ON GUARD: HOUSING

Community land trust could be new housing solution 

A GROUP of tenants faced with the threat of eviction hope the city will help preserve their housing at current rates -- by introducing a new solution to San Francisco's housing crisis. 

Hospital chain Catholic Healthcare West plans to sell 19 residential properties in Polk Gulch and the Upper Haight. Under the proposed plan, the more than 200 tenants of those buildings would form a community land trust (CLT) -- a nonprofit organization that would own the land on which the buildings sit. The CLT would rent or sell the housing units on the site. 

Unlike most of the city's tenants, those CLT members who chose to rent their homes from the trust would not live with the constant threat of eviction. CLT home owners would hold limited equity on their property: they would be allowed to live there in perpetuity, but they would be barred from selling the housing at a profit. 

"That removes speculation from the housing market," said Robert Haaland, an organizer with the San Francisco Tenants Union, which is helping the tenants organize a CLT. "It helps to freeze prices on real estate." 

"People say, 'What's the difference between this and tenancies in common?' The difference is that TICs fuel real estate speculation, whereas limited-equity co-ops stop real estate speculation," Haaland said. "You're figuring out ways low-income people can control housing where there's not tenant displacement or speculation." 

Six of CHW's buildings are owned by St. Francis Hospital, the other 13 by St. Mary's Medical Center. The 19 buildings contain more than 100 units. Were the property to be sold, their rents would likely be raised to market value -- which would leave many of the tenants unable to pay. 

Deborah Mosca is a tenant in one of the CHW buildings and is the community coordinator for the tenants of the buildings owned by St. Francis. "San Francisco should be looking at this kind of option for any hope of affordable housing," Mosca said. "It's pretty ridiculous: New York's got it, Boston's got it, Chicago's got it. San Francisco's the second most expensive city in the United States, and we don't have it." 

Timothy Huet, another tenant, told us, "We're talking about a situation that's supposed to be a threat to our community and turn it into something positive." 

Tenants hope the city will help them form a CLT, either by helping to subsidize the purchase or by guaranteeing a loan from a private lender. "Just as the city gives money to nonprofit housing developers, it could give money to a housing association to hold the land in the service of the community and help prevent tenant displacement," Haaland said. If the city can't provide funds, he said, the tenants could approach a private lender for the money and the city could guarantee the loan. 

Huet and Haaland met with Marcia Rosen of the Mayor's Office of Housing Jan. 13. According to Huet, Rosen was skeptical that money from her office could be used to subsidize the purchase, since those funds are federally earmarked for low-income, elderly, and disabled renters. She offered the services of a staff analyst to help tenants assess the viability of purchasing the property. 

Rosen could not be reached for comment. 

"I understand that that money is earmarked for people on the lowest rung, and we don't want to compete with them -- although many of the people in these properties fall into that category," Huet told the Bay Guardian. "But we want to find some creative way to preserve affordable housing without taking away from someone else. We're trying to preserve these units as affordable housing not just for current tenants but when they come up [for sale or rent in the future]." 

Haaland told us the city has put most of its resources into developing new affordable housing, rather than preserving units that already exist. "A community land trust is a way to preserve the existing affordable stock," he said. "We need to create new affordable housing, but we need to preserve existing housing, too." 

Supervisor Tom Ammiano has lent his support to the CLT campaign. "It's a creative solution for the community and protects tenants from greedy landlords," he said. 

The tenants say the CLT is a viable alternative to the housing problems they predict will arise and hope that they can form a CLT with the city's help. 

"In San Francisco as a whole there's a disappearing market for low- and moderate-income rentals," Huet said. "Pretty soon the character of the city is going to change to where there's only upper-income market-rate housing and people living in public housing. There should be someone in the middle." 

Shanti Priya