Preserving already affordable housing is one of our core strategies for addressing the Bay Area’s housing crisis and ensuring that everyone has an affordable home. Without a strategy for preserving naturally occurring affordable housing in California, we are putting at risk thousands of renters who are predominantly people of color with low incomes.
We are proud to support this bill to establish the Community Anti-Displacement and Preservation Program (CAPP). CAPP would provide funding for the acquisition and rehabilitation of unrestricted housing units while attaching long-term affordability restrictions to prevent the displacement of current residents. This is a creative and common-sense preservation strategy to protect affordable housing.
Our Letter of support is excerpted below:
A study from Enterprise Community Partners found that the San Francisco Bay Area lost an annual 32,000 unsubsidized rental homes previously affordable to low-income households over just five short years, and thousands more units are at risk of losing affordability over the next two years.
Acquisition and preservation of unsubsidized affordable housing has proven to be a successful local model to prevent displacement and homelessness and grow the supply of affordable housing. Moreover, acquisition preservation creates new affordable homes immediately, since the buildings are already built. These projects generally close in several months, rather than years. Currently, only a limited patchwork of local resources are available to do this work, and only a select number of communities are able to utilize this important strategy.
SB 225 would establish a unique state program to provide the resources that community organizations, affordable housing developers, and local jurisdictions need to acquire unsubsidized rental housing from the private market where tenants are at risk of displacement and to preserve the housing as affordable rental housing or homeownership opportunities. CAPP will prevent displacement and homelessness by stabilizing low-income families in their communities, while also growing California’s supply of deed-restricted affordable homes for the future.
Read the entire letter.
We are proud to support our partners – Enterprise Community Partners, Housing California, and Public Advocates – who are co-sponsors of this legislation.
Learn more:
- Read more about SFF’s all-in on housing work
