Multiple local ballot measures aim to boost Bay Area housing supply
SAN FRANCISCO -- On Tuesday, voters head to the polls and, in some Bay Area cities, the issue of housing figures prominently on the ballot. Voters are increasingly being asked to make decisions even as faith in elected officials has waned.
Jake Price spent his Sunday going door-to-door in San Francisco's Sunset District in a last-minute effort to get out the vote for Proposition D. A little farther out, on the Great Highway, other activists were also pushing the same measure.
"It says if a project is following all the rules, that it gets automatically approved. It takes the board of supervisors out of the process," said Todd David, a Prop D supporter with the Housing Action Coalition.
Advocates of a competing initiative -- Proposition E -- say theirs is what's needed to address the cumbersome bureaucratic process standing in the way of more affordable housing.
"So, this would bypass that, streamline it and make it much more efficient and therefore lead to more affordable housing production," said Prop E supporter Rudy Gonzalez.
Meanwhile, yet another housing measure is Proposition M, which would impose a vacancy tax on investment housing units if they sit unoccupied for more than 182 days. S.F. supervisor Dean Preston is backing that initiative.
"They're going to flip it empty when they think the market's high," he said. "They're not really interested in being a landlord and not really interested in living there. They're interested just in appreciation of the value and just leaving it empty."
A similar measure is on the ballot in Berkeley. So, what's going on? Why is so much housing policy being put up for a vote of the people? Kevin Zwick with United Way Bay Area thinks he knows.
"I think there's a lot of frustration in a lot of places when it comes to the situation around affordable housing in the Bay Area," Zwick said. "When people get frustrated and they're not seeing legislation passed by the state or by local city councils, then people go to the ballot and I think that's a good sign."
It's probably not surprising. Whatever's been done so far hasn't brought housing prices down and residents have lost confidence that government at any level has the will or ability to create the volume of housing that's needed. So, citizens are engaging in a little vigilante policy-making.
"Citizens are banding together and saying, like, 'our elected officials have failed us' and they are grabbing the reins," said Todd David. "And what will happen, as these measures are more and more popular and they are successful, the elected officials will follow behind. But citizens are going to be leading on addressing our affordability and displacement crisis."
Legislating through the ballot box can create its own set of problems but, for better or worse, California gives citizens the power to take government into their own hands when they get mad enough -- and few things are more maddening than trying to find an affordable place to live in the Bay Area.
