The City and County of San Francisco and ULI San Francisco are pleased to announce that we are one of eleven Breakthrough Grant awardees. The $500,000 grant awarded by PBF will help accelerate our work focused on advancing equitable housing policies and supporting developers of color. Over the next two years, ULI SF and the City and County of SF will work together to engage and support developers of color, as well as research and revise the city’s request for proposals process, underwriting guidelines and other internal procedures to be more inclusive and equitable.

Each Breakthrough Grant awardee consists of a government entity that is partnered with one or more community organizations to ensure that the community voices who are often left out of the process are represented when developing local housing policies. A housing policy fellow will also be embedded in each entity to provide expertise on community-driven policy and act as a catalyst to advance policy innovation.

“It gives us great hope to invest in inspiring and innovative housing solutions coming from our local leaders,” said Aysha Pamukcu, Policy Fund Initiative Officer for the Partnership for the Bay’s Future. “When we started Partnership for the Bay’s Future in 2019, it was with the belief that everyone deserves a comfortable and affordable place to live, and it’s so encouraging to see that those with the power to make change share that belief.”

The Breakthrough Grantees’ policy proposals will address the disproportionate impact the lack of affordable homes has on households of color – 60% of Black households and 55% of Latino households face rent burdens (housing costs exceed 30% of income) in the Bay Area – through focusing on racial equity and economic inclusion.

The Breakthrough Grant builds upon the success of PFB’s Challenge Grants, launched in March of 2020. These grantees and partners have proven that the policy process is more effective and inclusive through collaboration. One example is the City of Berkeley, which spent 18 months developing the Tenant Opportunity to Purchase Act, an anti-displacement policy that gives tenants options to buy the property they rent when it goes up for sale. Because they were also a part of the Partnership for the Bay’s Future, the Cities of San Jose, East Palo Alto and Oakland were all able to learn from Berkeley and design similar policies in four months or less and will be voting on these in the next few months.

The Breakthrough Grants is administered by the San Francisco Foundation, which also co-manages PBF along with Local Initiatives Support Corporation Bay Area (LISC). PBF is also partnering with Coro Northern California, which serves as the employer of record for the Breakthrough Grants Fellows, and Enterprise Community Partners, which serves as the housing content expert, technical assistance provider and network supporter.

In addition to the City of San Francisco and ULI SF, the Breakthrough Grant has been awarded to ten other government entities in the Bay Area totaling $5 million. You can find the full press release with more details here.