It’s no secret that buying a home in California is a grim and mostly futile undertaking.

In the Bay Area, you need to make about $444,000 a year just to purchase a mid-priced home, according to a May report from the real estate brokerage Redfin. A 2025 Zillow study found that even if mortgage rates fell to 0%, most Bay Area families still couldn’t comfortably afford to buy.

Statewide, the median home price hovers around $900,000, according to the California Association of Realtors. That puts a traditional 20% down payment out of reach for many families, locking them out of a pathway to generational wealth while simultaneously reducing the state’s political muscle as residents flee to cheaper, primarily red, states. 

Proposition 37 on the November ballot promises to help solve these problems by making it easier for middle-class Californians to enter homeownership. 

Article continues below this ad

The measure would permit the state to loan middle-income residents up to 17% of the cost of newly constructed houses, townhomes, row houses, condominiums and manufactured homes. Families with a traditional mortgage would only have to put 3% down.  

Under Prop 37 in San Francisco, a family would need $40,000 for a median-priced home of about $1.3 million — compared to a 20% down payment of about $267,000.  

Californians are clamoring for down payment help. When the state launched a down payment assistance program for first-time homebuyers in 2023, the $300 million on offer was spoken for in less than two weeks.

But Prop 37 takes a different tack than traditional efforts like that one.

Article continues below this ad

To start, it wouldn’t cost taxpayers a dime.  

The measure would authorize the California Housing Finance Agency to sell up to $25 billion in revenue bonds —........

© San Francisco Chronicle