PRESS RELEASE
From the Affordable HomeOwnership Alliance
June 11, 2001
Followup or questions to Adria Pulizzano 415-861-0777
“Class Warfare” Alive and Kicking in San Francisco:
SF Policy Perpetuates Paycheck-to-Paycheck Poverty Trap
Recently released HUD research shows that the principal way
for low-mid-income families, immigrants and minorities to
escape the paycheck-to-paycheck poverty trap, and break into
the middle class, is via homeownership. According to HUD’s
Urban Policy Brief, equity in a home is the largest single
source of wealth for most families, and is an increasingly
important economic hurdle in American society. Homeowner families
have a staggering 34 times the average net wealth of renter
families, according to HUD!
“Homeownership marks the great divide between the haves and
the have-nots. But San Francisco has declared war on those
who aspire to the middle class dream of homeownership”, declared
Sarosh D. Kumana, President of the Affordable HomeOwnership
Alliance (AHA), a non-partisan homeownership advocacy group.
“By only allowing 200 tenant families to become homeowners
every year, tens of thousands of families are condemned to
a marginal existence. This sort of class warfare against
the poor perpetuates an economic underclass.”
San Francisco’s homeownership policy has resulted in the
lowest homeownership rate of any US city of comparable size.
SF’s homeownership rate, an abysmally low 34%, compares unfavorably
to the national average of 68%.
Using the excuse of “diminution of rental housing stock”,
vested interests have promoted anti-homeownership regulations
to prevent tenants from buying the apartments they already
live in, even when the owner is willing to sell to the tenant.
“This policy subverts the needs and interests of the very
tenants that policymakers purport to protect,” says Kumana.
“Tenants would prefer to be homeowners, rather than continue
as tenants in a rent-controlled apartment. But they are not
allowed that choice. City policy and regulations should not
be the barrier. Bring choice back into housing!”
“Anti-homeownership policy has created our housing crisis,”
Kumana charges. “Some vested interests derive their power
and income from keeping tenants in rent-slavery. Obviously
they would oppose effective homeownership programs that enable
tenants to become homeowners.”
Said Carol Ruth Silver, former San Francisco Supervisor,
who, during her term on the Board of Supervisors was one
of the co-authors of rent control with Harvey Milk, “AHA’s
HomeOwnership for Tenants proposal (HOT), would increase homeownership
while reducing evictions, and includes a self-funding mechanism
to help low-income, elderly and disabled families to achieve
the homeownership they could never otherwise afford.”
Details about AHA’s HomeOwnership for Tenants (HOT) proposal
are available at
http://www.affordable-homeownership.org/
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