by Sarah Wright : sfstandard – excerpt

Late last month, as part of budget negotiations, Mayor London Breed agreed to spend $112 million on affordable housing, calling to use money from debt financing to pay for new housing projects and fund repairs to existing buildings.

It was part of a late-night budget deal that preserved most of the mayor’s priorities, but also added money originally requested by Supervisor Dean Preston as part of a “social housing” package, and in line with recommendations from the Housing Stability Fund Oversight Board. That board was formed to help figure out how to spend revenue coming from Proposition I, a real estate transfer tax that feeds into the city’s general fund.

So what does social housing actually mean? Let’s break it down.

What is social housing? Social housing, a type of public housing used in parts of Europe where government plays a larger role in providing social programs, aims to use private money to subsidize government-run housing where rents are capped for tenants based on their income level…It must be permanently affordable, and the average income across all tenants must not exceed 80% of the local median income…

How is it different from public housing? Public housing is state-run housing that caps housing costs to 30% of a resident’s income, and is only available to low-income renters who make less than 80% of the median income in the city. Social housing would institute a similar income-based rent cap but would not use income levels to restrict who can live there…

The major difference between the two concepts is where the subsidy for lower rents is coming from, Hyatt said. In public housing, it’s 100% from the government, while social housing would also use high-income rents or taxes to make up the rent gap for lower-income tenants.