HUD Delays Decision on S.F. Anti-Gentrification Plan

The Obama administration needs more time to decide whether to allow San Francisco to move forward on a controversial effort to ease the effect of the housing crisis on some of its most vulnerable communities.

Officials with the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) had planned to tell city officials by Friday whether they would reverse a decision they made last month when they rejected San Francisco's neighborhood preference plan.

That program gives priority to low-income and minority residents for new subsidized housing in their own neighborhoods.

HUD said the program violated the 1968 Fair Housing Act by limiting equal access to housing and perpetuating segregation.

The rejection led to intense lobbying by Mayor Ed Lee, Sen. Dianne Feinstein and House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, who called on the federal agency to reconsider.

On Aug. 25, City Attorney Dennis Herrera wrote a letter to HUD Secretary Julian Castro, blasting the agency's decision, calling it "wrong as a matter of law and public policy."

Last week, Supervisor London Breed and several other city officials went to Washington, D.C., to meet with senior-level federal housing officials.

After that meeting, HUD said it was open to reconsidering its decision and would offer a response to the city by Friday. By midday, however, negotiations to find a compromise were still ongoing and it looked like a new plan could emerge.

Officials on both sides, though, would not offer specifics.

"We will likely be taking more time now to respond, as we received a new proposal from the city today," said Ed Cabrera, a HUD spokesman, in an email Friday morning.

"We are in ongoing conversations now trying to figure out what can work, what HUD will sign off on," said Conor Johnston, an aide to Breed, in a text message.

The city's program would have given black seniors in the Western Addition preference to move into a federally subsidized 98-unit affordable housing development this fall.

But, given HUD's extended deadline, the chances anyone would benefit from the preference plan to get into the Willie B. Kennedy development at Turk and Webster streets are extremely slim.

About 5,000 people have applied to live in the development, according to Don Falk, the CEO of the Tenderloin Neighborhood Development Corp., the project's developer.

The deadline to apply to live in the new units ends Friday (Sept. 9). A lottery to choose who will get slots takes place on Sept. 21.