In August, the backers of a $20 billion Bay Area affordable housing bond abruptly yanked the measure off the November ballot after years of work on the nine-county initiative, which would have been the largest affordable housing bond in California history.

Why?

It certainly wasn’t for lack of need. The measure would have funded the creation and preservation of 72,000 new affordable homes. But with the bond polling at around 55% support, backers rightfully feared it wouldn’t meet the onerous two-thirds voter approval California’s Constitution demands of local bond measures.

Proposition 5, which the California Legislature placed on the statewide November ballot, would lower that voter approval threshold from two-thirds to 55% for local affordable housing and public infrastructure bonds.

The two-thirds approval requirement for local bonds has been in the state Constitution since 1879, though voters in 2000 greenlit a ballot measure to reduce it to 55% for local school bonds. The threshold for local bonds is higher than state bonds, which only require majority approval, because local bonds and interest payments are generally financed by higher property taxes.

Prop 5 supporters say that the 66.7% threshold is not only prohibitively high for many local governments to meet but also leads to undemocratic outcomes in which a minority of voters get to reject projects that the vast majority support. In 2023, for example, a $22 million Santa Cruz County fire protection district bond failed with 66.4% of the vote. In 2022, a $400 million San Francisco bond for public transit infrastructure and street safety failed with 65% support, and a $650 million Berkeley affordable housing bond failed with 59% support.

Had Prop 5 been in effect in recent elections, an additional 20% to 50% of local bonds would likely have passed, raising several billion dollars over the next few decades, according to the nonpartisan Legislative Analyst’s Office.

These outcomes, supporters argue, demonstrate how the two-thirds threshold is hampering California’s ability to build much-needed infrastructure projects — particularly housing. Local governments are facing a state mandate to plan for 2.5 million homes by 2031, including 1 million affordable to lower-income households. The state has been increasingly aggressive in cracking down on scofflaw cities, but Prop 5 supporters say the measure would empower more local governments to do the right thing.

Furthermore, the kind of dealmaking required to craft a measure likely to get two-thirds support often results in bonds “so small that you’re not actually solving the problem” or “Frankenstein bonds” filled with favors to neutralize the opposition of key interest groups, said Jason Elliott, a former deputy chief of staff and housing adviser to Gov. Gavin Newsom.

We agree. Unfortunately, Prop 5 is a Frankenstein measure.

To read the entire column, please click here