After raising more than $500 million, a group of prominent Bay Area stakeholders is using that money to fund a double-whammy solution to the housing crisis — building new housing while also creating local tenant protections.
The Partnership for the Bay’s Future, which includes the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, the San Francisco Foundation and the Silicon Valley Community Foundation, on Tuesday announced investments that will produce or preserve 800 units of affordable housing — all of which should break ground or start renovations in the next six to 12 months.
At the same time, the partnership doled out funding for projects that will help local cities and counties — including San Jose and Oakland — do everything from provide relocation assistance to renters, to fund community land trusts.
“We’re a year in, and I think we’ve never been more aware of how much work we have ahead of us,” Caitlyn Fox, director of housing affordability for the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, told media and supporters Tuesday at the Redwood City Woman’s Club. “But we are really inspired by the progress that has been made, which makes us feel hope that it’s possible to start to make a dent in this incredibly huge crisis in front of us.”
The partnership launched in January 2019 with $260 million in the bank, and much fanfare. Priscilla Chan, co-founder of the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative and a pediatrician married to Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg, gave a speech, along with several other prominent local figures. Then the group went quiet, publicizing nothing more until it broke its silence Tuesday.
The partnership originally had sought to raise $500 million in three to five years to build and preserve 8,000 homes. Instead, its leaders say the fund should hit about $520 million by June — after just a year and a half — signaling support for its regional approach to solving the housing crisis. Investors include Facebook, Morgan Stanley, the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, First Republic Bank, the San Francisco Foundation, biotech company Genentech and the Silicon Valley Community Foundation.
The group raised another $20 million to fund local policy solutions.
Ten Bay Area cities and counties — in partnership with local community organizations — applied to receive $220,000 policy grants, plus staffing help, from the partnership. Seven were chosen.
San Jose, working with SOMOS Mayfair, will use its grant to get a tenant preference policy off the ground, said city housing director Jacky Morales-Ferrand. Under that policy, San Jose residents at risk of being displaced from their gentrifying neighborhoods would be given priority for certain subsidized housing. The city also plans to look into community land trusts or other strategies that would help tenants purchase affordable housing.
The best part about the grant is that it will help San Jose actually apply the policies it creates, Morales-Ferrand said. As part of the grant, a housing policy expert from nonprofit Working Partnerships USA will be embedded in the city’s housing department as a full-time staffer, with his salary paid by the Partnership for the Bay’s Future. That’s a huge bonus for a department that already has its hands full, Morales-Ferrand said.
“Many times cities create these plans and strategies and they just sit on a shelf, rotting away. Or I guess in today’s terms they’re lost in the web, in our website, never to be found again,” she said. “But the opportunity that this challenge grant brings to us is a tremendous opportunity to actually implement the strategies that our council will be adopting.”
Oakland also received a grant. The city, in partnership with the Bay Area For All Preservation Table, will analyze its existing housing policies to determine if they have a disparate impact on certain racial groups — and make changes, if needed, to make them more equitable.
The other winning pairs are: Alameda County and Resources for Community Development, Berkeley and the East Bay Community Law Center, East Palo Alto and EPA CAN DO, Palo Alto and SV@Home, and Redwood City and the Legal Aid Society of San Mateo County.
In addition to the policy projects, the Partnership for the Bay’s Future has invested $30 million so far into seven developments that will produce about 800 units of affordable housing in Alameda County. That includes building eight units on vacant land owned by McGee Avenue Baptist Church in Berkeley, saving 40 affordable units near Oakland’s Lake Merritt BART station that otherwise would have been sold to a market-rate developer, and building 46 units of permanent supportive housing in Hayward.
Pastor Michael Smith of McGee Avenue Baptist Church said he’s “so grateful” the Partnership for the Bay’s Future will help his church finally build housing on a vacant lot that has been an eyesore for 20 years.
“We are so excited that we are part of the bay’s future,” he said.
While the initial projects are concentrated in Alameda County, there will be more to come throughout the Bay Area, said Maurice Jones, president and CEO of LISC, which manages the fund. And the fundraising is far from over, he said.
“We never said that once we got to $500 million that we would go and chill out,” he said. “As you all know, the job to be done in housing here far exceeds that $500 million. So guess what? We’re going to continue to try to raise more money for this pool.”
