Voters Rally for Affordable Housing at the Polls

Several communities around the nation saw victories for affordable housing at the polls on Tuesday.

In Los Angeles, voters approved a $1.2 million bond measure to fund permanent supportive housing for the city’s chronically homeless. The city has approximately 28,000 homeless residents.

Voters in the San Francisco Bay Area passed several measures that will increase funding to support housing for low-income residents.

Oakland voters approved a $600 million bond measure to improve city streets, add more affordable housing, and upgrade some community facilities; $100 million of it will be earmarked for affordable housing. And in San Francisco, voters were in favor of Proposition C, which would allow the city to repurpose general obligation bond funds, which had been approved in 1992 for seismic upgrades, for the acquisition and rehab of multifamily housing that will be made permanently affordable.

A $950 million affordable housing bond measure—comprised of $700 million for affordable housing, $100 million for affordable housing for low-income families, and $150 million for affordable housing and programs for working families—barely passed in Santa Clara County. In addition, voters approved a $580 million bond referendum, which will provide $460 million for rental housing programs and $120 million for homeowner programs, in Alameda County as well as a half-cent sales tax extension for 20 years that would help support affordable housing in San Mateo County.

San Diego voters were in favor of Measure M to construct additional affordable rental housing by lifting the city’s cap of subsidized housing units.

Voters in Portland, Ore., also approved a $258.4 million bond measure, which will help build or preserve 1,300 rental units.

On the East Coast, a proposal to amend the Baltimore city charter to set up an affordable housing trust fund that would support and promote fair and affordable housing also was approved. The proposal did not specify how the trust fund would be funded.

In North Carolina, a $25 million general obligation bond for affordable housing development passed with a large margin in Asheville as did a $25 million housing bond in Greensboro, which will provide $8 million in grants and loans to build low-income housing, $2 million for housing for the homeless, disabled, or veterans, and $3 million to develop 250 affordable rental homes.