SF Supervisor Plans to Create New Housing Department, Co-Op Program

Supervisor Myrna Melgar plans to introduce legislation that would expand the Mayor’s Office of Housing and Community Development into its own department, along with separate measures developing a housing co-op program and accelerating the city’s bike lane rollout.

The proposed Department of Housing Development and Preservation would pull the Mayor’s Office of Housing and Community Development out from under the mayor’s office and turn it into a standalone department, as Mission Local reports. The new department would take on a broader role than the current housing office, which primarily oversees affordable housing and the city’s affordable-housing portfolio.

The department’s director would still be appointed by the mayor, and Melgar has reportedly been working with Mayor Daniel Lurie's office on the legislation, as Lurie's “Clean Up City Hall” plan aims to expand the mayor’s authority over city agencies.

According to Mission Local, Melgar wants the new department to bring together housing planning, financing, and policy, which are currently spread across multiple city agencies.

The city’s Housing Authority, Department of Homelessness and Supportive Housing, and Office of Community Investment and Infrastructure all handle housing-related programs, and it has not yet been determined exactly how those offices would interact with the proposed department. Melgar said the goal is to centralize housing policy without taking authority away from the mayor.

Melgar is also developing separate legislation to create a program that would help develop, finance, and support housing co-ops, per Mission Local. San Francisco reportedly has about 1,600 co-op units, with many located in the Fillmore, Bayview, and Diamond Heights. The outlet reports that most of San Francisco’s co-ops were built in the 1960s until the 1980s, when federal housing subsidies dried up due to tax cuts.

The proposed program will reportedly provide grants and training to help co-op shareholders manage their buildings, as some properties have struggled with finances or with the administrative work involved in running a co-op board. Melgar also wants to encourage new co-op construction as a more accessible path to homeownership.

“It’s a really great model that we could be looking at to build new construction, and we haven’t done that in forever,” Melgar said.

In May, Melgar and Lurie proposed a new charter amendment measure that would more than double the city’s Housing Trust Fund to support affordable housing construction, with funding tied to future property tax growth. If approved by voters in November, the Housing Trust measure would increase annual funding from $52 million to more than $125 million and extend the program through 2058, potentially generating up to $3 billion over the next three decades.

As part of the amendment, the Board of Supervisors voted 9-2 in July to lower the citywide affordable housing requirement from 15% to 5% for three years.

Separately, Melgar is looking at legislation that would require better coordination between the Department of Public Works and the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency, as Mission Local reports. She said the agencies currently do not coordinate when Public Works repaves streets, missing opportunities to install bike lanes that have already been planned as part of the city’s Bike and Rolling Plan.

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