I’ve never owned a car. When I need a quart of milk, I walk downstairs to the corner store. For my 15-minute commute, I walk two blocks to BART. Walking, biking, and taking transit to everything I need means I not only save $5,000 a year (versus owning a car), I also have a healthy lifestyle. But, I am middle class and have the luxury of choosing a convenient, “hip” urban area of San Francisco. Conversely, many Bay Area low-income families have been economically forced to move to isolated, ex-urban, and car-dependent areas on the fringe of our region simply to find a home they can afford – leaving them with few linkages to job opportunities, and the increasing burden of car payments, insurance, and gas costs.
To address the challenge of rising rents in transit-rich neighborhoods, I am proud of the leadership role The San Francisco Foundation has had in incubating, catalyzing, and investing in the Transit-Oriented Affordable Housing Fund. I was honored to learn this week that the Environmental Protection Agency has bestowed our unique $50 million Fund with their prestigious Smart Growth Achievement Award. The Fund’s odd bedfellows of public, private philanthropic capital is breaking new ground in creative financing for affordable housing. Since the Fund’s launch 18 months ago, I’ve already heard from many other metro-regions from LA, to Chicago, to Atlanta seeking to emulate our success.
The very first project to receive financing from the Fund is Eddy & Taylor Family Housing. This $7.2 million loan will transform a surface parking lot into 153 affordable housing units and a new grocery story in the Tenderloin. The site is just two blocks from the Powell Street BART station, a major transit hub in San Francisco.
As more wealthy residents are attracted to convenient urban neighborhoods, this Fund is helping ensure that low-income families will still have safe, secure housing they can afford. Middle class residents like me shouldn’t be the only ones to benefit from easy access to transit.