Op-ed by Lecturer Calvin Welch: Obama’s Irrelevant Housing Proposal

SAN FRANCISCO CHRONICLE -- “The Obama administration is dead wrong when it comes to San Francisco’s housing approvals. Height limits and parking requirements are not slowing approvals. Let’s look at the real problem: declining HUD funding for housing subsidies. The Carter administration in 1978 allocated $249 billion in 2015 dollars to HUD. The Obama administration’s 2015 request was for $47 billion. And the request for fiscal year 2017 was $400 million less than the request for fiscal year 2016.” “The Obama administration has cut federal HOME funding, the primary subsidy for the development of new affordable multifamily rental housing, by 55 percent from its 2006 allocation, according to Harvard’s Joint Center for Housing Studies. The number of low-income tenants receiving HUD assistance fell while the population living in neighborhoods with poverty rates of a least 40 percent has more than doubled between 2000 and 2014.” Calvin Welch lectures at USF and SF State.