Supervisors press city on Treasure Island financing gap as staff seeks district formation delay

San Francisco supervisors and city finance staff spent more than an hour on Nov. 15 weighing how to close a multi-hundred-million-dollar funding gap to deliver the affordable housing promised for the Treasure Island/Yerba Buena Island redevelopment.

City finance staff told the Board the development agreement adopted in 2011 obliges the city to form an Infrastructure Financing/Revitalization District (IFD/IRFD) and a Community Facilities District (CFD) to pay for necessary infrastructure. The planning and finance presentation, led by Nadia Sasse, the mayor's Office of Public Finance, identified a current shortfall the staff described as roughly $382 million to build the initially planned affordable units.

The shortfall stems from multiple causes, staff said: higher construction costs than projected in 2011, the loss of redevelopment-era revenue tools, and lower-than-expected outside grant commitments. Sasse and other staff outlined a mix of potential solutions: a 5-year…