RM4 miscalculation triggers successful legal challenge
Image by Tanbir Ahmed
As an antidote to biased local South Bay media, the San Mateo Daily Journal offers thoughtful, balanced reporting of RM4's ballot language errors and why families making more than $200k per year might receive subsidies.
A miscalculation of what a $20 billion regional housing bond could generate annually triggered the threat of legal action against the Bay Area Housing Finance Authority Aug. 2.
Regional Measure 4 is meant to bridge the financing gap that many developers face when trying to secure funding for housing, especially for below-market-rate units, and would be funded by property owners across all nine Bay Area counties. In June, BAHFA officially voted to add the measure to the November ballot, but it didn’t take long to receive notice that its estimates were incorrect.
The original ballot measure question asked voters whether to adopt the $20 billion bond measure, which would generate $670 million each year while bonds are outstanding. But the updated amount, approved during a recent BAHFA meeting Thursday, Aug. 8, would increase that figure from $670 million to about $911 million. According to the resolution, “a correction to the ballot question to delete ‘$670,000,000’ from the ballot question and replace it with ‘$910,976,423’ was approved unanimously.”
The bond would be funded by levying about $19 per $100,000 of assessed property and is estimated to provide about 70,000 affordable housing units across the region. San Mateo County would receive about $2 billion, with a minimum of 52% allocated for affordable housing production and 15% for preservation, per the Regional Housing Finance Act.
However, BAHFA and the Association of Bay Area Governments can update those percentages with a two-third majority vote no earlier than five years after its passage.
The funds could be allocated toward below-market-rate housing production for those earning up to 120% of the area’s median income, which, as of 2023, was about $210,000 for a four-person household in San Mateo County.
Read the whole thing here.
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