This article is adapted from an episode of our podcast “Civic.” Click the audio player below to hear the full story.
To many older adults in San Francisco, especially those on fixed incomes, it can feel like they are just one rent increase or health problem away from becoming homeless.
Dewen and her husband have lived with that anxiety for nearly two decades. When they moved to San Francisco in 2008, they signed up to receive affordable housing through the city’s lottery system. While they waited to be chosen, they moved into the only apartment they could find within their budget, the majority of which came from Dewen’s meager $8 hourly wage. Dewen’s expenses to commute to work further whittled down their income.
Today, the older Chinese couple resides in the same apartment, still on the waitlist for affordable housing — and still living on the knife’s edge. They rely on Social Security for general expenses and use government assistance for food. Dewen, who has lived with a leg injury for several years, is applying for disability payments. Each month, after paying rent they have close to $200 for food, electricity and phone bills, transportation costs and other essentials. The San Francisco Public Press is not publishing Dewen’s full name, in an effort to protect the couple’s housing security; their relationship with their landlord is strained.
In this “Civic” episode, we hear from Dewen, a senior struggling with housing costs, and from local organizations who discuss Proposition G’s potential impacts.
“I couldn’t dare to even go to have dim sum with my family because we don’t have much extra left to spend,” she said.
Households like Dewen’s might get help if San Francisco voters pass Proposition G this November.
Proposition G would create an Affordable Housing Opportunity Fund to lower rents in 550 to 600 units on an ongoing basis for extremely low-income seniors, families and people with disabilities. Tenants could earn no more than 35% of the local area median income, or $52,450 for a four-person household. The city would set aside at least $4 million for the fund in its first year and annual allocations would be at least $8.25 million over the subsequent two decades.
Proposition G’s opponents have criticized its funding mechanism. Rather than reserving minimum annual amounts for it, the city should decide how much money to give the fund during each year’s budget appropriations process, they say.
Opponents also worry the measure would siphon city dollars from public safety, infrastructure and other essential funding goals.
However, the measure’s proponents have said that revenues from some existing taxes must be spent on certain targets, including subsidies to lower rents, and those could power the Affordable Housing Opportunity Fund.
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The proposal comes as San Francisco faces a state mandate to develop more housing, including homes for 14,000 extremely low-income households, by 2031. The fund could help the city achieve that goal, supporters say, especially if officials expanded it in the future.
For San Francisco’s 66,000 extremely low-income households, even subsidized affordable housing is often too expensive.
Owners of affordable housing typically charge rents recommended for households earning 50% to 60% of the local area median income, said Meg Heisler, campaign manager for the “Yes on G” campaign committee. That would be affordable to a four-person household earning between $74,950 and $89,900 per year.
Rents at those levels enable owners to cover the costs of running their buildings. Since the COVID-19 pandemic, they have seen spikes in operating expenses like insurance and labor costs, said Lydia Ely, deputy director for housing at the Mayor’s Office of Housing and Community Development.
But the rents can be difficult for elderly San Franciscans, immigrant families and people with disabilities to afford, said Silayan Kintanar, a caseworker at the South of Market Community Action Network. It’s “heartbreaking” to tell clients that their incomes are too low to even apply, she said.
High housing costs can push some of the city’s most vulnerable, like older adults, into homelessness, said Itzel Romero, a housing organizer with Senior and Disability Action.
High costs can also force them to stay in less-than-ideal living conditions.
“For older people with poor health like us, it feels like we’re on a downhill slide,” Dewen said.
She and her husband don’t always feel safe at their apartment building, which she called “chaotic.” The smell of marijuana smoke often wafts in the window from the street and makes the couple feel sick, but there’s nothing they can do to stop it. Meanwhile, they deal with a leaking ceiling, gradually rising rents while their income remains static, and ominous messages from their landlord over seemingly minor noise issues. Dewen said she suspects the landlord wants them to move out; their unit is rent-controlled, so the landlord could raise the rent to the market rate for a new tenant and make more money.
“I just have to endure it and endure it, so there’s no hope,” Dewen said.
After learning about Proposition G, Dewen said she was disappointed that it would put only a few hundred units within reach for people like her, and that units would be given through the city’s lottery, which she hasn’t had success with.
The measure’s supporters acknowledged that it would create fewer units than they would have liked.
Even with its limited assistance, Romero is “hoping that Prop. G will have a big impact for the people who have kind of been forgotten,” she said.
Zhe Wu, a reporter at the San Francisco Public Press, provided interpretation services for this story.
Click here to listen to a panel discussion on proposition G, co-hosted by the San Francisco Public Press and KALW.
