Building more affordable housing is essential, but so is protecting the affordable homes and communities that already exist. In the first installment of our new Why Preservation Matters series, we explore what housing preservation is, why it is an important part of our housing strategy, and what it will take to expand this work in Santa Clara County.
Written by Manuel Salazar, Housing Planning and Production Associate
Building more affordable housing is crucial if we are to address Santa Clara County’s housing affordability crisis. We need substantially more homes that people with lower incomes can afford, and we need the funding, land, policies, and partnerships necessary to build them.
The scale of this need is enormous. Santa Clara County is home to more than 250,000 low-income households, yet more than 215,000 do not live in deed-restricted affordable housing. At our current rate of producing roughly 1,000 to 2,000 new affordable homes each year, new construction alone cannot meet the full need facing our communities.
Alongside building more affordable housing, we also need to think about the homes people already live in and how we can keep more of those homes affordable over the long term. This is where affordable housing preservation comes in.
What Do We Mean by Preservation?
Preservation can take different forms, but at its core, it means protecting existing homes and keeping them affordable for current and future residents. Broadly, this work typically falls into two categories.
The first is the preservation of existing deed-restricted affordable housing. Affordable housing developments come with requirements that keep homes affordable for a set period of time. As those restrictions approach expiration, preservation efforts can extend affordability and help ensure those homes are not lost from our existing affordable housing stock.
The second is the acquisition and rehabilitation of existing housing, often bringing properties that are not currently deed-restricted into nonprofit or community ownership. Affordable housing developers, community land trusts, and other mission-driven organizations can acquire existing properties, rehabilitate them, and preserve them as affordable homes over the long term.
While each approach comes with different opportunities and challenges, both give us tools to protect existing affordability while we continue building the new affordable homes our communities need.
Why Does Preservation Matter?
With more than 215,000 low-income households living outside deed-restricted affordable housing, much of our region’s housing affordability challenge is playing out in the existing housing market. Preservation gives us another way to reach those households and protect the homes and communities they already rely on.
Acquiring and preserving existing housing can help residents remain rooted in their communities and reduce displacement. It can also often cost less per home and move more quickly than developing a new affordable housing project from the ground up.
Preservation can contribute to our broader housing goals as well. Under certain circumstances, preserved affordable homes can receive credit toward a jurisdiction’s Regional Housing Needs Allocation, or RHNA, when state requirements are met.
None of these benefits make preservation a substitute for building new affordable housing. Instead, preservation gives us another tool to address a housing challenge that is simply too large for any one approach. The longstanding 3Ps framework (Production, Preservation, and Protection), reflects that need for a broader housing strategy
Preservation Is Important, and It’s NOT Easy
Preserving an existing building may sound simpler than constructing a new one, but preservation comes with its own set of challenges.
More than half of Santa Clara County’s rental housing stock is both decades old and located in smaller buildings with fewer than 20 units. This can mean significant rehabilitation needs and tighter operating margins for organizations working to acquire and preserve these properties.
Preservation opportunities can also move quickly, particularly when properties come onto the private market. Successfully preserving them requires access to flexible funding and the ability to acquire, rehabilitate, and operate properties over the long term.
And funding remains one of the central challenges. Preservation often relies on the same limited public resources as new affordable housing, even as we need to significantly expand both. Building a stronger preservation ecosystem will require us to think about how we create the resources, tools, and partnerships necessary to do this work at a greater scale without losing sight of the continued need for new production.
What’s Next for Preservation in Santa Clara County?
These questions are what we will be exploring through SV@Home’s new Why Preservation Matters series.
Every few weeks, we will take a closer look at a different piece of the preservation puzzle, from community ownership and expiring affordability restrictions to funding, local preservation efforts, and the policies that can support this work. We’ll use this series to better understand where preservation fits into our broader housing strategy, what we are learning from the work already underway, and where there are opportunities to do more.
Follow our Why Preservation Matters series as we explore the projects, people, policies, and partnerships working to preserve affordable housing across Santa Clara County. And be on the lookout for opportunities from SV@Home to get involved and advocate for policies and resources that support preservation in our communities.