Affordable housing might get new set of rules

From today's Examiner, "Supervisor Chris Daly introduced legislation to increase the percentage of affordable units developers would have to set aside. The legislation would also lower the income levels necessary to qualify for those units."

"Supervisor Jake McGoldrick introduced legislation to require that projects with five or more units, as opposed to the current 10 or more, include affordable units."

Unfortunately, both of these proposals will set aside a few units that will be affordable, but the net result will be that market-rate units will be more expensive and more developers will be scared off by these new, tighter restrictions.

From BeyondChron, "McGoldrick’s legislation also raised the hackles of some developers. The proposal would lower the number of units a building must have before it becomes subject to affordable housing laws from 10 units to 5 units. Local developer Dick Millet argued that should the proposal pass, he would simply start reducing his projects of 5-9 units to 4 units to avoid having to provide affordable housing units. In addition, SPUR and other development interests said the law should be tweaked so that the amount of affordable housing required is increased incrementally as the number of units in the development increase."