by Adam Brinklow : thefrisc – excerpt

100% affordable housing is tough to pull off. SF’s transit agency will front up to $100M extra just to get the $2B project underway.

Best-case scenario: If funding comes through, a new Potrero Yard bus facility will include 465 units of affordable housing perched on top. SF’s transit agency just said it needs to front as much as $100 million extra for the project to get off the ground. (SFPlanning)

The city’s cash-strapped transit agency says it will pay some of the developer’s costs, up to $100 million, then hope to recoup the money through a complicated buyback plan.

Earlier this year, The Frisc reported that the project’s 465 homes could shrink to about 100 homes – a Plan B if funding didn’t come through. Now the only way to keep the project moving, homes or no homes, is through an unusual twist: the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency is going to pay all infrastructure costs upfront instead of splitting them with the developer… (more)

One reason why the voters are not supporting more money for Muni through taxes and or bonds if they can stop it. What happened to the original goal of running a first rate transit system? When did SFMTA decide to branch out into other risky businesses? What rose do the voters and citizens of SF have in this scheme, other than being an ATM machine for MTA?