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\nSacramento voters will get one of their best chances ever to weigh in on behalf of affordable housing, and Mutual Housing California was well-represented this week when the City Council voted 7-1 to put an expanded Measure U on the municipal ballot.<\/p>\n
Before Tuesday night’s successful vote, incoming Mutual Housing board chair Cathy Creswell and housing development director Holly Wunder Stiles urged the council to let the citizens decide whether to increase the local sales tax with a portion of the new funds to be directed to affordable housing construction.<\/p>\n
Creswell told the council that it must increase the city’s affordable housing trust fund if it hopes to solve the local housing crisis in which homelessness is rising and families are being forced to choose between paying their rising rents or putting food on the table.<\/p>\n
“More than five families are evicted every day in this city,” Creswell said. “Sacramento needs to find solutions that match the scale of the crisis. We can’t just be doing what we’ve been doing because it’s clearly not enough.”<\/p>\n
Originally passed by voters in 2012, Measure U increased the local sales tax by a half-cent, with the revenues targeted toward basic city services such as police, fire and parks that had been severely depleted in previous years by budget cuts that resulted from the Great Recession.<\/p>\n
The ballot measure slated for November will double the Measure U tax to a full penny and generate an estimated $50 million in new funding to kick-start an economic opportunity initiative aimed at the city’s disadvantaged neighborhoods. The plan was conceived by Mayor Darrell Steinberg to address some of the underlying socioeconomic issues that gave rise to the fatal police shooting earlier this year of Stephon Clark.<\/p>\n
One such issue is the lack of affordable housing in the city, and Creswell said the new funding is needed “to address the housing catastrophe head-on.”<\/p>\n
“Without significant and ongoing new funding for affordable housing, the crisis will continue, and the city will leave itself ill-prepared for competing for the new funding that’s going to be coming from the state in November.”<\/p>\n
Creswell referred to the possible passage of Proposition 1, the Veterans and Affordable Housing Bond Act, which will be on the statewide ballot this fall. If it passes, the affordable housing revenues it will generate will go to cities and counties that are ready to leverage the grants with funding of their own.<\/p>\n
The former acting executive director of the state Department of Housing and Community Development as well as a long-time head of the agency’s policy division, Creswell told the council, “I can tell you: communities that have local funding to leverage are the ones who can compete. Sacramento will not be able to compete without significant new resources for affordable housing.”<\/p>\n
Stiles told the City Council that the success Mutual Housing has enjoyed over the past 30 years has significantly depended on subsidies provided by local governments. In that time period, Mutual Housing has built 19 communities with more than 1,000 homes that house an estimated 3,600 people.<\/p>\n
“Indeed,” she said. “Not a single Mutual Housing community would have been developed anywhere without local investment.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Sacramento voters will get one of their best chances ever to weigh in on behalf of affordable housing, and Mutual Housing California was well-represented this week when the City Council voted 7-1 to put an expanded Measure U on the municipal ballot. Before Tuesday night’s successful vote, incoming Mutual Housing board chair Cathy Creswell and… <\/p>\n