The Bay Area Housing Finance Authority (BAHFA) has pulled the $20-Billion affordable housing bond measure from the ballot, instead deciding to let voters first decide about lowering the threshold for passage of housing bond measures to 54% from the current 67%.
The proposed measure, approved by the same body last June, would have generated significant funding for affordable housing creation, and preservation in the nine Bay Area counties. Those funds would then flow down to the cities in each county based on a formula adopted within each county. BAFHA pulled the measure on the last day measures can be removed from the ballot.
Although the State of California imposes affordable housing targets on all jurisdictions in the state, it provides no major regular funding for its creation, and has not done so since 2012 when Redevelopment Agency funding was halted by the legislature and then Governor Jerry Brown.
The County of Sonoma and the City of Sonoma have been working for months to determine the funding sharing mechanism, and must now sit back and wait to see what BAHFA will do.
Due to this latest development, Sonoma Mayor John Gurney commented, “I was not surprised. Disappointed is a better description. Housing has been a goal of the City Council over the years. This goal continues today. Sufficient funding has always been the challenge to making a significant impact.
BAHFA offered a meaningful opportunity to have serious financial support to move affordable housing initiatives forward in Sonoma and other regional communities.”
“The City’s Measure T 1/2 Cent Sales Tax,” Mayor Gurney noted, “will be on the November ballot. This measure now becomes more critical to the current and future goals, programs and services. I am optimistic we will see the BAHFA initiative come back to the voters in the future. The housing challenges we have experienced in the past will continue until there is a true commitment to invest in community housing.”
The only major funding source for developing Affordable Housing in the City of Sonoma is its Affordable Housing Trust Fund, which is slowly accumulating revenue. The fund is built with 1% of the city’s TOT (Hotel room tax) revenue, permitted in-lieu payments on projects that would otherwise be required to provide built housing, and other contributions. The city’s fund pales by comparison with the revenue it would have received as its share of the $20-billion bond, had it passed. It will now be at least two years before the bond funding measure can be placed on the ballot again.
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