After outcry, SF Health Department to cap rents in hundreds of housing units

After an outcry, the San Francisco Department of Public Health has agreed to bring its 250 housing units into compliance with a year-old law that caps rents paid by formerly homeless residents in the city’s subsidized units at 30 percent of their incomes.

The law was sponsored late last year by Supervisor Matt Haney, who represents the Mid-Market and SOMA neighborhoods where many of the city’s subsidized housing projects are located. The bulk of the city’s 2,600 applicable units fall under the purview of the Department of Homelessness and Supportive Housing, which secured $6 million in funding to make sure the 30 percent ratio was achieved.

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The 250 units overseen by the health department didn’t receive supplemental funding and never closed the estimated $535,000 gap, according to the San Francisco Business Times. Haney’s legislation gave supportive housing providers until Oct. 1, 2023, to comply.

Protests arose recently when funding wasn’t set aside to address the lower rent requirement in the department’s $2.6 billion base budget for the 2021-2022 fiscal year. One scheduled for Tuesday in front of the department’s offices turned into a celebration instead, after officials announced their intention to bring its units into compliance.

Supportive housing resident Jordan Davis, who began the #30RightNow movement and went on two 2019 hunger strikes to bring the city’s attention to lowering rents for fixed-income SRO residents, said the success was a blueprint for similar situations in LA and Placer counties.

“The next step is for the campaign to go statewide,” she told the Business Journal.

[SFBT] — Emily Landes