Affordable housing in S.F.? Depends on whom you ask

The Natoma Family Apartments is a 60-unit affordable housing complex for which 2,800 people applied. Tenants began moving in last month. The Natoma Family Apartments is a 60-unit affordable housing complex for which 2,800 people applied. Tenants began moving in last month. Photo: Codi Mills, The Chronicle Buy photo Photo: Codi Mills, The Chronicle Image 1 of / 15 Caption Close Affordable housing in S.F.? Depends on whom you ask 1 / 15 Back to Gallery

It seems everybody's answer to San Francisco's rash of evictions is, "Build more affordable housing!"

But what is affordable housing?

It's easy to define its opposite. A quick perusal of the Craigslist apartment listings on a recent afternoon found plenty of examples of decidedly unaffordable housing - for us lowly journalists, our families, friends, co-workers and everybody else we've ever met anyway.

The most shocking rental listing is for a new four-bedroom home that will be on the market in April in the Forest Hill Extension neighborhood near Twin Peaks.

For $50,000 a month. Not $5,000 - $50,000.

Convinced this was a typo, I e-mailed property manager Wayne Cheung to confirm the price. Asked how the seller came to that figure, he said, "I'm not able to disclose that information."

Massive amounts of alcohol perhaps?

Granted, it's not just a house, it's a mansion. And one that sounds like the ideal setting for a murder mystery game. Colonel Mustard in the "custom walnut-paneled library" with a candlestick!

Asked whether he thinks he'll find somebody willing to pay $50,000 a month, Cheung said, "It's hard to say - the market is pretty haywire, but that's the asking price. Just like anything else, sometimes you get what you want and sometimes you get the best offer."

Makes other Craigslist offerings look downright reasonable.

There's a two-bedroom unit with a den being rented for $11,000 a month at One Rincon Hill, and a four-bedroom condo in the Inner Richmond going for $10,000 a month. Remember back in the good old days when monthly rent checks started with a 1 and had only four digits?

OK, so that's the unaffordable end of the spectrum. What's affordable? Turns out the average San Franciscan has little to no idea.

The Committee on Jobs, a business advocacy group with political sway at City Hall, conducted a poll last month of 600 registered voters in the city. One question asked them to define affordable housing. Answers included "a basic two-bedroom home without the frills" and "affordable housing means a one bedroom/one bath should be $1,000, not $4,000."

Just 42 percent of respondents considered their own homes affordable.

The official keeper of the definition of "affordable housing" is the Mayor's Office of Housing - and it's a lot more complicated than one would hope.

First, there's "affordable housing with a capital A," as the wonks in the mayor's office call it. Those units are built by not-for-profit developers who subsidize them with federal low-income-housing tax credits.

You can generally apply for those units if your household income is less than 60 percent of the area median income - $40,750 for one person, $46,600 for two people and $58,250 for a family of four.

Qualifying is one thing - actually scoring one of the coveted units is quite another. At a new housing project at 474 Natoma St., 2,800 people applied for 60 affordable housing units.

Then there's the affordable housing - referred to by the wonks as inclusionary housing - that's required by the city of private housing developers.

They can choose to build those units on-site or pay into an affordable housing fund. To qualify for those, you must have an income less than 120 percent of the area median income - $81,550 for one person, $93,250 for two and $116,500 for a family of four.

(For more information on either type, to see what's available and to apply, visit www.sf-moh.org.)

Then there's just regular, market-rate housing that's somewhat affordable by virtue of being in a far-flung neighborhood like the Hunters Point Shipyard, Visitacion Valley or Parkmerced. The mayor says units being built in those places will be affordable for those earning less than 150 percent of area median income - $101,950 for one person, $116,550 for two and $145,650 for a family of four.

Mayor Ed Lee has set a goal of building 30,000 new and rehabbed housing units by 2020, a third of which will be affordable or inclusionary. More than half will be affordable to those earning less than 150 percent of the area median income, he said.

But if you don't score one of them, you can always team up with 30 of your closest friends to rent out that mansion in Forest Hill.

Quote of the week

"This is what a man does. A man cries, and keeps taping things to light posts until somebody calls."

Bryan Mason of his huge, citywide and eventually successful efforts to retrieve his lost dog, Sparky