Lee’s Affordable Housing Plans Firm Up

Mayor Edwin Lee’s working group for housing is considering a number of policy changes to boost affordable housing, according to a report by the San Francisco Business Times’ Cory Weinberg. The proposals would help meet the mayor’s goal of creating or rehabbing as many as 10,000 units (out of a total of 30,000 new or rehabbed units) by 2020 that would be permanently affordable for low-income and middle-income families.

The proposals include increasing flexibility for developers building offsite and partnering with nonprofit developers to increase affordable unit construction, targeting middle-income workers for affordable housing, and increasing fees on luxury condos to fund affordable housing. After further internal consideration, the proposals could be moved toward becoming legislation in 2015, notes Weinberg.

The mayor’s office keeps track of its performance on the housing pledge. As of September 2014, it reported that 3,508 units had been completed, with 951 of them dubbed affordable for a permanently affordable rate of 27 percent, slightly less than the overall planned 30 percent level.