It’s no secret that the Bay Area is one of the most expensive places to live in the U.S.
State law requires California metro areas to plan for housing that can accommodate 100 percent of each region’s projected population growth across all income levels.
So many of MTC’s funding programs — including the OBAG program in this section — include incentives for cities and counties to encourage affordable housing construction within their borders.
Promoting Affordable Housing
MTC also has taken a more direct approach to promote affordable housing.
MTC recently invested $10 million to establish a revolving loan fund to help affordable housing developers finance land acquisition in select locations near rail and bus lines throughout the Bay Area.
The Bay Area Transit-Oriented Affordable Housing Fund, or TOAH, attracted another $40 million from private foundations and financial institutions to make a total of $50 million available for new loans to affordable housing developers. For more information about the TOAH fund, see bayareatod.com.
Additional Funding
Proceeds from the auction of greenhouse gas emission allowances through the state Cap-and-Trade program have emerged as another source of financing for affordable housing! Read more in this section on Cap-and-Trade.
Original investors in the $50 million TOAH revolving loan fund include:
- MTC
- Morgan Stanley
- Citi Community Capital
- Ford Foundation
- Living Cities coalition of foundations and financial services firms
- San Francisco Foundation
- Community Development Financial Institutions
MTC in 2015 adopted new performance targets related to affordable housing and displacement that will guide evaluation of Plan Bay Area 2040, the region's next long-range transportation and land-use plan.
In early 2016, MTC will host a workshop to continue discussion on affordable housing and displacement issues.
Our interactive, and wonderfully addictive, database has the numbers to inform you about the evolution of Bay Area housing development trends over the past several decades.
