A $20 billion affordable housing bond got removed from voters' ballots Wednesday amid fears that it wouldn't pass.
Email addressA construction crew works on a 290-unit transit-oriented, mixed-use affordable housing community in Fremont on April 22, 2020. Photo by Anda Chu, Bay Area News GroupBackers pulled a $20 billion affordable housing bond off Bay Area ballots today, amid fears that it wouldn’t pass.
“We’ve had to think about the long run, and it’s going to now need to be, we think, an even longer run, in order to preserve our collective ability to really fight and win,” said Heather Hood, who manages the Northern California market for Enterprise Community Partners, a housing nonprofit and a member of the pro-bond coalition.
The change of heart was born out of concerns about the public’s appetite for costly new measures, a pending lawsuit against the regional bond, and worry about another ballot measure,. That statewide constitutional amendment would make it easier to pass local and regional affordable housing and infrastructure bonds by lowering the electoral threshold for victory from the current high bar of two-thirds down to 55%.
Amelia Matier, a spokesperson for Prop. 5, said the campaign is “laser-focused on our campaign” and that “voters strongly support Prop 5 when presented fairly.” Calling into the hearing this morning, Khamis applauded the decision to pull the measure: “I don’t think that the voters are ready to pass another very large tax measure that’s going to make it very hard to keep their homes,” he said. “We have enough people living on the streets now and I don’t think a very large new tax is going to help.”
Today’s sudden reversal puts on hold for now a legislative debate that had been playing out in Sacramento over whether to
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