Friends and Neighbors,
This week we won a resounding victory for social housing. With an 8-3 supermajority, the Board of Supervisors passed our plan to put $64m in Prop I funds toward an Emergency Housing Acquisition Program.
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The voters gave us a mandate to tax the rich and invest in affordable housing, and on Tuesday we made good on that promise.
It’s a game-changer for San Franciscans at risk of eviction in a rebounding real estate market. The investment allows the city to scale up its program to take multi-unit apartments off the private market, and turn them into permanently affordable housing. We are now poised to save the homes of more than 500 families citywide.
It’s also a game-changer for the long term picture for affordable housing in San Francisco.
Last November, 58% of voters approved Prop I, a tax we put on the ballot on high end real estate deals. Despite a unanimous commitment by the Board to use the revenue for rent relief and social housing efforts, Mayor London Breed defunded all efforts to direct Prop I revenue to housing in the most recent budget.
At the time, we vowed to continue the fight. And it took an incredible effort — we organized more than 40 organizations to get behind this proposal — but with the support of President Walton and Supervisors Chan, Haney, Mar, Peskin, Ronen and Mandelman, we emerged victorious on our effort to direct $64m to social housing, as the voters intended.
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It’s a major victory in the near term, but make no mistake, it is an important precedent for Prop I funds to be used for social housing for years to come.
This is what it looks like to put housing justice in motion. We have been in office for less than two years, and in that span, we have gone to the ballot to tax the rich, and we have successfully taken the revenue to provide rent relief and, after Tuesday’s vote, an historic investment in social housing.
When we say “Housing is a Human Right,” we mean it not only in our words, but in our actions. The effort we successfully passed Tuesday is an example. We aim to have many more in our time in office.
I am immensely proud to carry this torch on the Board of Supervisors, and I am grateful to represent the forward-thinking residents of District 5.
With gratitude,
Dean Preston
District 5 Supervisor
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