Affordable Housing Boon or Bust? S.F. Voters Consider Proposition C

It's a rainy Saturday, and high school teacher Elizabeth de Rham is trudging through the Mission District with about a dozen ninth- and 10th-graders from International High School, a small public school in San Francisco for recent immigrants.

"Do you guys want to explain what is Prop. C?" de Rham asks a teenage girl who is handing an information card to a young man on the street.

"The new way for people that have no money to pay the rent," the girl says haltingly as she switches off her native Spanish to practice her English. "Affordable housing."

"I'd love some information," the young man replies. "Thank you."

The Mission District is widely known as one of the hot spots of San Francisco's housing crisis -- a place where luxury condominiums and boutique retail stores are rapidly crowding out taquerias and laundromats, not to mention low-income families. Many of de Rham's students live here and in other immigrant enclaves like Chinatown. When a recent civics lessons turned to local politics, de Rham says her students were eager to learn about and support Proposition C.

Prop. C can be a bit tricky to explain, but here are the basics:

San Francisco has a charter -- basically the city's constitution. It requires that developers of mid- to large-size housing projects set aside 12 percent of their units for below-market-rate housing.

But Supervisor Jane Kim, who co-authored Proposition C with Supervisor Aaron Peskin, says the 12 percent rate is far too low to help the city build the many thousands of affordable units it needs.

"We think that developers can do double what they've done previously," Kim says.

Proposition C would raise the on-site rate for affordable housing to 25 percent. And for the first time ever, some of that housing would be set aside specifically for middle-income residents such as teachers, police officers and government workers.

There's another big shift, which some say could lead to some political infighting down the road: Under Proposition C, any future changes to the affordable housing requirements would no longer need the approval of voters. That's because the measure removes the city's inclusionary housing regulations from the charter and hands them over to the Board of Supervisors.

The full board and Mayor Ed Lee are backing Proposition C. Still, it took a lot of negotiating to get developers and trade unions to quiet down their opposition. A last-minute compromise exempts projects already in the pipeline from the 25 percent rate. Economists will also have to produce periodic reports on the policy to show whether it's stifling development.

"So that bought them all off. The developers abandoned us," says Sonja Trauss, founder of the pro-development SF Bay Area Renters' Federation. Her group believes San Francisco should be building as much housing as it can with as few barriers as possible. Trauss thinks Proposition C is bound to backfire by stifling future development.

"We could have had a lot more houses coming on the market and a lot more competition, but we're missing that opportunity," Trauss says.

People like teacher Elizabeth de Rham and her ninth and tenth-graders may have the most to gain -- or lose -- from San Francisco's housing policies. De Rham says she's been priced out of the city and most of her students say their families are stressed about housing.

That includes Giovanni Rodriguez, 16, from El Salvador, who lives in the Mission.  He says his landlord is raising the rent, and his dad says it looks like they'll move to Oakland.

"I like the Mission," he tells me, his broad smile fading.

It will be up to voters to decide June 7 whether Proposition C is the right solution for these students -- and the rest of San Francisco.