By Eli Walsh. Bay City News.
Nearly 33,000 units of affordable housing are currently stuck in pre-development in the Bay Area and need about $7.6 billion to complete, according to new research from housing nonprofit Enterprise Community Partners and the Finance Authority. of Bay Area Housing.
A total of 395 affordable housing projects are in various stages of pre-development, needing additional public or private funding to complete, according to research by the two organizations, which was organized on the Area Affordable Housing Project database. the Bay.
Of those projects, 282 are new construction projects, while 67 are some type of renovation or rehabilitation of an existing building.
The researchers also found that Alameda County has the most projects under development at 106, but Santa Clara County leads the region in total units under development at 10,829.
State officials have determined that the Bay Area needs approximately 180,000 new housing units by 2031 to meet the total housing need for the entire region.
“The good news is that the large size of the pre-development pipeline gives Bay Area cities, towns and counties a head start in meeting the affordable housing production challenge set by the state,” said the director. of BAHFA, Kate Hartley, in a statement.
Affordable housing is typically financed by various bonds and financing measures, with local, state, and federal funds filling in the gaps to cover development costs.
Rather than wait for state or federal funds to fill the $7.6 billion gap, officials with the regional planning agency, the Metropolitan Transportation Commission, have proposed placing a bond measure on the 2024 ballot. that would provide between $10 billion and $20 billion in funding exclusively for affordable housing.
State legislators authorized BAHFA to place a parcel tax or bond measure before voters in an effort to raise money for affordable housing when the legislature created the authority in 2019.
The authority is jointly governed by the MTC and the Bay Area Association of Governments.
"The Bay Area faces a critical lack of affordable housing, and existing federal, state and local resources are oversubscribed," said Justine Marcus, senior director of state and local policy at Enterprise Community Partners.
“We need new solutions to ensure that every planned housing development is built and that homes that are currently affordable remain affordable for generations to come,” he added.
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