SF’s affordable housing plan struggles to fill vacancies
December 21, 2021
By Annika Hom, Mission Local
The Small Sites Program is a city loan program that helps nonprofits acquire and rehabilitate residential buildings with fewer than 25 units. Since its inception, advocates championed it as a powerful anti-displacement tool that kept low-income tenants in place, and magically kept units affordable forever.
Already, the city dedicated $10 million for the program this fiscal year, and promised another allocation up to $10 million to carry acquisitions through June, 2022.
Peter Cohen, the co-director of the Council of Community Housing Organizations, said he and other organizations sent a list of Small Sites reforms to the Mayor’s Office of Housing on Aug. 31, though conversations about resolutions began as early as January. But like mayor’s offices in the past, the office has been “rigid and unwilling” to reform it, Cohen said.
“What is the reason they are stalling?” he asked.
As supervisors and housing advocates point out, neither the problems nor the solutions appear insurmountable.
