October 22, 2012
It all started last year when Governor Brown dismantled the Redevlopment Agencies. Each county, including San Francisco, had its own Redevelopment Agency to create housing for poor and low-income people and other folks. Due to the Redevelopment Agencies’ checkered past (under a man called Justin Herman in San Francisco who displaced a lot of people in the Fillmore and Manilatown), Brown decided to cut an agency that he thought nobody would notice. He chose to cut the county Redevelopment Agencies across the state to help the budget.
What’s unknown to a majority of people: a lot of low-income housing is built from Redevelopment Agencies’ money. In the city of San Francisco there is $15 million set aside for low–income housing left over from the Redevelopment Agency. People think $1 million is not a lot of money, but to low-income people like myself it is. When the governor cut the Redevelopment Agencies, there was no way of spending the $15 million because there was nobody to distribute it.
To replace San Francisco’s Redevelopment Agency, Mayor Ed Lee came up with the idea of the Housing Trust Fund. On Election Day we will vote on it as Prop C. It will build low-income housing by a two-pronged approach. One is the $15 million set aside for housing from the closed Redevelopment Agency, and the other is a 5-year scaled funding from the same people that send their money to, or invest in, redevelopment. This money comes from people who have business in redevelopment districts like Rincon-Hill, the Trans-Bay district, mid-Market, and Hunters Point aka Lenar.
This poverty skolar is going to vote yes on Prop C. I believe this proposition will help low-income families stay in the city and county of San Francisco and get at least 20 families out of shelters, permanently. It will help the elders and people with disabilities afford housing.
At this time, this is the only way that we can get money to keep elders like me and low-income families (at 30% of San Francisco’s median income, people who make less than $12000 a year) a chance to stay here and use housing instead of shelters. Shelters separate families and make people go into inadequate emergency room care, but with a house you can get Medical. It costs $500 to keep a person housed in an apartment per month, compared to $1000 to keep a person in a shelter. You do the math.