On November 30th, SV@Home hosted its quarterly Affordable Housing Developer Roundtable to discuss the limited availability of affordable housing funding in Santa Clara County as we face the depletion of the County Measure A funds and some of the possible collaborative strategies to bridge the financing gap. The group heard from Consuelo Hernandez from the Santa Clara County Office of Supportive Housing, Ray Bramson from Destination: Home, Rachel VanderVeen from the City of San Jose Housing Department, and Wayne Chen from the City of Mountain View Housing Department.

Measure A, the countywide bond approved in 2016, has been the most significant funding source for affordable housing projects in Santa Clara County that include permanent supportive housing and homes for extremely low-income households. It has been a huge success, supporting more new development than initially projected in a shorter time than expected, but the funds are mostly allocated today. In San Jose, Measure E, passed by voters in 2020, has seen a dramatic decrease in receipts in the last two years. While the County and the Cities of San Jose and Mountain View described creative new tools in this difficult moment, including creative collaboration with developers and effective use of publicly-owned land, it was not an easy discussion. 

As the event concluded, attention turned towards the Bay Area Housing Finance Authority (BAHFA) bond, a proposed transformative housing bond measure with $10-20 billion in funding across the nine-county Bay Area expected on next year’s ballot. The significance of the BAHFA bond effort, as a potential solution to the impending funding challenges, was clear to all in attendance. SV@Home is co-leading the housing bond campaign in Santa Clara County along with Working Partnerships USA, and we know that its success will require collaboration among advocates, government officials, and developers to champion affordable housing.