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Motion to authorize the Mayor to send a letter of support for Assembly Bill 1319 (Wicks), Bay Area Housing Finance Authority Clean-Up Legislation. (Nell Selander, Economic & Community Development Director)
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RECOMMENDATION
Recommendation
Staff recommends that City Council authorize the Mayor to send a letter of support for Assembly Bill (AB) 1319 (Wicks), a clean-up bill for 2019's AB 1487 (Chiu), which established the Bay Area Housing Finance Authority.
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BACKGROUND/DISCUSSION
Assembly Bill 1487, signed into law in 2019, created a regional authority that could address housing affordability by raising, administering, and allocating funding for affordable housing throughout the nine-county Bay Area. This authority would be called the Bay Area Housing Finance Authority or BAHFA. The original legislation provided BAHFA with powers to place a measure on a future ballot to raise revenue and allocate funds, apply for and receive both public and private grants or loans, issue bonds and other types of debt, develop affordable housing programs, and to incur other liabilities and obligations.
Since 2019, BAHFA has hired staff and begun to develop programs. Through this process the BAHFA team has identified a number of legislative clarifications and modifications that are necessary to meet the housing needs of the region. In addition, BAHFA staff are aware of more recent efforts by affordable housing partners across the state to explore statewide measures that may interact with BAHFA and future BAHFA ballot measures. Assembly Bill 1319 addresses this new context to allow BAHFA to benefit from any potential changes passed by voters in the future, as well as address the necessary clarifications staff have identified.
Clean-Up Legislation Provisions
Assembly Bill 1319 serves to clarify and modify previous legislation rather than create additional substantive legislation. The bill outlines narrowly focused tweaks that will help ensure that BAHFA is as hi...
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