November 2020: Vote Yes on Prop K for Social Housing

Proposition K authorizes San Francisco to build or acquire 10,000 units of municipal social housing. Municipal social housing units would be owned by the city and offer permanently affordable housing for a range of incomes, with an average income less than 80 percent of the median income. This housing would also be kept off of the private real estate market. Voting “yes” on Prop K is the first procedural step to creating this urgently needed affordable housing in San Francisco.

Why, you might wonder, do voters need to approve this? Thank Article 34 of the California Constitution, passed in 1950, designed to make it harder for cities to build low-income housing by requiring voter approval first. Article 34 is a tool to keep the poor and people of color out of richer, whiter communities, and it should be repealed statewide.

In the meantime, Prop K provides authorization for San Francisco’s social housing pilot. The program will likely be managed by the Mayor’s Office of Housing to start. The timeline for rollout depends on what portion of the city budget is available to fund the program. This question of funding is to be addressed by the related Proposition I [Ed. Note: Blog post coming soon], intended to fund the social housing program, by increasing taxes on large-dollar real estate transactions.

For more details, check out https://www.socialhousingsf.com/.

Ensuring that housing in San Francisco is affordable reduces displacement of low-income people to far-away locations that require long commutes back to the city. That strains overburdened transit systems, or (more likely) leads to more long car trips that contribute to climate change (as well as traffic and congestion).

SFLCV supports affordable housing to protect the environment, and we urge you to vote yes on Prop K.