In his annual State of the City address, delivered in mid-January, Mayor Ed Lee framed the challenges facing San Francisco in terms of finding ways to share the prosperity. Addressing housing was a main focus of that program, along with education, transportation, women’s empowerment, and antipoverty efforts.
For housing, Lee promised to direct more money toward rent support to help keep low-income residents in their homes, expanding down payment assistance for moderate and middle-income residents, continue efforts to reform the Ellis Act, put an affordable housing bond on the November 2015 ballot, create a new investment fund for affordable housing projects, and expand the city’s pipeline of middle-class housing by using surplus public land for the construction of mixed-income housing.
