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BAHFA
Bay Area Housing Finance Authority Pulls Regional Measure 4 from the November Ballot
San Francisco Bay Area --
On August 8, 2024, the Bay Area Housing Finance Authority (BAHFA) held a special meeting of its Executive Committee and voted to
pull Regional Measure 4, the $20 billion dollar regional bond measure,
off the November ballot, under the advice of General Counsel Kathleen Kane. In their comments on the withdrawal, BAHFA attempted to tarnish the opposition as being "anti-housing."
Nothing could be further from the truth.
Gus Mattammal, President of the 20 Billion
Reasons campaign to defeat the bond measure in November, hailed the
move.
Said Mattammal,
“This decision is a win for Bay Area taxpayers, and a win for affordable housing. To address housing affordability in a meaningful way, we have to address root causes, not soak taxpayers for billions of dollars at a time using bonds that would waste two thirds of the revenue on interest and overhead while barely making a dent in the issue.”
The 20 Billion Reasons campaign brought together Democrats, Republicans, Libertarians, and Independents in a single campaign, a rarity in recent times.
Mattammal added,
“Actually working on the root causes of the housing crisis in California, a crisis created by our legislature and the corporate interests to which they are beholden, is politically difficult. It’s much easier to simply raise taxes. That’s why it’s so important for voters to say ‘no’ to deeply flawed proposals such as Regional Measure 4: every time we do say no, it helps create the political conditions to work on the problem in a meaningful way.”
As one of the most glaring examples of the errors and misstatements contained in the Measure was the miscalculation and misstatement of the annual cost of the bonds to taxpayers. The true cost was almost 36% higher than the amount shown in the ballot question!
The now defunct Measure stated that the cost would be $670 million, whereas the actual cost was approximately $911 million - a $241 million math error.
It makes one wonder, if after "years of work" by BAHFA's staff and a raft of major Bay Area housing advocacy agencies and significant expenditures of taxpayer monies, as they have claimed, they can't even do first grade math, correctly, why should the public trust them to spend $20 billion, wisely?
Regional Measure 4 is off the ballot for now, but other proposals, such as State Proposition 5, remain on the ballot, and the $20 Billion Reasons campaign team has indicated that they will continue to work to ensure that Bay Area taxpayers are getting the real facts, going forward.
About Gus Mattammal – Gus is the chairman of the Mid-Coast Community Council and an entrepreneur and educator who has
lived and worked in the Bay Area for over 17 years.
Learn more at: 20billionreasons.com