Jane Kim has been a champion for affordable housing creation throughout her time as a Supervisor. In fact, her district has supported more housing development –and more affordable housing development – than any other district. She believes strongly that we not only must create new housing opportunities, but preserve our supply of affordable housing to ensure San Francisco remains the diverse, dynamic city we love.

As Mayor, Jane will continue to be bold and pragmatic in confronting this challenge by both taking immediate action and laying the groundwork for long-term sustainable solutions to grow our city in a way that embraces all its residents.

We can all see that San Francisco is wrestling with how to produce more housing, what types, for who and how fast. We are on track to produce the 5,000 units per year that Mayor Ed Lee set as our goal. That said, we can be doing a lot more in the short and medium term to begin to provide relief.

To succeed, this plan recognizes that we need to build more middle-class housing and affordable housing while simultaneously preserving and maintaining our existing affordable housing stock. This is not an “either/or.” We must ensure current residents have the option to stay in their homes as we create new homes.

Immediate Action

Jane knows we must act quickly to help residents at risk of evictions stay in their homes. She was the first candidate to endorse Prop F, the June 2018 ballot measure that would ensure tenants facing eviction are represented by an attorney.

If Prop F is approved by voters, Jane will call for a citywide moratorium on no-fault evictions where the tenant has done nothing wrong, until the tenants’ right to counsel program created by Prop F is operational. Jane understands no one should lose their home by being evicted without access to counsel, because too often the most vulnerable tenants can be tricked into losing their home or forced out because of fear. If voters approve Prop. F, during the implementation period, Jane will direct all of her city departments and agencies to take necessary steps to ensure that city resources are not used to enable no-fault evictions against a tenant who does not have legal representation.

Protect Renters and Rent-Controlled Apartments

Rent-controlled apartments are our largest stock of affordable housing. Jane believes we should repeal the flawed state law known as “Costa-Hawkins” to allow more buildings to transition to rent controlled units over time. Jane would support an analysis of how we can create a rolling deadline for rent-controlled protections: currently, for example, no San Francisco housing built after 1978 can be rent-controlled. Jane would study rolling rent control protections annually (1979, 1980 and so forth) to continually increase our supply of rent-controlled housing.

She will work to make rental housing more affordable and available to working families:

• Expanding rental subsidy programs for our City’s families and teachers at risk of eviction or searching for housing.
• Expanding existing workforce homeownership programs like First Responders Down Payment Assistance Loan Program (FRDALP), which assists police and fire first responders, and Teacher Next Door (TND) programs that assist educators and other critical City Employees, and adding civilian employees at police and fire, 911 dispatchers and supervisors, employees at the Department of Emergency Management, housing inspectors, and employees at the San Francisco General Trauma Unit.
• Streamlining the housing application process.

Clear the Hurdles of Housing Creation

We have tens of thousands of approved housing units in the pipeline – we need to push to get these units online as quickly as possible, prioritizing the development of affordable housing. Jane will direct the Mayor’s Office of Economic and Workforce Development and the Department of City Planning to address pressing issues that cannot wait any longer:

• Streamline the post-entitlement process once a project is approved, to reduce bureaucratic barriers to getting shovels in the ground.
• Organize the approval process for new projects to avoid bureaucratic delays.
• Begin conversations with the trade unions about securing enough labor for all of the projects underway, potentially using City College pathways for entry into the trades.
• Urging our state legislators to fund more local housing construction and the infrastructure improvements that delay building already approved projects. Rather than continuing to force through the fundamentally flawed SB 827, state leaders should support funding local projects right now.

Plan for a Sustainable Future

Housing affordability is a citywide crisis and we need to present a solution that takes into account all our disparate neighborhoods and encourages locally-driven solutions. Jane will engage in a thoughtful and constructive consultation with our city’s engaged communities and civic organizations. By June 2019, she will present a “Vision for Housing in San Francisco” for full public review and legislative action. It will not be an unworkable “one-size-fits-all” approach to housing like the failed State Senate Bill 827. Instead it will integrate transportation, equitable economic growth, and resident-focused community building with our City’s housing programs and policies. This may include:

• Launching a program to encourage private landlords to provide housing to teachers using a real estate tax abatement on improvements.
• Providing incentives, such as a revolving loan fund and an abatement on property taxes for improvements, to add accessory dwelling units to the housing supply.
• Providing partial property tax abatement for housing developments that include additional affordable middle-income housing.
• Proposing a $1 Billion Bond for the 2019 Ballot to fund this Vision and accelerate and stabilize our housing market, at all points along the housing ladder, while also providing for urgent transportation and infrastructure improvements, by:
  • Accelerating master-planned neighborhood-making projects by loaning up-front infrastructure and site preparation funding. This could shave years off the development timetables for the 20,000+ new housing units in the already-approved Candlestick, Treasure Island and Park Merced projects – nearly 30% affordable – as well as others.
  • Funding acquisition of existing apartment buildings and/or buy-down of new market rate units to be permanently dedicated as affordable moderate and middle-income housing.
  • Assisting lower-income and senior homeowners living in substandard housing conditions and/or at risk of losing their homes due to deferred maintenance. In-law units will be eligible for these deferred loan funds.

Jane Kim – A Proven Housing Record

Jane Kim grew up in affordable housing – but that’s not why she’s the best candidate on this issue. She’s the best candidate because she’s fought the hardest to create more affordable housing for our residents:

• Negotiated record levels of affordable housing again and again:
  • 40% affordable housing at Mission Rock
  • 40% affordable housing at 5M
  • 40% affordable housing at Folsom tower
• Authored successful ballot initiatives to expand affordable housing:
  • Prop K (2014), Housing Balance Plan
  • Prop K (2015), Surplus Lands for Housing
  • Prop C (2016), Increasing Inclusionary Housing Rate
• Expanding housing reach by including middle-income housing for the first time (including her work on Prop K in 2014, Prop C in 2016, the Giants and 5M negotiations.)
• Opposes SB 827 which proposes a one-size-fits-all solution that would discourage transit development in suburbs lacking transit while requiring no additional contribution from developers for parks and schools

Further, Jane has been leading the effort to protect tenants and the City’s largest stock of affordable housing:

•  Authored Evictions Protections 2.0 which tenant advocates point to as contributing to the drop in evictions.
• First candidate to endorse the Right to Counsel ballot initiative.