to BSC Vice President of External Affairs Zach Gamlieli.

Davis Belilty, a second-year Berkeley City College student, applied to live in a co-op in 2014, but it took him nearly a year and half to get in. Though his home is now a 10-minute walk away from the college, he commuted from Oakland for the first three months he attended BCC.

Belilty enjoyed his bike commute to BCC — a courtesy of the West Coast’s balmy climate –– but it carved out a significant portion of his day. Belilty wasn’t alone as a student forced to live outside the city of Berkeley — a fellow student from his Spanish class, for instance, lived in Stockton. Belilty said he believes more rigorous regulation on property uses and price ceilings are necessary to mitigate this displacement.

“An increase in housing supply that can only be afforded by a small subset of the population is not really an increase in the housing supply,” Gamlieli said in an email.

Trauss, however, said it doesn’t matter which type of housing the city invests in — low-income or market-rate. In the absence of new luxury developments, according to Trauss, high-income individuals who wish to live in the area can always afford to compete with mid- and low-income populations for existing housing, which drives up prices eventually.

“It’s like musical chairs. People are going to fight over housing.” Trauss said. “People who are rich are going to get it. So if there are more people than housing, the ‘extra’ people are going to be poor people.”

Even if newly developed properties cost more than other properties in the surrounding neighborhood, Edelstein said, any addition to the overall housing supply will lower the average property price.

But if market-rate housing development truly drives housing prices down, Brown said, the new development that took place over the last three years of Bates’ mayorship would have shown that. Instead, Berkeley experienced unprecedented rent increases, he added. 

Now, City Council is taking a different path — Arreguín hopes to finance 500 units of affordable housing developments with funds from the newly approved Measures U1 and A1, Arreguín said.

Visions of Berkeley

To Kelly Hammargren, development often leads to the loss of Berkeley’s many historic buildings and unique environment.

The project had been set to feature 302 apartment units and a three-level underground parking lot. The construction, however, had drawn concern from Berkeley residents that the new building would interrupt the city’s view of the bay. The project also called for the replacement of Shattuck Cinemas with a new 10-screen movie theater.

The thought of losing the city’s largest movie complex called people to action, Hammargren said, adding that the protest against the Harold Way project had garnered more than 5,000 signatures because there was something in the project “for everybody to hate.”

“So here, we can sit on grass and there’s sunshine all around us — that’s what makes Berkeley livable,” Hammargren said.

“Sometimes being a part of a community means that you’ll be asked to give up some of your own comforts for the greater good.”

— Dana Buntrock, UC Berkeley architecture professor

Nonetheless the Harold Way Project was ultimately approved after nearly three years of deliberation. City councilmembers who voted in favor of the project back in December 2015 said the developer’s fee payment of $10.5 million would enable the city to create more affordable housing.

The new council in general, however, has been more interested in appropriately sized developments that will not obstruct sunshine over massive amounts of space, according to Hammargren.

Campus architecture professor Dana Buntrock said preserving individual properties’ access to light is minor in relation to mitigating displacement.

“The trade-off that comes with protecting that house’s access to light at all costs is for other people to move further and further away… into dangerous housing like the Ghost Ship,” Buntrock said in an email. “Sometimes being a part of a community means that you’ll be asked to give up some of your own comforts for the greater good.”

In limbo

Winkler said he feels that Arreguín’s policies, however, are putting small real estate businesses at risk. Unlike larger development companies that pay hundreds of thousands of dollars a year to lawyers, “mom-and-pop” developers can’t afford to fight the city.

“This is not some big development company — this is a mom and pop, husband and wife,” Winkler said of the Haskell Street project’s owner, CS Development Construction. “They build houses for their living. They’re not flying in a private jet. They’re not building a thousand units a year.”

Clifford Orloff, the managing partner of OPHCA, a developer that took the city to court twice over demolition fees associated with its project, said the city’s recent actions have made development in Berkeley difficult, causing developers to go elsewhere, such as El Cerrito or Albany.

Orloff said the only way to lower rents in Berkeley would be to build about 5,000 more units in the city. But he’s not sure how the city could achieve this increase when even the small 3-unit Haskell Street development failed to pass through the council.

Matt Baran, the architect of the Haskell Street project, has been informing his clients that there is no guarantee that a development will be approved even if it meets zoning requirements, according to Winkler. Winkler said he believes that the current owner of the Haskell Street property will no longer pursue the project. He plans to help his client sell the house to a new buyer, who may perhaps attempt construction again.

“But in the meantime, nobody gets to live there. (There are) no tax benefits to the city, no family to go to the school, nobody to support the small businesses,” Winkler said. “It just sort of makes it wither away.”

Charlene Jin is the lead business and economy reporter. Contact her at [email protected] and follow her on Twitter at @CharleneJin0327.

Article source: http://www.dailycal.org/2017/05/07/for-the-fear-of-shadows/

Take action for affordable housing in the Bay Area

By Amie Fishman and Matt Schwartz

May 6, 2017

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}

If Bay Area voters deliver a clear message to elected leaders about the need for affordable housing, change is possible in 2017. In fact, change is already brewing.

Last year, Bay Area voters told pollsters for the first time that housing was their top concern. Then voters around the state showed they were prepared to take action to address it, passing 12 of 13 affordable-housing funding measures to create affordable housing and support our communities.

But the Bay Area can’t go it alone. Even with increased local funding, we face a significant funding shortage for affordable housing. New data out this month from the California Housing Partnership show that Bay Area counties have lost almost 70 percent of direct funding for housing over the past 10 years. In 2011, after the state dissolved redevelopment agencies, California suffered a loss of $1.5 billion annually.

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Bay Area residents can build off our momentum from the November election by calling on state leaders to re-invest in our communities and identify funding for new, badly needed affordable housing.

Two proposals in Sacramento seek to do just this:

1 The Building Jobs and Homes Act (SB2) would establish a sustainable funding source through a nominal real estate filing fee, generating hundreds of millions of dollars annually for affordable housing programs and local investments.

2 The Bring California Home Act (AB71) would eliminate a state mortgage interest deduction for vacation homes and redirect those savings to directly fund more than 3,000 new affordable homes each year.

Together, these bills would yield significant benefits for our communities, creating new affordable housing for our seniors, veterans and chronically homeless, and funding housing programs and opportunities for our teachers, nurses, essential workers and families.

It’s good for all of us when we have the resources we need to create affordable housing, retain our teachers and workforce, and care for our most vulnerable.

Solutions are within reach, but it is going to take effort from all of us to provoke the change we want.

Amie Fishman is the executive director of the Non-Profit Housing Association of Northern California. Matt Schwartz is the CEO and president of the California Housing Partnership.

Weigh in

Learn: Read the California Housing Partnership’s new housing needs assessment for four Bay Area counties for a snapshot of where we are and how solutions fit in: http://chpc.net

Get involved: Unearth opportunities to put action behind housing solutions: http://nonprofithousing.org/ahw2017

Speak out: Urge your state lawmakers to create permanent funding for affordable housing investments by supporting SB2 and AB71.

Article source: http://www.sfchronicle.com/opinion/openforum/article/Take-action-for-affordable-housing-in-the-Bay-Area-11127300.php