Image by Sunshine Profits

Prop 5 will release a massive infusion of affordable housing bonds into local elections, like the Bay Area’s dead-but-not-forgotten RM4. Yet what does “affordable” mean? In his comprehensive post-mortem of that $20 billion boondoggle, Marin Post’s Bob Silvestri examines how BAHFA’s cure for housing is worse than the disease. Lower-income property owners end up paying to house high-income residents. Even vulnerable, fixed-income homeowners are forced to pay more taxes.

Since its inception, BAHFA has been working on a housing bond proposal, the purpose of which was ostensibly to fund the development and preservation of “affordable housing,” which all sounds laudable until we look at the details.

“Affordable housing” is a term that has become so expansive and abused over the past 10 years that it’s become completely disconnected from its original intentions of housing low-income people and those most in need. As it is now, a family of four in San Francisco that makes 130% of the official Area Median Income (AMI) is eligible for taxpayer-subsidized, rental housing.

As such, under the RM4 proposal, the average San Francisco home-owning family of four that makes $146,872 per year (100% of AMI) would have to pay a hefty property tax to subsidize a family of four that makes $194,800 a year!

This begs the question: on what planet is that equitable?

Worse still, although RM4 touts itself as helping house seniors, retirees, and those with disabilities, ironically, it offers no exemptions from its property tax increases for existing homeowners who are seniors, retirees, or those with disabilities.

Read the whole thing here.

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