A long-brewing effort to open the nation’s first municipal bank in San Francisco could go before the city’s voters next year.
That’s according to lead organizers behind the San Francisco Public Bank Coalition, who released a poll on Monday showing 67% of likely San Francisco voters support the creation of a public bank. The push comes as the city faces a pressing housing crisis, the coalition said the bank could help address, and as legal barriers to creating the institution have cleared.
“We are in this moment of crisis with the federal and state government having not been able to backfill and actually cut back some low-income housing,” said Fernando Martí, former co-director at the Council of Community Housing Organizations, who now teaches housing politics at the University of San F