A $20 billion regional housing bond that promised tens of thousands of affordable homes won’t go before voters in November.
Previously known as Regional Measure 4, the bond was originally proposed and authorized by the Bay Area Housing Finance Authority (BAHFA) and sought to fund up to 90,000 affordable homes across nine Bay Area counties. BAHFA voted unanimously today to drop the ballot.
A statement from BAHFA officials said they decided to hold the measure “when there is more certainty” and to see how the statewide Proposition 5 will fare. Proposition 5 asks voters to lower the threshold for passage on local bond measures from 66.67% approval to 55%.
The bond was broadly supported by elected officials in all nine counties, including an endorsement from the San Jose City Council. Housing advocates expressed disappointment over the bond’s withdrawal.
“Although it’s disappointing to see the delay, we see this as the best path forward in getting that financing that affordable housing desperately needs,” Ali Sapirman, an organizer with the Housing Action Coalition, told San José Spotlight.
SV@Home Deputy Director Josh Ishimatsu said the biggest obstacle for affordable housing is the lack of funding, and this bond could have alleviated some of those pressures. The SV@Home Action Fund was a co-lead on the measure’s support campaign in Santa Clara County.
“We’ll be looking toward new either regional or local initiatives to fund affordable housing because we’re going to need that money,” Ishimatsu told San José Spotlight. “The need for more affordable housing doesn’t go away just because (Regional Measure 4) is pulled off the ballot.”
Ishimatsu said the action fund also plans to support Proposition 5 in November, which would impact future attempts to fund affordable housing through bond measures.
The bond faced legal challenges in its final days, after former San Jose Councilmember Johnny Khamis and 12 other voters in eight counties filed a lawsuit against BAHFA over the measure’s ballot question, including a discrepancy about the annual cost to taxpayers through 2077-78. He said the discrepancies he found were “not a confidence builder” for BAHFA.
Sapirman said the supermajority passage threshold was already a potential barrier, but the lawsuit added more challenges.
Supervisor Susan Ellenberg said the measure being removed from the ballot has also nixed opportunities to improve the quality of life for residents.
“It seems that a small vocal opposition has disenfranchised hundreds of thousands of voters across nine counties who should have had the opportunity to decide whether they wanted to invest at scale in meaningfully addressing our affordable housing crisis,” Ellenberg said. “This is not the outcome I had wished for our region.”
The housing finance authority unanimously approved updating the ballot question with the increased number at last Thursday’s meeting, where employees attributed the wrong amount to a “mathematical error.”
“Not only are they brand new, but they either don’t know how to do math, or they’re trying to deliberately mislead the population,” Khamis told San José Spotlight. “One way or another, it doesn’t build trust, so why should we trust them?”
Supporters of the bond disputed some of the lawsuit’s assertions on what is and isn’t misleading, including the ballot question’s promise to build housing near transit and retail, which has been a trend in affordable housing developments in Santa Clara County.
Cupertino Vice Mayor J.R. Fruen was among local officials supportive of the measure. The Cupertino City Council also endorsed the measure “in principle,” Fruen told San José Spotlight before the measure was pulled.
Fruen also pointed out that the lawsuit was filed after BAHFA removed the incorrect amount from the ballot question, suggesting Khamis and others on the lawsuit weren’t upset about the inaccuracies. An example Fruen used was the lawsuit asks the word “homes” be changed to “housing units” in the ballot question, under the argument that “home” is not a neutral word.
“To say that… the use of the term ‘home’ is somehow false and misleading for a ballot measure whose intention is to produce affordable homes, and to require instead that voters only hear that term as ‘housing units,’ speaks to the elitism behind the opposition,” Fruen told San José Spotlight before the measure was pulled. “They argue that a home evokes an image of a cozy abode. Yes, yes it does, and it should. Because that’s what it is intended to fund.”
Contact B. Sakura Cannestra at [email protected] or @SakuCannestra on X, formerly known as Twitter.
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