The nine-county, $20 billion Bay Area regional housing bond that was projected to create more than 70,000 affordable homes may be scuttled tomorrow morning. The portion of the affordable housing and preservation funds allotted for San Francisco would have exceeded $2 billion.
Tucked away as the final agenda item on a Wednesday-morning special meeting of the Bay Area Housing Finance Authority is a decision on whether to evoke Elections Code Section 9605 regarding the massive regional housing bond.
In plain English: “The gist of this is, the board will consider pulling the regional affordable housing bond measure off the ballot in November,” confirms John Goodwin, a spokesman for the Bay Area Housing Finance Authority.
This comes on the heels of a pair of lawsuits from California anti-tax crusaders, as well as a dire unforced error.
A group of concerned taxpayers on Aug. 7 filed suit against the housing finance authority and the elections directors of all nine Bay Area counties. The lawsuit is lengthy and targets the housing bond on multiple fronts. But perhaps the most salient claim is that the government had misstated the annual cost of repaying the bond: It’s not $670 million but, rather, $911 million.
This, it turns out, is true. The Bay Area Housing Finance Authority last week called an emergency meeting to correct what it categorized as a “clerical error” ahead of any Bay Area counties printing out ballots and official election materials. But the taxpayers did not drop their lawsuit.
Meanwhile, on Aug. 1, the Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association filed a lawsuit, alleging that the ballot language on a separate state measure was misleading.
That measure, state Proposition 5, would lower the threshold for bonds from two-thirds of the voters to just 55 percent. But the Howard Jarvis people argued that the summary of this ballot measure was misleading, and it wasn’t clear that the threshold was being lowered, not raised.
Last week, a Sacramento Superior Court judge concurred. And this leaves the backers of the Bay Area housing bond in a bind. Polling referenced in the memo put before board members placed the housing bond at “53 percent solid yes and 2 percent leaning yes.”
These are soft numbers. With the state measure to lower bond thresholds in a tenuous place — and potentially being forced to rewrite its language in a less flattering manner — its passage is now less certain. Clearly the housing bond measure won’t succeed without it.
And, even if Prop. 5 passes and the housing bond only needs to clear 55 percent, the grievous mathematical error provides ammunition for taxation foes to lobby voters and elected leaders alike. The taxpayers’ lawsuit, again, is multifaceted and ongoing.
“There’s very little building going on, and if that bond were to pass, it’d create a huge infusion of funds,” says John Avalos, the executive director of the Council for Community Housing Organizations. “This would stimulate a part of the economy that really needs to be stimulated right now. It’s really devastating.”
Avalos said that if the regional measure is pulled, his organization will put its efforts into passing the Affordable Housing Opportunity Fund.
Sam Moss, the executive director of Mission Housing, lamented the potential lost opportunity to put the regional measure on the same ballot as a Harris/Walz ticket.
“But if we don’t get it now,” he said, “we’ll get it next year, or the year after that. No matter what the ghost of Howard Jarvis would want.”
Update, 4 p.m.: California’s Third District Court of Appeals has reversed a Sacramento County judge, and ruled that the ballot language for California Prop. 5 need not be rewritten. Prop. 5 would lower the threshold on bond measures from 66.67 percent to 55 percent.
It remains to be seen how this influences the Bay Area Housing Finance Authority’s decision tomorrow regarding whether to keep or yank the regional affordable housing bond measure.
Update, Aug. 14: The housing bond was yanked off the ballot by a unanimous vote.
How do you get the cost of a bond wrong by over 1/3rd? Shouldn’t some heads roll for that?
Getting the amount wrong was not unintentional. They thought that no one would notice.
It might be better to yank it and then try again in 2026. By then, assuming Kamala Harris wins the presidency, the economic environment may improve and voters might be more willing to take on so much debt.
I suspect that this measure would get > 55% in San Francisco since there are so many renters that would not be paying the cost since landlords could not pass on their additional costs if it’s a rent-controlled property. But in other Bay Area cities, where the voters would be on the hook for significant increases in their property tax to pay for the bonds, it’s unlikely that the measure would garner sufficient support.
What John Avalos stated about very little building going on right now is true. When market-rate housing is not built, due to it not penciling out financially for developers, we don’t get either inclusionary units or in-lieu money for subsidized housing, so the affordable housing doesn’t get built. The money for affordable housing needs to come from somewhere, and it’s not coming from the State or from in-lieu fees, or as inclusionary housing.
If this were done within the auspices of the SEC, for instance, heads would roll
and indictments issued. Cost being $911 million rather than $670 million,
a 35 %+ “misstatement”, would be considered a true and perhaps intentional misrepresentation in the private sector. One has to question what other
“gaffes” have been, are, and will be put forth by the politicos who are minions
of the Demo Regimes which dominate the local, county, regional, and state
government entities. Catastrophes such as the Detroit and Stockton bankruptcies
don’t sneak up, they are visible to the informed citizenry. There are those of us
Baby Boomers who still recall the New York City debacle of 1975. To those who
don’t, “Google” New York City 1975 default threat.
Meanwhile all those who got coerced into signing the petitions to get this on the ballot have had their data sold to brokers and can expect more spam, junk mail and scam calls.
This is ridiculous. How can it not even be worth trying??? This is pretty much the only measure on the ballot that would put a serious dent in the housing crisis, I can’t believe they’re considering pulling it. If the polling is close… then fight for it!
Appeal court overturned Sacramento judge’s decision. Measure 5 to lower the threshold to 55% will remain on the ballot without any revision. Housing Bond will probably move forward as well. Low polling is most likely due to voters not having heard about the bond before
May the campaign that is opposing RM-4 switch to Oppose Prop 5? Sort of a citizen’s gut and amend?