REP-SF Citywide People’s Plan is the Real Pathway to Affordability & Equity: Mayor’s Affordable Housing Leadership Council Report Full of Developer Giveaways & Same Failed Policies
PRESS RELEASE for Thursday, February 29, 2024
San Francisco – Today at noon in City Hall, during a San Francisco Planning Commission hearing, the Mayor's Affordable Housing Leadership Council will present recommendations from its recent report. The Race & Equity in all Planning Coalition (REP-SF), comprised of dozens of grassroots housing justice organizations from across the city, has analyzed the Leadership Council’s report and concluded that it is full of the same failed policies that made San Francisco one of the most expensive places to live.
“If we keep doing things the same way, we’re going to end up with the same results – nearly all new housing being out of reach for most San Franciscans. This is the sum of the actions in the Mayor’s Affordable Housing Leadership Council report,” says Jeantelle Laberinto of the Race & Equity in all Planning Coalition (REP-SF).
The recommendations in the report from the Mayor’s Affordable Housing Leadership Council will not change the outcome from the last eight years when we fell short of our affordable housing goals by 8,000 units, during the previous Housing Element cycle (2014–2022). Instead, we overbuilt expensive, market-rate housing.
“The report from the Mayor’s Affordable Housing Leadership Council is full of the same supply-side, trickle-down economics, and developer giveaways that the City has always done. We know this approach doesn’t work. The only way to get to the 57% new affordable housing mandated by the state is through the REP-SF’s Citywide People’s Plan, our communities’ blueprint for the real solutions for affordability and equity across the city,” says Dyan Ruiz of the REP-SF coalition.
In the Citywide People’s Plan, REP-SF combines, for the first time, decades of community development plans with the expertise of grassroots leaders from nearly 40 San Francisco-based nonprofits, cultural districts, and neighborhood groups and coalitions. It includes innovative, fresh solutions for affordable housing funding, land acquisition, and community-led planning. Read REP-SF’s Citywide People’s Plan.
“Neighborhoods like the South of Market (SOMA) have seen and felt the harmful impacts of the types of supply-side approaches that Planning has proposed, through gentrification and displacement of our communities. We know that the only equitable way forward is to implement REP-SF’s Citywide People’s Plan focused on advancing affordable housing and racial and social equity. The People’s Plan focuses on the strategies our communities need, such as rezoning for 100% affordable housing, land banking, and acquiring sites for affordable housing,” says David Woo of SOMA Pilipinas, a member of the REP-SF coalition.
