{"id":139,"date":"2019-02-08T20:18:42","date_gmt":"2019-02-08T20:18:42","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.dcfeedback.com\/archives\/?p=139"},"modified":"2019-02-08T21:09:51","modified_gmt":"2019-02-08T21:09:51","slug":"joining-loans-and-policy-grants-to-get-more-affordable-housing-in-the-bay-area-shelterforce","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.dcfeedback.com\/archives\/139\/","title":{"rendered":"Joining Loans and Policy Grants to Get More Affordable Housing in the Bay Area \u2014 Shelterforce"},"content":{"rendered":"

shelterforce.org\/2019\/02\/04\/joining-loans-and-policy-grants-to-get-more-affordable-housing-in-the-bay-area\/<\/a>
\nJoining Loans and Policy Grants to Get More Affordable Housing in the Bay Area February 4, 2019
\nSan Francisco. Photo by Carol M. Highsmith, IIP Photo Archive, Library of Congress In August 2016, there was a rumor that the philanthropy the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative (CZI) was looking to make moves to address affordable housing. Fast Company spoke to me as editor of Shelterforce for an article about what sorts of things the foundation might want to consider. While I still regret that our most ambitious proposal\u2014hire one of the country\u2019s top lobbyists, the sort that represent the defense industry, and have them go for broke pushing huge increases in federal spending on rental assistance and affordable housing construction\u2014didn\u2019t make it into the article, the writer did pick up on the idea that funding production should probably be accompanied by some attention to policy.
\nApparently that\u2019s what stakeholders in the Bay Area told them too, albeit with a focus on local policies rather than federal.
\nThe Partnership for the Bay\u2019s Future grew out of CZI\u2019s interest in housing and an initial funding commitment. This \u201ccollaborative regional effort\u201d is being supported by the San Francisco Foundation, the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, the Ford Foundation, Local Initiatives Support Corporation (LISC), Facebook, Genentech, Kaiser Permanente (which has also recently announced its own separate $200 million housing and health initiative), the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, the David and Lucile Packard Foundation, and Silicon Valley Community Foundation.
\nLast week, the Partnership announced the launch of two funds to address the housing crisis in California\u2019s Bay Area\u2014one $500 million investment fund dedicated to alleviating the capital constraints facing affordable housing development, and one $40 million grant fund focused on moving forward both tenant protection policies and policies to enable more housing construction.
\nConversations that led to this project started in December 2016, says Judith Bell, vice president of programs at the San Francisco Foundation. CZI then put a $50 million initial investment on the table, which she says really \u201cbrought people together.\u201d In an extensive community engagement process, partnership members heard not only about market gaps in financing that needed filling, but that it would take policy change for investments like the ones under consideration to have the desired effect. That led to the two funds.
\nResponding to Market Gaps
\nThe investment fund will be managed by LISC. With below-market funds from philanthropy, CDFIs, and individual impact investors, the fund\u2019s aim is to offer products that don\u2019t currently exist to make possible the affordable housing projects that were not possible before.
\nThe first six products include a financing tool aimed at churches that want to enable housing construction on their properties, financing for mixed-income projects that will serve a wide range of incomes, a product aimed at preserving affordability where previous restrictions are expiring, and a supportive housing product.
\nSome of the unusual things about the fund include its long time frame of 18 years, and the acceptance of nontraditional collateral, including developers\u2019 fees. Maurice Jones, LISC\u2019s CEO says the fund\u2019s products will be available to nonprofit and for-profit developers, \u201cas long as we are aligned on the mission.\u201d He says they will be looking to cultivate small developers, especially companies owned by women and people of color, which are often shut out of access to capital.
\nThe beauty of this fund, says Jones, is its flexibility. \u201cIt\u2019s not inhibited by government regulations or things traditional financial institutions have to adhere to make the economics work. It can respond to actual market demand.\u201d
\nThe investment fund intends to continue the type of community engagement process that led to its inception, says Jones. \u201cAs one of the Fund\u2019s goals is to advance racial and economic equity, we are committed to making sure we are responding to and addressing the needs and opportunities identified by community leaders and residents,\u201d he explained. \u201cWe therefore . . . will soon begin another round of community engagement by setting up 100 one-on-ones with community partners across the five counties on which the fund focuses.\u201d
\nCommunity engagement will also go both ways. \u201cWe will be trying to make sure that people understand the rationale behind the need for more housing and more housing that\u2019s affordable,\u201d says Jones. \u201cEvery place we work, we have to confront the issue of folks who are fearful of housing and more development. That\u2019s what the process is about\u2014making sure people have a chance to voice their fears and concerns, and address them. That voice should be in the mix. It will keep us on our toes.\u201d
\nComplementary Policy
\nThe Policy Fund will be making awards of a two-year policy fellow and other technical assistance to local governments based on competitive applications. The first two years will focus primarily on anti-displacement and tenant protections, to be followed up by policy changes that might allow more affordable housing construction. The order is important. \u201cInvestment and production takes time,\u201d says Bell. \u201cIn the meantime we need to protect tenants.\u201d
\nThe RFP for the program will be going out for public comment before it is finalized and accepting applications, to ensure that it will be helpful to its target audience (a practice more funders might want to consider). That audience includes some jurisdictions that actively want to have better policies in these areas, but need some help crafting them, aligning with state initiatives, and building community consensus around them. It will also include some jurisdictions that Bell describes as \u201con the fence,\u201d which might make some progress toward commitment given incentive and encouragement.
\nBell acknowledges that there are communities that actively don\u2019t want to change or become more welcoming to low-income tenants or affordable housing. This fund is not going to take them on, she says. \u201cThis is all carrot, no stick.\u201d However, she thinks the fund will be complementary to other efforts. \u201cThe governor has already started implementing a set of strategies that maybe will move some of those jurisdictions,\u201d Bell says. \u201cThere\u2019s plenty of thought and strategy being developed in the field about exclusionary jurisdictions. But we don\u2019t think the policy fund is a strategy for solving that problem.\u201d
\nThe fund will be taking the recommendations put out by the regional CASA process as its starting point, so applicants seeking to implement those policies will have a leg up. Under tenant protections, for example, this will include just-cause eviction protections, right to counsel for tenants, and anti rent-gouging measures. Applicants can propose other ideas not covered by CASA, says Bell, but that will be a \u201chigher hurdle,\u201d as they will be asked to give evidence that those policies are effective. Applications will also require community participation and political buy in.
\nWorking Together
\nOne of the most exciting parts of the launch of Partnership for the Bay\u2019s Future is that the two funds will share an advisory board and be administered together. Places that successfully make policy improvements through the work with the policy fund will likely get some kind of priority for investment from the investment side, though the specifics have yet to be worked out.
\nSimilarly, policy obstacles encountered by borrowers working with the investment fund may inform the second round of policy work.<\/p>\n

Mary Bolton 202-390-1208<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

shelterforce.org\/2019\/02\/04\/joining-loans-and-policy-grants-to-get-more-affordable-housing-in-the-bay-area\/ Joining Loans and Policy Grants to Get More Affordable Housing in the Bay Area February 4, 2019 San Francisco. Photo by Carol M. Highsmith, IIP Photo Archive, Library of Congress In August 2016, there was a rumor that the philanthropy the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative (CZI) was looking to make moves to address affordable housing. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-139","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-housingarchive"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.dcfeedback.com\/archives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/139","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.dcfeedback.com\/archives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.dcfeedback.com\/archives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.dcfeedback.com\/archives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.dcfeedback.com\/archives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=139"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.dcfeedback.com\/archives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/139\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.dcfeedback.com\/archives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=139"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.dcfeedback.com\/archives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=139"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.dcfeedback.com\/archives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=139"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}