A common cry on all sides of the housing debate is to build more affordable housing and build it fast. But more often than not onlookers are left wondering just what affordable housing means — and how affordable is it.
The Mission has seen hundreds of affordable housing units approved in the last few months. Some 434 units were slated for the neighborhood in the tail end of 2015, from the 165-unit complex on Mission Street to the recent 96 units of senior housing at 26th and Shotwell.
These large-scale projects are capital-A affordable housing: projects built and maintained by non-profit developers that must rent their units to tenants making below 60 percent of the area’s median income. In San Francisco, that comes out to $42,800 for a single-person household and $61,150 for a family of four.
Below is a list of the affordable housing units currently open in San Francisco. Subscribe to the housing office email alert system to stay up-to-date on new offers of housing.
This means tenants hoping to live in a fully affordable housing unit cannot make more than that to qualify, and may often have to make less: Some projects, such as the upcoming 101-unit complex on Folsom Street, set aside a portion of their units for those making even less than the 60 percent standard including at-risk youth or the formerly homeless.
But even if a tenant qualifies, applying is infamously arduous.
“The process is to get onto the Mayor’s Office of Housing email list, check the Mayor’s Office of Housing waiting list, and when an individual project goes up, [apply for it],” said Sam Moss, the executive director of the non-profit housing developer Mission Housing.
Each non-profit has its own application and waiting list, and though the Mayor’s Office of Housing may combine lists in the future, currently tenants must go to each organization individually and apply there, a scattered process.
(As an example, there are four-bedroom apartments at 1738 Mission St. listed as the only currently open affordable housing units in the Mission District on the Mayor’s Office of Housing site. But applications go through the non-profit in charge, Asian Inc., which states that it is not accepting any offers at this time. The list promoted by the housing office is incomplete or contradictory in various ways.)
Once on a waiting list, tenants wait for construction of a new unit to finish and or for an existing unit to open up. The candidates on a list are then entered into a highly competitive lottery: An affordable housing project at 474 Namona Street in SoMa, for instance, had 2,800 applicants for just 60 spots.
If chosen, the potential tenant must prove his or her income level, usually with a pay stub or tax information, and the rest is comparatively smooth sailing.
Many in housing lament the lack of a standardized process. Apps like One Home hope to do away with this mystification by presenting a single interface where those seeking affordable housing can enter their income level, family size, and geographic area of to find available units.
“As a person looking for affordable housing, you can’t easily see what you’re eligible for,” said Rey Faustino. “People just apply for affordable housing without really understanding whether people are even eligible for affordable housing.”
The city does have lists of affordable units currently available, but those simply route to the non-profits in charge, and interested tenants must still contact them to seek a unit.
“They would have to go find these listings online or in person, pages and pages long, of just these Excel spreadsheet tables, and you would have to go in and look manually,” said Faustino. “It’s really complex.”
There’s another type of affordable housing — technically called inclusionary housing — that’s required of private developers when they build market-rate units. These units are also reserved to renters making 60 percent of area median income or below. There’s an open lottery per project that the housing office lists on its site.
Some units are set at higher income levels, from 120 to 150 percent of area median income — $85,600 to $107,050 for a single earner. These are usually the results of deals reached with developers to increase their density, like those for the 5M and Mission Rock projects. These units remain permanently affordable, just to middle-income rather than low-income earners.
Then there’s public housing — sometimes known as Section 8 housing — which is similar to affordable housing but managed by the city rather than a non-profit. All public housing in San Francisco is in the process of being transferred to non-profit control, and the wait list for public housing units is currently closed.
Tenants who cannot find any affordable units and do not have a rent-controlled apartment must hope that their current landlord does not raise the rent by an exorbitant amount, or they can attempt to find housing on the regular market — competing with those who can pay an average rent of $3,500 for a one-bedroom, or the few who can afford a three-bedroom for $29,950 a month.
Lottery winner housing only helps a few and screws everyone else…..