Yesterday’s rally for affordable housing was truly beautiful. The event reflected the diversity of San Francisco — a precious diversity that we are losing as the City’s housing market becomes increasingly unaffordable. Struggling mothers living in public housing, immigrant families, homeless seniors and many others came together to fight not just for more affordable housing in the form of the $28 million supplemental appropriation to be voted on by the Board today, but to really give the diversity of this City a chance to continue to live here…Last week the Mayor accused me of playing politics with the City’s financial health and added, “It will become a war of words.” While I rarely shy away from a debate, I was hoping that this year’s supplemental budget process would be more about deeds than talk.

There’s good news in San Francisco again. Our revenues have outpaced projections. The result is a surplus that has grown to nearly $130 million. Under nearly identical conditions a year ago, Newsom introduced 2 supplemental appropriations — a $16.5 million violence prevention supplemental long on police spending through then-Supervisor Ma’s office and $25 million to jumpstart the General Hospital rebuild. As Chair of the Budget Committee, I announced a deliberative “supplemental budget” process  and called for any additional spending proposals. Supervisor Elsbernd submitted a street resurfacing proposal. President Peskin added a plan to fix up dilapidated rec centers and parks. I introduced a supplemental for affordable housing. After a few hearings at the Board, we approved $54 million in supplemental spending including $20 million for affordable housing. Newsom signed all these supplemental requests into law.

Given the surplus and this recent history, I thought the affordable housing supplemental would be entirely non-controversial. Last year’s appropriation is helping deliver 170 units of affordable family housing, 184 units for seniors and people living with disabilities, and 270 units of supportive housing for formerly homeless people. It also helped Chinatown stabilize 21 units of housing using a creative land trust model. The Mayor is even taking credit for the affordable housing dollars included in the budget. As reported in yesterday’s Beyond Chron, at Newsom’s “Fake Question Time” meeting in the Excelsior this weekend, Newsom exclaimed, “We have put $210 million this year in affordable housing, but that’s clearly not good enough.” But when pressed about the current supplemental by Youth Commissioner Luciana Carvalho, Newsom responded, “I don’t support it. It was submitted one week before my balanced budget, and was not part of the process. This Administration has done more for housing and homelessness last year than we ever have done before. I’m going to submit a budget that increases housing in the City and I will have that budget to the printers on May 15th.”

Never mind that he signed almost identical legislation under almost identical conditions last year. Never mind that his budget submission is due to the Board on June 1^st, more than 2 months after my March 27^th submission of the supplemental request. Never mind that there is no statutory reference to a May 15^th deadline in any San Francisco code. Never mind that he’s never done anything for affordable housing (other than his rob Peter to pay Paul Care Not Cash scheme ) that progressive members of the Board of Supervisors didn’t force him to do.

This is about whether we should act now to meet a grave need that exists in our city. Can we use some of the $130 million in the bank to help stem the tide of families leaving San Francisco? Can we spare some change to actually decrease  the number of people forced to live on the streets? Can we sacrafice a little so that our elders can live out there days with some dignity?

Of course we can.