SAN FRANCISCO, Feb. 28 (Xinhua) -- The San Francisco transportation planning commission on the U.S. west coast on Wednesday pledged 10 million U.S. dollars to help build affordable housing.
The Metropolitan Transportation Commission (MTC), the transportation planning and funding commission for the nine-county San Francisco Bay Area, said it used the money to establish a new revolving loan fund, known as the Bay Area Preservation Pilot Fund, to catalyze the development of affordable housing near transit lines.
The fund is designed to help lower- and moderate-income renters to buy housing properties in areas along high-frequency transit service, the MTC said in a statement.
It will be supplemented by an additional 39 million dollars from Preservation Pilot managers, Enterprise Community Loan Fund (ECLF) and Low Income Investment Fund (LIIF), to make a total of 49 million dollars available for new loans.
"It's no secret that the Bay Area's housing supply hasn't kept pace with the region's employment growth," Oakland Mayor and MTC Commissioner Libby Schaaf said.
"Our economy relies on people from diverse employment sectors and from all levels of our economy having the ability to live in neighborhoods with reliable access to our major job centers," she added.
The MTC said non-profit developers and joint venture partnerships can tap the Preservation Pilot fund for loans up to 7 million dollars with a term of up to 10 years to buy non-subsidized apartment buildings with at least four units.
Borrowers can use the loan proceeds to fund an operating reserve for the acquired property, and to perform life safety upgrades and limited other property rehabilitation work, said the transportation planning, funding and coordinating agency.
The ECLF has invested more than 1.6 billion dollars and leveraged over 11 billion dollars in additional capital to create or preserve more than 106,000 housing units affordable for lower-income households nationwide.
The San Francisco-based LIIF has provided over 2.2 billion dollars of financing and technical assistance to enable some 2 million lower-income people around the country to access stable housing and community services.
A study released in January showed that rents in the Bay Area have skyrocketed to an alarming high, with Oakland city registering a 51.1 percent price spike, from a median rent of 1,952 dollars per month in 2012 up to 2,500 dollars per month in 2018.
San Francisco saw prices rise by 37.9 percent in the last five years, from 2,900 dollars per month on average to 4,000 dollars a month.
