As City Adopts Ambitious New Affordable Housing Goals, Supervisor Preston Announces Law to Create Consequences if City Fails to Deliver

SAN FRANCISCO — Amid serious concerns that the city will not meet significantly increased affordable housing goals, Supervisor Dean Preston announced a law today that would create legal consequences if the city fails to meet the new targets.

Known as the Affordable Housing Accountability Act, the legislation would provide a private right of action against the City in the event of refusal or failure to achieve the affordable housing goals of the just-adopted Housing Element.

“We don’t take lightly creating the power for the city to be taken to court,” Preston said, “But as a legislative body we cannot in good conscience approve plans that have no possibility of succeeding without also creating a consequence for failure and a remedy that forces the affordable housing we need.”

Earlier today, the Board of Supervisors adopted a new Housing Element, a state program that requires localities to increase housing production, particularly affordable housing, to continue to receive state funding. In order to comply, San Francisco must allow for the production of 82,069 new units of housing, 46,598 of which (57%) must be affordable to low- to moderate-income San Franciscans by 2031.

In the most recent Regional Housing Needs Assessment cycle from 2015 - 2022, the city’s goal was to create roughly 16,000 affordable units. At the end of 2022, the city barely hit 50% of the targets. The new Housing Element increases the affordable target by a factor of three – 46,500 units – without a clear plan to fund and create this scale of affordable homes.

Preston pointed to the mandatory consequences if the City fails to produce sufficient market rate housing, including additional rezoning, constraint reduction, and deregulation. If the city does not meet affordable targets, there are only suggestions – not requirements – that the City increase funding and begin landbanking once we have already failed for four years.

“The goal here is not to financially punish the city,” Preston said. “The goal is to make good on our affordable housing commitments so working class people can afford to live here. This ordinance will allow a nonprofit whose mission is primarily to advocate for housing for low-income people to file suit, take this out of the political realm and into the legal realm, which unfortunately may be needed to make sure our city lives up to our promises on affordable housing. ”

###