Housing Bond: A billion here, a billion there.....

While attributed to Everett Dirksen, the think tank dedicated to his career in Congress cannot verify that he actually said, "A billion here, a billion there, and pretty soon you're talking real money."  No matter, it's still a great Twain-sian take on government spending.  There is so much money sloshing around that people, especially elected officials, can't really comprehend it.  The latest example is right here in the Bay Area where ABAG has approved putting a $10 $20 billion bond measure on the ballot for "affordable housing".

Mind you, our governor just spent unchallenged millions to barely pass a $6 billion bond measure for "affordable housing" across the state.  The tally took a long time and garnered a 0.5% winning margin.  So now we are to consider a 67% 333% bigger bond just for the nine counties in the Bay Area?  The Daily Journal notes

The Association of Bay Area Governments approved the ballot measure Thursday, April 18, which would produce and maintain about 72,000 affordable units, according to documents from the Bay Area Housing Finance Authority.

San Mateo County would receive about $1 billion to $2 billion, depending on the final bond amount, with a minimum of 52% allocated for affordable housing production and 15% for preservation, per the Regional Housing Finance Act.  The measure would effectively create a regional public lending institution bolstered by Bay Area property owners, who would pay roughly $19 per $100,000 of assessed property toward the fund.

One eagle-eyed Voice reader sent me an email stating

If this bond issue were to pass It would raise my property taxes. $500. No thank you, I'm voting no.  Where will the water come from and how much will the water cost?  And how much extra traffic on the streets and freeways will this cause?  No thank you. And please don't tell me everyone's gonna take public transportation.

If you read through the rest of the DJ article all you see are politicians nibbling around the edges of the proposal.  No one has the big picture in mind like our emailer.  We are almost at the two-year anniversary of my post titled "State Auditor: Housing "requirement" numbers way off".  Is anyone doing anything about fixing the illusory numbers?  Not that I can see.  They just go along like sheep thinking we need to build our way out of a manufactured "crisis".

Maybe we should just let a few billionaires build their California Forever city on ranch land out in Solano County and call it a day.  As Calmatters.org notes, they can pay for the infrastructure, the housing and be the master developer.  That would free up ABAG to, you know, worry about fixing the roads, the water system, the grid, the schools, etc.  All that boring stuff.

Comments

[Concerned]

Great post Joe.

The latest local evidence that this is a manufactured “crisis”, for which more high density housing is not the solution, is the fact that the brand new low income housing rental complex on Park Road is begging for tenants. This needs to be publicly reported. The City Council will never admit to this expensive failure.

The billions that have been wasted by CA lifetime politicians on their inappropriate and ineffective homeless “crisis” solutions have simply lined the pockets of their fake “homeless advocates”.

How many more years of proof of failure of “progressive” policies will be required before we stop doubling down on them?
How much more unnecessary increases in our cost of living and lowering of freedoms and quality of life will be tolerated before we wake up and vote sanely?

[Peter Garrison]

Use HSR as a measure and means for inexcusable waste.

[Paloma Ave]

HSR is an example of buying future votes and endorsements.

[Joe]

I have asked the city for occupancy/vacancy rates for the Village apartments. I should have done that after seeing the flyers posted about getting a tour (you wouldn't think they would be needed) but Concerned comment reminded me to ask. TY.

[Joanne]

Curious how many available apartments are there? My cousin got a senior apartment there and moved in over a month ago.
She got a one bedroom for $1645.

[Joe]

I'm still waiting for the occupancy numbers at The Village. In the meantime, the Comicle cheerleading is on-going:

The $20 billion housing bond likely headed to Bay Area ballots in November could create an unprecedented cascade of affordable construction projects that would “unlock” a pipeline of nearly 41,000 units across the nine-county region.

A new report from the affordable housing financing group Enterprise Community Partners and the Bay Area Housing Financing Authority, known as BAHFA, found that there are 443 projects totaling 40,896 units that are somewhere in the process of being approved or financed.

---the map shows San Mateo county with 3,099 units in the pipeline at an average cost of $847K per unit with $306K per unit of "subsidies"---

“The astounding number of projects that are waiting in the wings is a testimony to the amount of the work we are seeing on the local and state levels,” said Justine Marcus, policy director for Enterprise Community Partners Northern California. “But they can’t move forward without the resources to do so.”

The report comes as the board of BAHFA, a quasi-public financing authority that was created in 2020, is scheduled to vote June 26 on an unprecedented $20 billion bond — the number that was recommended by the executive board of the Association of Bay Area Governments, or ABAG.

The bond would be funded by property taxes, with an estimated tax of $19 per $100,000 of assessed value — about $190 per year for a home assessed at $1 million. The amount of money each city receives from the bond would be based on how much that jurisdiction pays in taxes: San Francisco would get about $2.4 billion to invest, while Sonoma County would receive about $806 million and San Mateo County would get $1.05 billion.

https://www.sfchronicle.com/bayarea/article/affordable-housing-bond-project-19442663.php

[Paloma Ave]

We need to stop calling it affordable housing. It is subsidized housing and the government doesn't pay for it, the taxpayer's pay for it. Question to ask yourself: Are you willing to pay for other people's housing?

[Joe]

@Joanne. The city is having some difficulty getting the exact occupancy numbers, but they note that "as of late February, there were 100 units leased. Most of those unleased were the senior units (20+ available), generally at the 80% AMI (Low-income) level."

There are 82 units total for 50% of the Area Median Income (AMI) residents, 35 for the 80% AMI and 13 for the 120% AMI. That implies there are 31 units still to be occupied.