Credit: InSapphoWeTrust, Flickr Creative Commons

Invest in Neighborhoods (IIN) works to strengthen, revitalize, and stabilize neighborhood commercial districts around the City by marshaling and deploying resources from City departments and nonprofit partners. Services include loan programs, façade improvement grants and technical assistance for small businesses, all intended to help small businesses thrive, increase neighborhood quality of life, improve overall physical conditions and, in turn, build community capacity. IIN deploys the specific services and resources that are most needed in each district, building stronger neighborhoods through strategic investment in each community’s core commercial corridor. By helping the City think holistically about small business and commercial corridors needs, IIN supports strong and resilient neighborhoods.

More information on Invest in Neighborhoods is available at: https://oewd.org/neighborhoods.

San Francisco is a city of neighborhoods and neighbors. This goal seeks to build on the strength of our city’s character and vibrancy, by being effective governmental stewards of resilient, healthy and cohesive neighborhoods based in trust, equity and partnership.

Housing is one of the greatest challenges our City currently faces. In the coming decades, stresses and shocks, such as an earthquake or projected sea level rise, has the potential to make our housing challenges even more severe. As a result, housing is an integral part of our planning for climate change, hazards, and disaster recovery, from seismic retrofit programs to post-disaster housing strategies.

The Hazards and Climate Resilience Plan will help San Francisco meet this planning commitment. More information on that plan is available here.

The Department of Homelessness and Supportive Housing administers locally and federally funded supportive housing to provide long-term affordable housing with on-site social services to people exiting chronic homelessness. San Francisco’s adult supportive housing programs offer housing to very low income homeless adults and couples without custody of children.  Some of the units in this portfolio are in SRO hotels that have been renovated by their owners and are managed by non-profit organizations that provide property management and supportive services. Other housing in this portfolio is provided in apartment buildings that offer housing to adults that meet the specific eligibility requirements of each building.

More information on efforts led by the Department of Homelessness and Supportive Housing are available here.

The Small Site Acquisition Program funds the purchase & stabilization of multi-family rental buildings in neighborhoods that are susceptible to evictions and rising rents. This program allows for more buildings to be rehabilitated and permanently stabilized as deed-restricted to households earning up to 120 percent of the Area Median Income (AMI), to include very low, low, and more middle income San Franciscans. This program also includes active encouragement of new development to preserve buildings housing tenants at risk of displacement through the City’s Inclusionary Housing Program, which requires developers to contribute to new affordable housing alongside their market-rate development.

More information on housing efforts and policy in San Francisco is available here.  

The HOPE SF Initiative seeks to transform four of San Francisco’s most distressed public housing sites into vibrant, thriving communities through holistic revitalization. In 2006, the City convened a task force, representing diverse perspectives, to develop a set of principles that would become the HOPE SF Initiative. This initiative has eight guiding visions, helping ensure a positive outcome for all residents:

• Ensure No Loss of Public Housing
• Create an Economically Integrated Community
• Maximize the Creation of New Affordable Housing
• Involve Residents in the Highest Levels of Participation in the Entire Project
• Provide Economic Opportunities through the Rebuilding Process
• Integrate Process with Neighborhood Improvement
• Produce Community Focused Revitalization Plans
• Create Environmentally Sustainable and Accessible Communities
• Build a Strong Sense of Community

More information on housing efforts and policy in San Francisco is available here.  

The City is working to increase the range of households served by affordable housing. The City will allow developers to “dial up” their current inclusionary requirements by providing a greater percentage or number of below market-rate units at a higher AMI target, with ownership units priced up to 120 percent of AMI and rental units priced up to 90 percent. This allows for more middle-income residents—such as teachers, police officers and firefighters—to access affordable housing. This diverse approach may also carry with it the benefit of maximizing the number of affordable units on the site.

More information on housing efforts and policy in San Francisco is available here.  

Credit: Maximilian Barnes

In 2014, Mayor Ed Lee set a target of producing 30,000 housing units by 2020 with half available to low, working, and middle income San Franciscans.The City is striving to meet this target through several different mechanisms. Through the inclusionary ordinance, new affordable units are delivered through market rate housing development as new residential projects of 10 or more units pay an Affordable Housing Fee or provide a percentage of the units as “below market rate.” In addition, the affordable housing bonus program offers housing developers incentives, including increased density and height, in return for building more permanently affordable units into their projects. In addition, affordable housing units are delivered through major development projects. For example, 30 percent of the new housing units built at Pier 70 will be permanently affordable.

More information on housing efforts and policy in San Francisco is available here.  

San Francisco’s Housing Affordability Fund leverages limited public dollars for housing. The Fund brings together financial, employer, and other sources of capital to support efficient and timely site acquisition for affordable-housing construction, or for the preservation of exiting at-risk affordable rental buildings. Given the steady decline in federal and state funding for affordable housing, the loss of redevelopment agencies and the increasing cost of producing affordable housing in San Francisco, it is clear that our existing funding streams are still not enough. This Fund builds on the work of the Housing Trust Fund, the most aggressive local funding stream for affordable housing in California.

More information on housing efforts and policy in San Francisco is available here.  

The lack of affordable housing across the market affects everyone in our city. Years of failing to build homes has resulted in families and long-term residents leaving San Francisco in search of more affordable places to live. The livability of our City is greatly enhanced when teachers, first responders, artists, restaurant workers and all others can build their homes and communities close to their workplaces. In 2017, Mayor Ed Lee issued an Executive Directive to speed up the time it takes to create homes in San Francisco, to reduce housing approval timelines in half, and to create 5,000 units every year for the foreseeable future. The City will continue to focus on making sure that as many as possible of these new units are affordable to low, moderate, and middle income San Franciscans. More housing means more affordable options for our residents.

More information on housing efforts and policy in San Francisco is available here