San Francisco Public Bank Supporters Eye 2026 Ballot Measure

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 Francisco. “Affordable housing is dependent on the public’s investment.”

Organizers behind the public bank effort say it would offer low-cost financing for affordable housing development, small business loans and green infrastructure projects.

California lawmakers passed Assembly Bill 857 in 2019, enabling local governments to charter public banks. In April 2022, San Francisco launched a working group made up of community leaders, bankers, financial experts and small-business owners to study the idea. The following year, San Francisco supervisors gave a green light for the city to begin designing the bank.

The city has since crafted a business plan with The Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) approval “top of mind,” according to lead organizer Misha Steier. Next, the city has to pass an ordinance that would create the publicly owned financial corporation.

“We have a business plan. And now we need the seed funding,” said Martí, who was on the working group. A ballot measure is one way proponents are exploring generating initial capital, but specifics remain unclear.

Small business supporters on the working group said a municipal bank would provide an alternative to corporate lenders who tend to favor mid-sized and large-scale businesses, and protect mom and pop shops from fraudulent loans.

“We’ve seen examples of small businesses along Haight Street that have gotten caught up in predatory lending. There’s a ton of advertisements towards small businesses; we get it all the time,” said Christin Evans, who owns a bookstore along Haight Street and has been working with the San Francisco Public Bank Coalition. “Most banks are not catering to small business needs.”

San Francisco is also on the hook to pass rezoning legislation by January 2026 and build nearly 82,000 housing units by 2031. Failing to meet these goals could result in loss of funding, or the state could step in to approve local development plans.

Nearly 46,600 of those units must be affordable to very low- to moderate-income residents, meaning a single person making up to about $68,550 to $130,600, according to 2025 state income limits.

Evans, who also served as vice chair of the city’s Homeless Oversight Commission, said her initial support for the public bank stemmed from her advocacy for more affordable and subsidized housing.

“We’ve had a real lack of capital and dollars for greatly expanding affordable housing,” Evans said. “So we’re in a very difficult situation where our affordable housing crisis continues to worsen.”

City officials are currently battling over Mayor Daniel Lurie’s rezoning plan, which would increase density along transit corridors and is expected to increase zoning capacity to make room for 36,000 new housing units on the city’s north and west sides, two regions that have historically resisted new development.

The mayor’s Family Zoning Plan is not tied to any specific projects, but would allow developers and homeowners to build more housing in certain areas where supporters say it’s most needed.

But Martí and others say that zoning changes alone won’t solve the city’s housing crunch. Thousands of projects have received city approval, yet developers are struggling to find financing to get construction off the ground, and fallout from the COVID-19 pandemic continues to affect the city’s economic recovery.

“We see the cost of living rising, and when it comes to affordable housing, zoning is just one part of it. What’s really missing is the financing piece,” said Supervisor Jackie Fielder, who has advocated for the public bank since before her election in 2024. “Not even market-rate housing developers are breaking ground on projects because there’s just not a market for it.”

Fielder said her office is also exploring a legislative proposal through the Board of Supervisors that could later bring the public bank before voters.

“So if we want to decouple our ability to build housing from market conditions, we really need a public financing option like a public bank, that could, through no-cost loans, help bridge crucial financing,” Fielder said.

Voters passed Proposition C in 2018, creating a tax on the city’s wealthiest tech companies to fund homeless services and affordable housing. However, the city’s most recent budget, passed this year, moved some funding that had been set aside for permanent housing to building out the city’s temporary shelter system.

“Unfortunately, the political will from our prior mayor and our current mayor is that they’ve been unwilling to spend that [Proposition C] money on housing,” Evans said. “Instead, they’ve focused on things like zoning alone, which basically creates the capacity for some future housing that may or may not appear.”

The public bank model proponents are pushing for in San Francisco is similar to a statewide state-owned bank in North Dakota, currently the only public bank in the nation.

Jon Coupal, president of the anti-tax Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association, said the North Dakota example is intriguing. But if San Francisco is planning any tax increase in order to fund a public bank locally, “we would oppose it,” he said.

The poll released Monday, conducted for the coalition by Underpin, a progressive political strategy firm, also found nearly 69% of voters would support the public bank if it invests in renewable energy, affordable housing and other public projects. The survey was based upon a representative sample of 541 San Franciscans, with a margin of error of 4.4%.

“This poll is really powerful in showing that a lot of people have heard about a public bank and they see the need for it,” Fielder said. “We’re at a point where Wall Street banks being in charge of our money is clearly not aligned with our values and our interests in San Francisco.”