In this episode, we take a look at the Bay Area Housing Finance Authority (BAHFA), a pioneering regional authority addressing the persistent housing challenges in the Bay Area. Kate and Daniel elaborate on BAHFA's origin, its role in the CASA Compact, the three P’s, and its unique status as a regional finance agency created by state legislation in 2019. They highlight BAHFA's capacity to raise revenue for affordable housing throughout the Bay Area, emphasizing collaboration with local jurisdictions. The discussion delves into the intricate relationship between BAHFA, MTC, and ABAG, showcasing their united effort to address the housing crisis and create meaningful solutions, including here, in San José.
00;00;00;00 - 00;00;46;09
JS: Welcome to Dwellings, a podcast from the city of San José Housing Department, where we talk to thought leaders about ending homelessness, building affordable housing and key housing policies. I'm Jeff Scott and I'll be your host for season four of Dwellings.On today’s episode, I’m joined by Kate Hartley, Director of the Bay Area Housing Finance Authority and Daniel Saver, Assistant Director for Housing and Local Planning at the Metropolitan Transportation Commission. We will be discussing the Bay Area Housing Finance Authority’s role as a first-of-its-kind regional authority created to address the Bay Area’s chronic housing challenges.
00;00;46;11 - 00;00;49;25
JS: So with that, Kate, can you tell us a little bit about yourself?
00;00;49;27 - 00;01;18;23
KH: I am the director of the Bay Area Housing Finance Authority, also known as BAHFA, and I've been working on affordable housing in the Bay Area for about 30 years and joined BAHFA about 15 months ago, 16 months ago. And I'm really excited about it because it is really, truly bringing new ideas and new programs and new ways to solve our housing needs to the Bay Area.
00;01;18;25 - 00;01;25;12
JS: Thanks for joining our podcast today, Kate. It's great to have you. And Daniel, why don't you tell us a little bit about yourself?
00;01;25;14 - 00;02;18;19
DS: Yeah. Happy to. My name is Daniel Saver and assistant director for Housing and Local Planning at the Metropolitan Transportation Commission, or MTC, as well as the Association of Bay Area Governments or ABAG and also kind of connected to that working for the Bay Area Housing Finance Authority. So it's a lot of acronyms. You can think of it as kind of the regional government meant. I think we're a constellation of entities that make up the regional government for the Bay Area. And so and I lead a team that works on a lot of housing policy and planning related work. And so that involves providing technical assistance to local governments and involves coordinating our housing and land use strategies with our transportation and transit investments strategies, and also working very closely with Kate and her team as we think about generating revenue and then actually investing that revenue in housing solutions for the Bay Area.
00;02;18;21 - 00;02;26;28
JS: Great. Thank you, Daniel, for that. So I guess my first question just to start off, can you tell us exactly what the Bay Area Housing Finance Authority is?
00;02;27;00 - 00;04;12;29
KH: Absolutely. The we are a public sector agency. We were created in 2019 by state legislation, then Assembly member David Chiu, to carry that legislature down. And we were created out of some agreements that came out of the committee to house the Bay Area, which was a many month tent stakeholder convening where leaders and housing advocates and developers and architects and organized labor and public sector staff, everyone came together to talk about how we could do better in delivering the affordable housing that our region needs. And what came out of those negotiations and discussions was the CASA Compact. Ten points and one of which was to create a regional housing finance authority. And that really was the genesis of BAHFA. So we have the state enabling legislation, and it's given us a mandate to create new systems that can help better solve housing. Primarily, we are, I financing agency and we have the power to raise revenue for affordable housing throughout the whole Bay Area. Our mandate also requires us to work in close collaboration and cooperation with all the jurisdictions, the 101 cities and the nine counties and then we also are charged with providing technical assistance and advocating for more resources and creating programs that will help us deliver housing better. So we're kind of a full service housing finance authority.
00;04;13;02 - 00;04;18;04
JS: And Daniel, can you tell us how MTC plugs into this, how you fit into that picture?
00;04;18;06 - 00;07;02;14
DS: Yeah, Yeah, happy to. So the process that Kate described, the CASA process, the committee to House the Bay Area. The name doesn't quite match up with the acronym in that instance, but the CASA process was in large part kind of led by and then implemented through the Metropolitan Transportation Commission and the Association of Bay Area Government. So these are kind of two different regional entities. They have their own different reviews. MTC, as its name suggests, is primarily a transportation entity. So MTC works a lot with taking various forms of revenue for transportation and transit investments and figuring out how to strategically deploy those across the Bay Area. So MTC doesn't actually operate any bus that you ever go on. It doesn't run the BART stations. There are different legal entities, the transit operators that do that. MTC is really more about the funding and financing and kind of what's the policy framework that makes sense so that we have a sensible regional system for all of those transit agencies. And the Association of Area Governments has historically played a role in thinking about land use planning at a regional level. So it doesn't have any authority, we don't have any authority to impose specific land uses on local governments that that remains the role of your local city councils and boards of supervisors to decide kind of what gets built where, but to think in kind of a long range planning sense around like, well, we are a little bit all in this together, so how do we have a sensible plan that then our local governments can try to align with as we think about the long term land use? So the CASA Compact and BAHFA kind of sprang into existence by it with these two agencies working together to think about, you know, a missing link that we had in our regional government system, which was there really wasn't a regional we kind of had a a long range land use planning agency and we have a transportation and planning and financing agency. But we did not have a housing finance agency which really got in the way of our regional government implementing meaningful solutions to the housing crisis instead of just admiring it from all sides, like how do we actually move forward. And so imagine an MTC are part of the governance structure for both of them. So the members of the Metropolitan Transportation Commission, the commissioners are the same members of the board for BAHFA, though it is a distinct legal entity, they're the same people who are running it. But many of the most important decisions that BAHFA can make, like whether or not to raise revenue through a tax mechanism across the Bay Area, the Association of Area Government needs to, at the same time vote in favor of that. So you need kind of concordance between the two agencies for BAHFA to move on some of these really big initiatives.
00;07;02;16 - 00;08;00;09
KH: Just piggyback on something Daniel said. As you know, like for transportation, the bus lines don't stop at the county border. The BART doesn't stop at the county line. Similarly with housing, what we've done in the past is that every county and every city has tried to finance housing separately. But with a regional housing finance authority, you achieve a scale that opens up a huge amount of new possibility. All of a sudden you have a regional lender that's making loans on great terms throughout the region to get housing built, earning money and interest and fees. But then, which is something that so would be so different for us taking that those interest and fees and reinvesting them back in the community. That has to happen at scale. It can't happen county by county or city by city. So it's a really important part of BAHFA's mission.
00;08;00;11 - 00;08;17;11
JS: Are your entities able to impose or assess a tax or does any sort of revenue raising that you might want to do? Would that require the vote of the people? Would it require a vote of the state legislature? How would any of that money raising occur?
00;08;17;13 - 00;08;49;09
KH: We have five ways that we can raise revenue, and four of them require a vote of the people. So we are pursuing, for example, a general obligation, affordable housing bond in 2024 that will require voter approval. And then if the nine county voters say, yes, we'll have significant resources for every county in the region to address affordable housing needs. And that would be something totally different than what we do now.
00;08;49;11 - 00;09;32;05
DS: And just to add to what Kate said, you know, our the enabling legislation that she mentioned at the beginning is what spells out what sort of taxes could BAHFA put to a vote of the people. So all of those taxes that we can raise do require a vote of the people. And the one you know, there's five things we can do. Four require a vote. We can't do the fifth one unless and until there's a vote of the people to raise revenue to begin with. So there are I think part of the beauty of BAHFA is that really to get to scale and to do it, we need to do there needs to be broad public support. There needs to be a sense that this is the right solution. And so once the voters of the Bay Area move forward, that that opens up opportunities for us to to make investments that are going to really make a difference in the lives of the residents here.
00;09;32;08 - 00;10;00;29
JS: And so right now, individual cities and counties often try to finance some affordable housing and to the extent they can. So do you see what BAHFA is doing is kind of being complementary to what these individual cities and counties are doing? Or do you see it long term is replacing collectively taking all of the resources that would have been more at a localized level and putting them all up at a regional level to again, reach that scale, that you mentioned before?
00;10;01;01 - 00;11;20;20
KH: Oh, we're definitely additive and collaborative and not competitive. That is explicitly something that we are pursuing. We want to add to all the jurisdictions, affordable housing portfolios and help them as they continue on that in the process of building housing. That's important for them. And our counties are really different. Each county is going to have its own priorities. It's going to have different kinds of housing. What works in Solano County, for example, in terms of providing the housing that their residents need, might not be what works best for Santa Clara County residents. One of the great things about BAHFA and the way that our enabling legislation is written is that it recognizes those county differences and allows the counties to take the funds that we raise and write up plans that make sense for them. Then BAHFA will have some of those funds and will be investing throughout the region in a very additive way. We're not at all interested in competing with any city or county. We want to increase their affordable housing beyond what there already doing.
00;11;20;23 - 00;12;36;14
DS: Yeah, what I would add on top of that is that, you know, as you said, you know, some of the cities and counties are already they have some revenue, so some of them have more, some of them have less. Some of them really don't have much at all. So, you know, I think one of the key things that BAHFA is doing is what they're we do have local governments that have found ways to make those dollars work. There's not enough dollars. And they are not equally or evenly or appropriately actually distributed kind of all across the region. There's places where there's just huge gaps. They don't have many resources. So so through a regional approach that we can take with BAHFA, we can simultaneously raise resources for everywhere in the Bay Area so that it's not San Jose solving San Jose's problems. But as Kate said, people, people's problems in their lives don't exist within these imaginary jurisdictional boundaries, you know? So if San Jose solves a quote unquote problem, it's like if there's a problem in a city next door, it's probably going to affect San Jose. So we're we are all in this together. That's that's kind of underpinning the notion of BAHFA. And so we can raise revenue everywhere at once so that we all take a step forward at the same time, instead of taking a step forward here and a step back there.
00;12;36;16 - 00;13;26;04
JS: One of the issues that's happening now, or that we've seen in San Jose is kind of this tension with limited resources. Do we want to develop short term solutions for people who are experiencing homelessness, who desperately need assistance today, tonight? Where am I going to stay in a few hours when I go to sleep? And there's also a need, a recognized need for more permanent housing, more quote unquote affordable housing to be built so that people, when we get them off the street or help them off the street, they have someplace to live long term. So my question around BAHFA is, are you focused more on the permanent housing side of things or are you looking at both the short term immediate needs of people experiencing homelessness as well as the longer term permanent housing needs?
00;13;26;07 - 00;16;56;18
KH: I think that it is absolutely true that we ultimately need permanent supportive housing for people who are homeless and people who are at risk of homelessness. And we've seen our homeless count rise over the last three years, despite some pretty heroic efforts all over the Bay Area. So we have this humanitarian crisis. We need permanent housing for people to ultimately go and live safely and decently. We also need solutions to end street homelessness. So I don't think it's an either or. I don't think that's how we can approach it. But there are some things I think we can focus on and the BAHFA resources can really help this process. The first is that we spend a lot of money on our housing construction. Our costs have gone way, way up. And so BAHFA is really dedicated to trying to create new financing and development programs that can bring those costs down. If we have a permanent supportive housing unit that costs $900,000 per door, which we do. It's not uncommon in the Bay Area, and we can bring that down to $450,000, which is also really doable. It's happening in our region. We can double our production and then you have that many more permanent supportive housing solutions. There are lower cost interim housing opportunities, but we have to then have that path to permanent housing. So it's really in our view, it's really a matter of working on better permanent housing construction practices so that we can bring costs down and then working together as a region to create as much operating support and services dollars as we possibly can. So that we can expand the overall continuum of care housing system that can end street homelessness and get people quickly into permanent supportive housing. We need it all. We really need the federal government in this particular activity, and we haven't had street encampments. We haven't had homelessness forever. It really is a phenomenon that started with the Reagan administration in the eighties and elimination of many safety net programs, and then combine that with land use policies that we in California took on that made it much harder to build housing. It's sort of a perfect storm. And here we are and with this rising homeless rate. So we have to work together to undo that. And that means working together to look at every single possible source of the operating subsidies and services dollars that can expand the system and then also bring costs down for the permanent housing. That is absolutely vital.
00;16;56;22 - 00;17;44;09
JS: In terms of that regional housing need that you just articulated. I've heard a lot of different figures thrown out there about what our shortfall is, you know, how many more units we really need in order to to adequately, appropriately house our entire Bay Area population. And some of the numbers are pretty astronomical. I'm talking about hundreds of thousands of units just in the Bay Area alone. If someone kind of looks at the effort skeptically and says, gosh, we're in such a deep hole, realistically, can we ever dig ourselves out? How would you respond to that skepticism? I guess this is for either one of you, Kate or Daniel. How would you respond to that skepticism and let someone know that, yes, it's a big fight, but it's one that we can ultimately prevail in?
00;17;44;12 - 00;18;55;04
KH: I'll go and then, Daniel, pick it right up. We can do better. We know we can do better. We have people out there doing great work. We can reduce construction costs. We can build more, we can streamline construction. We have set in place all these burdens to housing production that we can undo. And it's happening. And we need to pursue that because the Bay Area is such an amazing place. It's beautiful. It's the center of creative economic vibrancy. It's free spirited. It's a place that we shouldn't give up on and we don't need to because we do have within our grasp the ability to do better. It's not going to happen overnight, but with regionalism that we're talking about now, with the dedication to solving the problems on the part of local leaders and policymakers, with the participation and support of the general public and their and our citizens, we absolutely can reverse this trend.
00;18;55;10 - 00;21;05;24
DS: I completely agree. And I think I'm optimistic, I guess I would say on this question, but I don't think unreasonably so. To Kate's point, I think, you know, BAHFA is part of why we can do it. And some of it is you know, it goes back to the way you described it before. It's up until now it's mostly been 101 cities and nine counties kind of trudging along, trying to do the best they can with the circumstances they've got. And given how deep of a hole we are in, you know, even when there's excellent work done locally and, you know, I would really lift up some of the great work that's happened in Santa Clara County because of Measure A and all of the work that you have in San Jose, you know, as a result of some other tax measures there, there's great work. And it's we're still in a housing crisis. So I can understand the skepticism. BAHFA can operate at a sense at a scale that can turn the tide. So instead of, you know, even great work that doesn't have the scale, it's going to feel like to most people, like nibbling around the edges. And so, you know, Measure A was, you know, $950 million. We're talking about a 10 to $20 billion regional bond. That's just a whole that's a game changer. It's totally different. We can move with a speed that is very different than what I think we've seen historically. And because of that scale, to Kate's point, we can actually change systems. We will have kind of the market power, the bully pulpit power, you know, of a region that has come together to do it differently. Acknowledging that what we have done for, however heroic the local efforts are, it hasn't produced the results that we need. It has not solved our homelessness crisis yet. We have to experiment, be innovative, go for scale. And and, you know, I think it's it's an instance where kind of one plus one plus one plus one equals like 25. You know, when you get to scale, there's something magical that can happen. When we actually change systems and develop new ways of doing business because of the way that we're able to bring such a level of resources that we're it's like totally new.
00;21;05;26 - 00;21;37;16
JS: One of the things that I hear is it's so expensive to build, you know, in addition to the high costs of land acquisition and the high cost of labor, the high cost of materials, you know, there could be, in some instances, a six figure assessment to build a single door. So my question for you is, are you looking at a way to maybe consolidate or reduce or change the fee structure so that we're not actually adding an additional cost or additional burden to the development of a new unit of housing?
00;21;37;18 - 00;23;30;14
KH: The fees imposed on housing development that have been imposed for a really long time definitely drive costs up. And we've seen recognition of that most recently in San Francisco, which just cut it's inclusionary housing obligation. That's the amount of affordable housing that a market rate development has to include in their development in half. It had ratcheted up to 25% of the units in a market rate development had to be affordable, and market rate development basically came to a halt in San Francisco during the pandemic that that inclusionary requirement is now back down to about 12 to 15%. So there is recognition around the region that impact fees are dragging down development of housing that we need. BAHFA does not have the authority to go into jurisdictions or cities or counties and say you have to change your fee structure. What we can do is prioritize developments that are able to move quickly through streamlining, for example. Because we know that the rising costs of construction mean that the longer your development timeline, the more expensive your development will be. So we can prioritize investments in projects that are streamlined and then BAHFA itself. When we invest in a project, we're going to seek to minimize any kind of regulatory burden. We're committed to acting fast, moving our investments out quickly and being very user friendly for our affordable housing developers so that we can address some of that. But it's a it's a regional issue that I think a lot of cities and counties are coming to terms with right now.
00;23;30;16 - 00;25;34;26
DS: Yeah, And I and I concur with all of that. And I think, you know, the flip side of it is that there's, you know, significantly increasing the population of the Bay Area. Right. And like inviting more people in by creating housing creates a need for there for additional services, for more parks, for more schools, for better infrastructure like that. There is a cost to this that, you know, those when done right, those fees are meant to, you know, help try to ensure that our new housing that's coming into our communities and is going to help contribute to the overall health and vitality, you know, and kind of the things that we need in our communities to make them stay great places to live, like Kate was talking about. So I think one cool thing about BAHFA and the potential for a regional revenue measure, the build the regional housing bonds that Kate was referencing is that for part of the regional funds that BAHFA would administer, there's actually a set aside that's eligible to be used on housing, supportive infrastructure and amenities. So I think this is a real cool innovation, you know, for a housing bond, you haven't seen this a lot in other types of local housing bonds where, you know, housing bonds tend to get spent on housing. But some of our money at BAHFA can actually be spent directly on parks, schools, infrastructure that is needed to kind of accommodate the growth from the new housing. And that's going to help make sure that our when we're investing in new housing, we've got new people moving into our our neighborhoods. They're still great neighborhoods, right? It's like there's cool parks that you can go to with your kids and like, there's great schools, you know, that everybody wants to send their kids to their local schools. They don't have to drive so far, you know, to go somewhere else like that that I recognition, I think is is built into our enabling legislation that we know those fees are there to a certain extent to defray those costs and maybe, you know, we don't need those as much. If we can also raise new capital to actually invest in community amenities so that BAHFA can be a part of that solution as well.
00;25;34;29 - 00;25;53;26
JS: On the BAHFA website, you're talking about the development of affordable housing. There is a three Ps strategy. Can you help our audience understand what those three Ps are and then how they can come together to fill in all aspects that we need to to increase our supply of affordable housing.
00;25;53;28 - 00;27;20;02
DS: A kind of a broad pitch on the three P's before getting to like what is each P. I think a key thing. We're in a deep hole with our housing situation right now, right? Like we've got a big kind of systemic problem. And I think it's it's a hard pill to swallow, but we have to look reality in the face and say there is no silver bullet. So, you know, anyone who's out there telling you that they've got the thing that's going to change their one, you know, niche solution is going to fix this problem. Like, I just don't think it's it's right we haven't it hasn't worked. The three P's is a framework that acknowledges there is no one silver bullet. If we are really going to change our current situation and make housing affordable, healthy, you know, accessible to everyone in our community, we have to be both and we have to take a multifaceted approach. We didn't get here because one thing went wrong. You know, like Kate said, there was cut the safety net, there was changes to land use. There was dramatic reductions in kind of the HUD budget, like a lot of things happened to get us where we are now. We will have to do a lot of things at the same time in lock step in order to get out of this. So kind of that's where the three Ps is born out of is is this notion that we have to be able to walk and chew gum, do multiple things at the same time. That's part of how we're going to really make a difference in the near term and the long term. So with that, I'll kick it back to you. Yeah, the other piece.
00;27;20;04 - 00;29;49;04
KH: The first P, production, that's just new construction. We have not built enough affordable housing for a really long time. We have a housing shortage, so that is straight up new homes for people. And the there's a few rules in our enabling legislation. And one of those is that the both BAHFA and the jurisdictions that get money have to use at least 52% of the money they get for new construction of new homes. The second P is preservation. And this is a little more complicated because the need for affordable housing preservation is multifaceted, basically. But the essence of it, the heart of it, is that a lot of people in our communities, they've lived in those in their apartments for a long time. And then the rent goes up and it goes up and they have to move far away in search of lower rents with preservation money, community based organizations, affordable housing developers can buy market rate buildings and convert them to permanently affordable housing, and that for low income people living in those apartments can stay there because their rents stabilized. The second part of preservation is that we financed a lot of housing back in the eighties and the nineties, a lot with read about old redevelopment money. If your listeners remember those redevelopment days well, much of that housing was built with bonds and when the bonds expire in those cases back in the day, the affordability restrictions expired overnight as well. So this money can be used to continue to keep those buildings affordable. And then the third thing is we have a lot of affordable housing that is getting older. It needs might need a new roof, it might need, you know, an upgrade to the electrical system. We want to make sure that those homes stay really in great shape so the jurisdictions can use money for preservation to keep those homes, make sure that they're getting all the repair that they need. So that's the first two Ps.
00;29;49;07 - 00;30;12;24
JS: Some of the affordability restrictions that may be lifted overnight when bonds mature, when their original financing is complete. If we refinance some of those existing affordable housing buildings, then when we refinance it, we have an opportunity to re up with the affordability restrictions and make sure that we continue on with those affordability restrictions. Is that correct?
00;30;12;26 - 00;30;27;13
KH: That's correct. You can provide funding in a refinancing that. And then as a condition of the new money that you're putting in require that the affordability be extended for 55 years?
00;30;27;16 - 00;30;32;20
JS: Thanks for clarifying. Okay. All right, Daniel. So the protection aspect of the three Ps.
00;30;32;22 - 00;33;10;23
DS: Yeah. So I think, you know, another little intro to this too is, you know, production is is to a certain extent, you know, like creating new units. It's about like the unit, the create the physical home that many different people could live in over the life of that building. And preservation is this and and protections which I'll going I'll talk about is really mostly about people you know it's the folks that we've got who have a home and we're trying to keep them there, make sure that they they don't end up on our streets and preservation exist somewhere in the middle, or it's about preserving the affordability of the unit no matter who lives there. But it's also got this very strong anti displacement component that Kate was talking about, where you don't want folks to be displaced overnight, you know, because the affordability restriction went off or because, you know, a speculator comes in and buys the building and kind of kicks everybody out. So there's this. The three P's also give us a spectrum of we need to invest in the physical assets that will outlast the individual families in them at this moment and provide home for people for years to come. And we need to invest in our people who are here now, you know, and make sure that they continue to be able to choose to live in their neighborhoods if they want to. And so that and that's really what protection is about. It's about protecting folks who are in their homes. You know, there's another like Kate said, there's for preservation. There's a couple of features of this. So one of the most salient ones is renters who need to have protections from, you know, whether it's like circumstances and often it's circumstances in life, you know, job loss. And so how do you pay the rent if you're not making a paycheck or you had a sudden medical bill and that wipes out your savings and you got to pay rent the next day or your car gets towed and like, you know, you don't have like $700 sitting around to get your car out if it's been there for a few days or whatever. So there's mechanisms, you know, to have emergency rental assistance. That's kind of a classic example of a tenant protection aid. Or it could be, you know, because there's, you know, not all property owners are unscrupulous and trying to do mean things to people. But, you know, because the market is what it is, you know, there's oftentimes an incentive for rents to get jacked up on people or for evictions to happen that may not be completely justifiable and so there's kind of other, you know, protections that you can put in place from a regulatory perspective to help make sure that tenants are treated fairly. It's really about leveling the playing field in that regard. But then another important feature of this is foreclosure prevention. So it's not just renters, it's also homeowners, you know, folks who are in their homes, but maybe they're living on a fixed income and they got to replace the roof.
00;33;10;26 - 00;33;48;07
DS: And, you know, that could really compromise your ability to keep paying the mortgage. There's and then you'd lose, you know, potentially out on this asset that you have been developing over time. So that's another feature. So all of those are, you know, in certain regards kind of on the table and the protections. P And when we think about the financing that BAHFA can provide, it's really more about providing financial assistance primarily to renters so that, you know, if they have a need for extra income, they can stay in their in their apartments or their homes, as well as the homeowners that we're trying to keep in their homes.
00;33;48;10 - 00;34;28;00
JS: It sounds like on the protection side of things that P there's a real world example that some of our audience may be familiar with. In the city of San Jose. We have something that we refer to as TPO, the Tenant Protection Ordinance, and it requires landlords to provide a just cause before there's an eviction and it lists out the 13 acceptable just causes. If I'm understanding you correctly, Daniel, that would be an example of something that would fall into the P the protection aspect of the three P's that not, not really construction, but it's just focusing on the person and protecting the individual person from maybe an unjust or illegal eviction.
00;34;28;02 - 00;35;27;25
DS: Yeah, that's exactly right. That, that's like a great example of a protection strategy. So, you know, BAHFA doesn't have the regulatory authority to impose, you know, a just cause requirement in any local jurisdiction. But that is, you know, it's a part of the puzzle. Our piece of the puzzle, if you will, like, that's a strategy a local government could pursue so that there's those protections in place. You know, but one of those reasons in any local just cause ordinance, I know this is true in San Jose is if you can't pay the rent, you can be evicted. And so again, this is where I think both I can really come in with financing. You know, again, as Kate said primarily by our name is, you know, it's a housing finance authority. So it's about raising money that we can then actually put in so that if the tenants have those protections but you still can't pay the rent, you know, you would have to move. And so we could come in in those instances to help make sure that people can pay the rent so they can keep living in that home and benefit from the protections, you know, that San Jose is offering.
00;35;27;28 - 00;35;50;21
JS: I find it interesting that we have a transportation entity and a housing entity that are so closely connected, so deeply intertwined. But I'd love to hear in your words why you think it's so important and kind of strategically critical that housing and transportation kind of go hand in hand as we think through our big problems in the Bay Area.
00;35;50;24 - 00;38;03;03
DS: I'll jump in on this one. I this gets me so excited I'll say, Jeff, I just think this is one of the things that is so cool about the Bay Area and even in other places that have housing finance authorities that are high powered and putting a lot of money out. This makes us different than those because no, nowhere else is there a housing finance authority that has such a close relationship to a transportation financing and planning authority. So I just think this is such a unique opportunity we have in the Bay Area. And why is it important? Because housing and transportation are totally connected. And not only are those two things connected, our environment and our climate are connected to both of those. So, you know, if if you live out in the hinterlands and work in the inner city, you have to have a way to get there. And so if we're making housing investments but not thinking about where our transportation investments are going so that we can reduce the vehicle miles traveled or greenhouse gas emissions that we're putting out, then then we may be able to build a lot of housing and deepen our climate problem. So, you know, I think that these problems, these features of our lives are interconnected. The problems that exist in the Bay Area, you know, that are related to these are connected and the solutions are connected. If we have a coordinated and strategic investment strategy that is arranging our transit and transportation investments in a way that makes sense with our housing investments, we can also bend the curve on our climate crisis. And so it's just such an exciting opportunity, you know, like what exactly does that mean? How are we going to implement that? I mean, these are the big questions that we're going to be grappling with, you know, in the Bay Area. But I think it's you know, Kate talked about the Bay Area as a place of innovation and creativity. And we can kind of, you know, set a bar the rest of the nation in the world. I think this is a great example of how the Bay Area could once again be a leader in California and the entire United States to think like, how do we do this in a coordinated way? Our lives are not siloed, are these problems are not siloed, and nor should our our funding and financing strategies be siloed.
00;38;03;06 - 00;39;12;07
KH: I totally agree with that. Just looking at the news in the last few weeks, months, year, the affects of climate change are all over the front pages and we can create vibrant densified and amenity rich excellent housing well-served by transit. We need to. We are in the midst of a environmental change that is wreaking havoc. And as Daniel said, we can provide leadership. We we have the capacity to do it. We can improve our transit system. We can build great housing. We can invest in those amenities like parks and good infrastructure that make that kind of living really wonderful. And we can't do them in separate sort of paths. We have to bring them together and thereby affect the the climate needs that are so pressing right now.
00;39;12;09 - 00;39;29;01
JS: So now, looking ahead, you've mentioned that you have a bond initiative coming up. Can you tell us what we can look forward to hearing out of BAHFA in the upcoming months or the next year or two? What we can expect to hear from you?
00;39;29;03 - 00;41;47;17
KH: Sure. We're in the process of going around the region and providing information about BAHFA and the regional bond measure that is scheduled to be on the November 2024 ballot. We're doing public workshops at the end of August. We're appearing before city councils and boards of supervisors and at civic organizations like the League of Women Voters. So we're getting the message out there and we are soliciting input from people we want again to make sure that we're creating something that's very responsive to the needs of our Bay Area residents. So that's all happening now. And then the formal process of putting the measure on the ballot, going through those governing boards that we talked about will happen in the beginning of 2024. And in the meantime, we have work that's happening. For example, we're working closely with the city of San Jose on the launch of something called, the Doorway Housing Portal. It's a new online application portal for the entire Bay Area that will make looking for affordable housing so much easier than it is now. You'll be able to look for an affordable housing opportunity from your phone or your personal computer. Right now it takes a lot of effort to find one of those opportunities. So we see that as an equity issue and we're really excited about that. We are investing in properties, we're investing in preservation properties. We're starting a new pre-development loan program shortly with in conjunction with Daniel's team, and we are doing research on the nine county eviction reasons. Where is it happening most? Why is it happening so that we can create better solutions to and promote eviction prevention. So there's a lot of work going on in addition to providing this information for the future bond measure, which is really what is going to make such a difference for us.
00;41;47;23 - 00;42;14;24
JS: I'm glad you mentioned the Doorway Portal. We actually are live with our portal in the city of San Jose. It's up on our website, the Housing department website, and for our audience listening, we'll be sure to put a link to that portal in the notes section for the podcast so that people can access that. So thanks for giving a shout out to that. So with that, is there anything either or both of you would like to say to wrap up to anything you think that our audience should know about either one of your organizations?
00;42;14;27 - 00;44;02;24
DS: I guess one thing I would flag and kind of connecting into the conversation about the 2024 ballot measure. So we didn't get into all the kind of nitty gritty details about this. But just something to be clear about, if we're the large portion of the money from that bond would go directly to the local governments. And so actually, if this were to move forward and if Santa Clara County were to be a part of this, both the county of Santa Clara and the city of San Jose would directly receive funds. So, you know, if we're talking about a $10 billion bond, we're talking about about a billion going to Santa Clara County and a billion going to San Jose directly, that the San Jose City Council and the Santa Clara County Board of Supervisors would have oversight of and allocation authority. So, you know, we talked a lot about what we can do as BAHFA regionally, that would be additive to this, you know, $2 billion kind of minimum that would already be going into the area where a lot of your listeners live. So I think I think I would flag for your listeners, as you know, we have our process about putting the measure before the voters deciding exactly how much it'll be, thinking about what our priorities will be for those for those dollars if we raise them at the same time local residents down there will have the opportunity to also go to the San Jose City Council and talk to them about how they should spend their $1 billion and how the Santa Clara County Board of Supervisors there should spend their billion dollars. So there's there's different venues that folks will be able to go to to kind of make sure that their preferences are known and what their top priorities are. And, you know, we're going to be working very closely with all of our local partners, the local governments, to make sure that as we're all setting priorities, we're doing it in a way that, as Kate said before, that's really additive and integrated and coordinated.
00;44;02;27 - 00;44;16;00
JS: For that bond that you're talking about, potentially as big as $10 billion. Is that the type of ballot initiative that would need a simple majority of the vote or a two thirds vote or some other some other margin? Yeah.
00;44;16;00 - 00;45;21;00
DS: So great question. That is so as of right now, that would require a two thirds vote of everyone in the bay in the nine County Bay area. If it goes to all nine counties, there are conversations happening at multiple levels right now to potentially run a statewide constitutional amendment at that same election, the November 2024 election that could allow voters to decide whether to adjust downwards that threshold. So just like school bonds have a 55% threshold, it's possible that we may try to lower or that there may be folks out there trying to lower the threshold for housing bonds that 55% or 50%. So the answer right now is very clearly two thirds. But that that may be up for discussion at the same election as a regional ballot measure. But both of those, just to be clear, both of those would need to be voted upon by members of the public. So neither of those are things that can just be kind of jammed through, you know, by us or by the legislature. The residents of the Bay Area and all of California will have a say in that.
00;45;21;03 - 00;45;23;09
JS: And Kate, any final words from you?
00;45;23;11 - 00;46;17;15
KH: I again, want to urge people to find out more information, to get involved, to make your voice heard and what you think is most important for your community and housing. There is a website. It's not BAHFA’s website, but it's a place you can go to find out more about these bond measures. And on the constitutional amendment, it's called Bay Area housing for all dot org. And then have on our Web page the BAHFA web page. So you can just look at BAHFA. We have a web page on the MTC ABAG websites and there's lots of information there about what we're doing and what we want to do and how we're proceeding at our meetings and we really encourage people to reach out.
00;46;17;18 - 00;46;22;20
DS: We have a mailing list, sign up for the board mailing list and get notices when BAHFA is doing more stuff. So that's.
00;46;22;20 - 00;46;40;03
JS: Right. Well, this is great. Thank you so much. I think this is such an important conversation and what you're talking about doing can potentially have a huge impact on the millions of people the Bay Area. So keep up the great work and thank you so much for spending the time to talk with me and share all your wisdom with our audience. We really appreciate it.
00;46;40;03 - 00;47;30;21
JS: Thanks so much, Kate and Daniel, for joining in today's episode. Thanks for listening to Dwellings, the City of San José Housing Department podcast. Our theme music is “Speed City,” composed and performed by Etienne Charles. Thanks to San José Jazz for letting us use their music. If you like the show, please subscribe and share with your friends and family. If you're looking for more ways to get involved with housing and homelessness response, please check out the show notes. You can follow the Housing Department on social media. We're on Twitter and Facebook at S J city housing. If you have questions or comments about today's episode, please send them to housingcomms@sanJoséca.gov. Our artwork is by Chelsea Palacio. Dwellings is produced by me, Jeff Scott and Jose Chavez of the Housing Department.