| | Women’s History Month As Women’s History Month kicks off, it is vital that we celebrate individual women in affordable housing as well as the collective power women have when they work together. Habitat for Humanity: Women Build is a yearly project that allows women to work directly on sites to build and improve homes for those in need. 74% of Habitat for Humanity’s preservation clientele are female! This year the organization plans on bringing over 500 women to their sites to help create more affordable homes throughout March. Habitat for Humanity: Women Build demonstrates how impactful a group of women can be when they come together. |
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| | | In response to the ongoing housing shortage, the San Mateo County Board of Supervisors is considering plans to increase Measure K spending on housing by millions of dollars. Specifically, the board is considering a one-time $10 million allocation for “farm labor housing & unincorporated housing support” as well as a one-time $4 million additional commitment to the County Housing Voucher Program. Potential spending plans were revealed at the Supervisors' meeting last week, February 28, when the Board of Supervisors held a study session on the 2023-2024 Measure K spending plan. The county has not yet shared specific information on how the $10 million for farm labor housing would be spent. HLC supports the use of these funds to housing the most people at the deepest level of affordability. The other priority is increased spending on the County Housing Voucher Program. The county launched this program last year with an ongoing $4 million annual commitment over a term of fifteen years. This will fund approximately 100 vouchers. As part of the County’s Vision Zero goals to eliminate homelessness, these vouchers support extremely low-income households who have experienced homelessness. The proposed 2023-2024 Measure K budget includes an additional $4 million one-time commitment to expand this program even further. The increase in Measure K spending makes important strides toward addressing San Mateo County’s housing needs, but it still leaves gaps in the County’s affordable housing production pipeline. HLC’s new report analyzing the impact of Measure K on affordable housing production in the county is coming soon! The report found that an approximately $10 million increase in annual spending in the Affordable Housing Fund would enable the county to invest in new affordable homes and increase production! Keep an eye out on our website, report coming next week. |
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| | Affordable Housing Month 2023 |
|  | ✧Events Calendar Coming Soon...✧ Affordable Housing Month is around the corner! We will launch our events calendar in the next weeks! Visit our website to stay up to date www.hlcsmc.org ✧Sponsor Affordable Housing Month✧ Last year, our sponsors helped us engage hundreds of new and returning supporters. Join us this year to commemorate our affordable housing partners’ achievements, learn about new challenges, and mobilize in response to our region’s housing shortage. |
| | | What is Affordable Housing Month? Every year, the Housing Leadership Council of San Mateo County (HLC) and our partners dedicate the month of May to affordable housing. We engage hundreds of housing supporters around San Mateo County to collectively learn, mobilize, and understand the positive and extensive impact affordable housing brings. We do this by offering the opportunity of attending informative workshops, groundbreakings, housing policy panels, affordable housing tours, and more. |
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| | Affordable Housing Available |
| ✧Grand and Linden Family Apartments, South SF✧ |
|  | Grand and Linden Family Apartments are a brand new 84-unit housing community in South San Francisco consisting of two buildings within a few blocks of each other. These properties offer 55 Section 8 Project-Based Voucher units consisting of studios, 1-bedroom, 2-bedroom, and 3-bedroom apartments. Apply online at: www.mysmchousing.com from March 6, 2023 at 8:00 AM through April 3, 2023 at 5:00 PM. If you are unable to access the online application portal, please leave a message at (650) 802-3352 for application assistance. To share this message with your community, follow us on social media! |
| ✧Update on Baden Station Apartments in SSF✧ |
|  | Update: Unfortunately, there was a funding gap of $1.1 million just weeks before the Baden Station proposal was set to begin construction in South San Francisco. This proposal is fully entitled to 36 100% affordable homes and includes 18 homes reserved for individuals with intellectual developmental disabilities. It also features an affordable 30-60% Area Median Income (AMI) with an overall average of 40% AMI. This past Wednesday, we answered the advocacy call from our friends at Housing Choices and supported the staff recommendation that the $1.1 million be converted to a long-term loan. We thank the City Council for their leadership in approving the loan to ensure that this proposal stays on track! This is a win for South San Francisco! |
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| | Events ✧FREE First Time Homebuyer Virtual Workshops✧ |
|  | | Learn about HEART's unique down payment assistance program and the home-buying process at one of our free webinars in April. HEART will be joined by local experts Bob Fryer of Meriwest Mortgage and Lee Ginsburg of Intero Real Estate Services. Tuesday, April 11 at 2pm and Wednesday, April 12 at 6pm | |
| | ✧Building Strong Relationships with Cities to Promote Affordable Housing✧ |
|  | The open secret of influencing local governments to support affordable housing is interpersonal relationships. Last week, HLC’s policy manager Jeremy Levine hosted a panel to discuss relationship-building strategies with city council members and city planning staffers. Missed this great event by our partner NPH? |
| | The panel brought together experts from the advocacy, nonprofit development, and city government spaces, who brought a range of perspectives as to how advocates can build effective relationships. Discussion topics focused on strategies to build productive, collaborative relationships that advocates can leverage to achieve our policy goals. |
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| | ✧SB 225 - Community Anti-Displacement and Preservation Program✧ Our partners at Enterprise Community Partners are co-sponsoring a bill (SB 225) that would create a Community Anti-Displacement and Preservation Program (CAPP) - which would seek to prevent displacement and homelessness in California. This program would make available funds to community organizations, affordable housing developers, and local jurisdictions to purchase rental homes from the private market where tenants are at risk of displacement and to preserve them as affordable rental housing or homeownership opportunities. If your organization would like to sign on to a support letter, please click on this link to complete the associated form by March 15, 2023. If you have any questions, please feel free to direct them to kchan@hlcsmc.org. |
| ✧SB 423 - Streamlining affordable housing✧ |
| SB 423 would indefinitely extend the provisions of SB 35, a bill set to sunset in 2026 that streamlines housing development in most of California. Per SB 35, California state law requires cities that have not met their Regional Housing Needs Allocation goals to ministerially approve development proposals that meet certain criteria. The criteria include meeting affordability targets and using skilled and trained labor. Since 2018, more than 20,000 units have been proposed per SB 35, over 75% of which are affordable to lower-income households. In order to make SB 35 even more effective, SB 423 would make some slight modifications. Most significantly, SB 423 would replace the “skilled and trained” labor requirement with a “prevailing wage” labor requirement for most developments. This change is intended to make SB 35 streamlining provisions available to market-rate developers; to date, no market-rate development has yet been proposed pursuant to SB 35 due to the prohibitive costs of “skilled and trained” requirements. This legislation was brought to our attention by SPUR and is sponsored by the Housing Action Coalition. Contact our policy manager Jeremy Levine at jlevine@hlcsmc.org with questions. |
| ✧SB 423 - Streamlining affordable housing✧ |
| Current California state law requires multi-family buildings over three stories to have at least two points of entry, and two staircases. The two-stair requirement significantly raises development costs and limits architectural flexibility, often entirely precluding development of mid-sized multi-family buildings on smaller lots. AB 835 would instruct the state fire marshall to draft single-stair regulations for multi-family buildings, which would facilitate missing middle infill density in a wider range of neighborhoods. Greenbelt Alliance contacted HLC to support this bill. Review their letter of support here or contact zsiegel@greenbelt.org with questions. |
| | A note from Reverend Nixon |
| The Affordable Housing on Faith Lands Act, SB4, continues to gain momentum as it makes its way to Senate committees in the coming weeks. More and more people are saying YES! Yes, In God’s Back Yard. We are happy to report that our own State Senator Josh Becker AND Assemblymember Marc Berman have not only said YES but have each signed on as a co-author. Thank you, Josh! Thank you Marc! We are deeply appreciative of our elected officials and representatives who “walk the talk” of building more affordable housing. The more conversations I have with faith leaders who care about housing justice, the more convinced I am of the impact that SB 4 will have when it passes. Faith communities are often cash-poor but land rich. Working with nonprofit developers to build housing on their land for underserved populations can be one of the best ways to further their missions and help the faith community thrive. Rev. Penny Nixon Faith Director, HLC revgpn@gmail.com |
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| Housing Leadership Council of San Mateo County
2905 S El Camino Real | San Mateo, California 94403
650-242-1764 | info@hlcsmc.org |
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