The following is a transcript of the video above, from our webinar “Remaking the Economy: How Policy Can Help Tenants Purchase Their Homes.” View the full webinar here.
José García: So, for COPA [Community Opportunity to Purchase Act], on the rental side, once you access any of these funds from the city of San Francisco, the property is deed-restricted for the next 75 years.
“What the program does offer is to make sure that the tenants don’t ever have to pay any capital needs.”
What does that mean for the tenants? It is usually, when we acquire the property, the program wants folks to be from 20 to 30 percent rent burdened [that is, pay less than 30 percent of their income for housing]. At acquisition you want to make sure that they’re somewhere around that range.
And then, once that rent is set, the max increase is anywhere from 2 to 3.5 percent, depending on the operating expenses. But that is the max increase going forward.
That is a little bit over the rent board increase—the average rent increase here in San Francisco. So that’s typically something that tenants are afraid [of] when they see that 3.5 [percent] versus a 2.5 [percent] yearly increase.
But what the program does offer is to make sure that the tenants don’t ever have to pay any capital needs pass throughs. We budget, [and we] as the nonprofit are responsible to maintain their home for the next 20 years of that loan.
So, any upkeeping, any structural [work], anything that happens in their building, they never get a pass through, and it’s covered through our loan with the city of San Francisco.
