SFMTA Promised 465 Affordable Units. There Was Never a Plan to Pay for Them.

The SFMTA board voted 6-1 to eliminate 365 of the 465 affordable units promised atop the Potrero Yard bus facility — before a single foundation was poured. The project had been sold as a joint development pairing a modern transit facility with 100% affordable housing. Then, SFMTA revealed why the housing was never real: There was no funding for housing above the podium. It was a future possibility.

Not a commitment. Not a line item. A future possibility. Neither SFMTA nor the Mayor’s Office of Housing ever secured the money to build what they promised.

SFMTA was already facing a $307 million budget deficit when it announced the downsize in September 2025 — and with demolition planned for 2027 and the revised bus facility alone costing $612 million, there was no money left to close the gap.

And here’s what makes it worse: the community working group that shaped this project wasn’t involved in the decision to downsize. They found out after the fact.

The Math That Keeps Failing

The housing was doomed by the structure of city government itself. SFMTA is legally prohibited from using transit funds for housing. The agency cannot use its transit funds for housing. That means the Mayor’s Office of Housing was supposed to find separate financing for 465 units — and never did.

Robert Baca, representing that office, said the quiet part out loud: “We have thousands of units throughout a pipeline in the city that we would love to move forward if financing was available.” No one at SFMTA could pay for the housing. No one at the Mayor’s Office of Housing secured the financing. And no one in city government built a plan to bridge the gap. For the life of the project, the promise floated between two agencies, owned by neither.

The Mission District spent years in working groups designing that housing. Studios through three-bedrooms on a reinforced podium above the bus facility at Bryant Street between 17th and Mariposa, reserved for households earning up to 80% of area median income, or $87,300 for a single person. Working people. Nurses, teachers, restaurant workers. Not theoretical beneficiaries. The reinforced podium that would have supported their homes? Simply eliminated.

Then the agency told the community working group it was over.

SFMTA Director of Transportation Julie Kirschbaum opened the meeting with an apology. “I know that losing the housing above the bus yard is a wound that will not easily heal.” An apology is not a plan. An acknowledgment is not a remedy. About 50 community members showed up at City Hall to oppose the downsize. It didn’t matter.

Everybody’s Disappointed, Nobody’s Responsible

The SFMTA board voted 6-1 to approve the downsized project. Only Vice Chair Stephanie Cajina voted no. “I’m sorry that I can’t do more today than just cast my one vote,” she said, “but I’m very disappointed how this ended up.”

One dissenting vote out of seven commissioners. Then it went to the Board of Supervisors — but by then, the key decisions had already been made. SFMTA announced the downsize in September. The Mayor’s Office of Housing never secured the financing. By the time the board took its vote on March 24, approving the downsized project was functionally a fait accompli.

The board voted 10-0, with Supervisor Fielder excused. Their own words confirmed this was a systemic institutional failure — not just a legislative one. Supervisor Chen called it “a tremendous, tremendous, tremendous policy failure.”

Three hundred sixty-five families who won’t have homes because no one across the entire city apparatus — not SFMTA, not the Mayor’s Office of Housing, not the Board of Supervisors — ever drew a clear line of responsibility for funding. The supervisors had leverage they didn’t use. They could have conditioned approval on binding replacement commitments. Instead, they did what San Francisco institutions always do with housing promises: made them nonbinding.

Supervisor Chan added language urging SFMTA and the Mayor’s Office of Housing to find replacement sites for the lost units. No funding mechanism. No timeline. No enforcement. No penalty for non-compliance.

What Nonbinding Language Actually Means

This is not a problem unique to one vote or one board. It’s a pattern baked into how San Francisco makes housing promises. Prop A, a $535 million earthquake safety bond on the June 2 ballot, includes funding for the Potrero Yard bus facility. It has unanimous Board of Supervisors and mayoral support.

The bond funds the infrastructure. It does not fund the housing. The housing was never secured in any bond, any financing plan, any enforceable commitment.

Every promise made to the community — every working group meeting, every letter of support residents were asked to write — rested on commitments no institution was legally obligated to keep. San Francisco rents are surging. The city is in a housing emergency. And it just approved cutting 365 affordable units from a project that took a decade to design.

The failure isn’t one vote. It’s a pattern. San Francisco makes housing promises to communities. It asks residents to invest years of their time — showing up after long shifts, writing letters of support, designing unit mixes for studios through three-bedrooms. Then, quietly, the housing dies. The financing was never planned. The agency director calls it “a wound that will not easily heal” and moves on. The supervisors say “tremendous policy failure” and vote yes. The community that gave eight years of its life to a promise gets 100 units instead of 465 and a nonbinding amendment nobody has to follow.

That is not a policy failure. That is how the policy works. And it will keep working that way — at Potrero Yard, at the next joint development site, at every project where the bus facility gets funded and the homes do not — until someone is finally required to put the money where the promise was.