The spending package is meant to acquire, construct and repair more affordable housing projects in the city.
Funding will come from Supervisor Dean Preston's Proposition I, a ballot measure approved by voters in 2020 that increases the transfer tax for real estate sales over $10 million. The tax is estimated to bring in another $170 million into the city annually over the next five years. The measure regarding veterans was introduced by Supervisor Gordon Mar, who said in a statement late Tuesday that homelessness among veterans is at a crisis level.
"The city's latest Point in Time Count report shows that veterans are more than triple the proportion of chronically homeless residents compared to their proportion in the overall population," Mar said in the statement. According to Mar's news release, the measure will not create a new preference but will give priority to veterans within an existing affordable housing preference category for which they already qualify. For example, for preference category one, veteran applicants who have been displaced by redevelopment agency projects will be able to have priority over non-veterans within that preference category.