Mayor Daniel Lurie was a guest on KQED’s Forum on Monday, a special episode devoted to helping the city’s voters make sense of November’s alphabet soup of ballot measures. As expected, the mayor pushed his preferred higher-profile measures like Propositions D, E and F.
He also took the opportunity to blast Proposition I, which redirects a portion of the transfer tax on properties valued at more than $10 million to a dedicated fund, and has attracted relatively less attention. A week and a half before the Nov. 3 vote, the mayor took to KQED to share his objections with listeners.
Prop. I “could blow a $120 million hole in our budget.” Lurie warned listeners. “It says it’s for affordable housing, and yet, if you really read the fine print, not one unit of affordable housing has to be built for that Prop,” Lurie said. “The problem with I, is that right now it would just go to a few nonprofits,” the mayor added. “There is no mandate for it to build any affordable housing.”
“He’s blatantly lying about it, and you know, he’s been corrected numerous times, and he just keeps lying, so it’s pretty extreme,” former Supervisor Dean Preston told Gazetteer SF.
Preston said he understands why Lurie might oppose and criticize Prop. I on its merits, but the mayor has “fabricated things in the measure that don’t exist, and is then using those as a straw man.”
“When someone misrepresents something, makes stuff up, doubles down on the misrepresentation over and over and over, and runs an entire campaign on those misrepresentations, at some point, you have to recognize that they’re lying,” Preston continued. “And someone who repeatedly lies is a liar.”
Lurie’s personal spokesperson Max Szabo didn’t return emails or calls seeking a response from the mayor.
Prop. I has been advanced by the Democratic Socialists of America, and seeks to create more affordable housing in the city. The text of the measure states: “No less than 60 percent of annual revenue shall be allocated to Affordable Housing Production Programs.” To say the measure won’t build any affordable housing is a “bald-faced lie,” Preston said. “Politicians have been dishonest before, but this is just a level of misinformation that really stands out.”
Prop. I supporters argue it is an attempt to make good on a measure by the same name authored by Preston and passed in 2020. Former Mayor London Breed, and now Lurie, sat on, or redirected, much of the affordable housing revenue the 2020 measure generated, according to its advocates. That outcome explains this year’s effort to dedicate the money to a specific pool, called the “House SF Fund.”
Lurie frames Prop. I as a wasteful alternative to Prop. C, which he favors. The Prop. C campaign, funded by Lurie allies such as billionaire Michael Moritz and William Witte of Related Companies, says the measure would direct affordable housing revenue annually from the General Fund into a different pool, the Housing Trust Fund, created in 2012. The measure extends the program for 15 years, until the contribution reaches $125 million.
Many proponents of Prop. I also support Prop. C, arguing the former augments the latter.
Lurie has previously been criticized for confusing voters by referring to Prop. I as a “nonprofit slush fund.” Campaign literature using his name and image continues to do so. It’s a critique based on the fact that the revenue generated by both Prop. C and Prop. I would be allocated by the mayor’s Office of Housing and Community Development. In other words, Lurie’s office would determine which affordable housing nonprofits would receive the funds.
The San Francisco Office of the Controller has confirmed that Prop. I would shift about $120 million annually from the city’s approximately $6.8 billion General Fund to the measure’s dedicated House SF Fund. Lurie’s characterization that movement of those funds would “blow a hole” in the budget is “unreasonable and alarming,” said Anya Worley-Ziegmann, coordinator at the San Francisco People’s Budget Coalition, who also listened to the mayor on Forum.
Previously Lurie has claimed that the cost of Prop. I would require cutting police officers and firefighters. “To think that this measure of $120 million would mean that he would reduce the SFPD budget is a complete lie,” Worley-Ziegmann said. “He will never, ever do that.”
Just as damaging, Worley-Ziegmann said, is Lurie’s continued identification of housing nonprofits as something that is “wrong with San Francisco.” Suggesting the organizations are unaccountable, Worley-Ziegmann added, “creates so much unnecessary distrust around what is a really a strong social safety net that we have here in San Francisco.”
