This week in affordable housing news, Apple announced it would commit $2.5 billion to addressing the Bay Area’s affordable housing crisis—joining Google, Facebook, and other Silicon Valley tech companies that have pledged to take action to increase housing access in a region with some of the state’s highest housing costs. The San Francisco Chronicle reports that the combined tech company pledges add up to more than $5 billion, with these resources supporting a range of strategies, from directly funding affordable housing development and homelessness programs to providing mortgage assistance to first-time homebuyers. “Now comes the hard part,” as the Chronicle puts it: Getting these affordable homes built—and maintaining business support for affordable housing over the long-term.

Senate President Pro Tem Toni Atkins shared similar priorities with the San Diego Downtown News in a story this week previewing the “year of housing production ahead.” After a long career championing affordable housing and denser development along transit corridors, Atkins says she plans to continue advancing these ideas in the Legislature—and is committed to pushing more communities to allow “actual development to happen where it needs to happen.” “We are not going to be able to take a sledgehammer and just beat it over the heads of every city,” Atkins said, acknowledging some of the political issues housing density bills have faced in the Legislature in recent years. “We‘ve got to be more precise about it…But I do think there is a way to do this.”

Finally, in a positive sign ahead of next year’s legislative session, the Sacramento Bee published an op-ed calling for “fresh ideas and collaboration” as the “only way to solve the housing crisis,” authored byDan Dunmoyer, president and CEO of the California Building Industry Association, and Lisa Hershey , executive director of Housing California. “We agree that building more homes is essential for meeting overall demand,” Dunmoyer and Hershey write, “But we also agree that a primary way to serve those with the lower incomes…is by creating more permanently affordable housing.” Noting that the state is facing a shortage of more than 1.4 million affordable homes, Dunmoyer and Hershey highlight a number of important next steps, including a permanent expansion of the Low Income Housing Tax Credit, a replacement for local redevelopment funds, and streamlined permitting and zoning rules.

STATE HOUSING POLICIES

Sen. Scott Wiener blasts ‘extreme’ local control of housing issues
Mercury News
State Senator Scott Wiener on Wednesday blasted what he called “extreme local control” for hampering housing production in California, but said he’s optimistic about the future. “We’ve told cities you can do whatever you want,” the San Francisco Democrat told a packed meeting of the Rotary Club of San Jose on Wednesday afternoon.

Atkins: year of housing production ahead
San Diego Downtown News
Governor Gavin Newsom tries to not overuse the word “crisis” because it can tend to normalize an issue. At a press conference in San Diego on Oct. 9 where he signed SB 113, a bill that allows $331 million in state funds to be used by renters and homeowners for legal aid, Newsom said he normally steers clear of the word, but the issue of affordable housing in California has truly become a crisis.

Sacramento Report: What’s Next for SB 50
Voice of San Diego
At VOSD’s Politifest this past weekend, the number of the day was 50, as in SB 50. Virtually every panel and discussion at our housing and transportation summit eventually brought up the measure by Sen. Scott Wiener that would force local cities to allow more home-building near transit and job centers. The bill was put on hold last year, and will return in the next legislative session for further debate.

California initiative to raise property tax on businesses gains support from L.A. mayor
Sacramento Bee
Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti on Wednesday announced he’s backing a campaign to raise taxes on business properties in California, joining powerful unions in supporting a proposal that would raise money for schools and local governments. The proposed ballot measure would change the state’s 1978 law known as Proposition 13, which limited property taxes by basing them on value at purchase, as opposed to current assessed value.

HOUSING CRISIS

Coastal cities give in to growth. Southern California favors less housing in Inland Empire
Los Angeles Times
In a dramatic shift to how Southern California cities plan to grow over the next decade, a regional agency decided Thursday to push for more housing in coastal rather than inland communities. Under the plan, communities in Los Angeles and Orange counties will have to accommodate more than 1 million new houses — more than triple the amount of both Riverside and San Bernardino counties.

Who Owns Silicon Valley?
Mercury News
IN A REGION where real estate equals influence, prestige and prosperity, just 10 power brokers — a mix of technology behemoths, commercial and residential developers and one private university — own about $59.2 billion in taxable property, making them the largest landowners in Silicon Valley.

Apple, Google and Facebook committed $4.5 billion for housing. Now comes the hard part
San Francisco Chronicle
As Apple built the Bay Area’s most valuable building, its new $3.6 billion headquarters that opened in 2017, the housing shortage intensified. The tech giant stayed largely out of it, paying $5.85 million to help fund only 19 affordable housing units in its hometown of Cupertino. It was neutral as a battle raged over the last few years about redeveloping its neighbor, the defunct Vallco Mall, into housing and offices.

I’ve covered California’s housing crisis for years. Living it is a different story
Los Angeles Times
My move from Sacramento to Los Angeles began with acceptance. My rent was going to go up — and it was going to go up a lot. For close to four years, I’ve been writing for The Times about California’s housing affordability problems. I’ve worked in the paper’s bureau in Sacramento, focusing on government’s response to rising home prices, rents and homelessness. I’ve chased lawmakers in a six-block radius around the state Capitol, and kept a close eye on the eye-popping stats about the cost of living.

Women of color face extra burdens in Calif. housing crisis, study says
Fox Los Angeles
California’s ongoing housing crisis is exacting an especially heavy toll on women of color, who face systemic barriers to opportunity in the Southland and elsewhere, including wage discrimination, biases in the workplace, unsafe transit options and a lack of access to affordable daycare, according to a USC study released Thursday.

Editorial: SoCal desperately needs more housing. Westside, South Bay, Orange County — that means you
Los Angeles Times
California’s elected leaders talk a good game on climate change, sustainability and the housing crisis. But when it comes to actually changing the sprawling land-use patterns that have clogged the freeways, multiplied greenhouse gas emissions, exacerbated economic inequality and sent the cost of housing sky high, they’ve been MIA.

Editorial: Affordable Rents at the iPad
Wall Street Journal
Silicon Valley wants to solve California’s housing crunch. Apple pledged Monday to put $2.5 billion toward addressing the “availability and affordability crisis.” The effort will include “mortgage assistance” for new home-buyers, and Apple will make available for housing development about $300 million of land it owns in San Jose.

Opinion: Fresh ideas and collaboration is the only way to solve California’s housing crisis
Sacramento Bee
Tackling California’s housing affordability and supply crisis requires fresh, new approaches – and close collaborations to achieve them. That goes not just for policymakers but for advocates of different backgrounds, including ourselves. We recognize that to create a California with homes for all, we need to think, act and do business differently. California needs to add more homes, especially homes that are affordable to families struggling the most to make ends meet. For these families, we are 1.4 million homes short.

Opinion: Californians can collectively combat housing crisis
Mercury News
Point fingers. Or join hands. California’s housing crisis, three decades in creation, impacts every community in our state. It also provides us with a collective opportunity — and responsibility — to address it. Context: It’s been 30 years — 1989 — since our state consistently met its annual housing production goals to keep pace with our population. We won’t fix it overnight, but we must work to improve it every day. 

Opinion: Ease the affordable-housing burden for older Californians
San Francisco Chronicle
The disproportionate impact of evictions and soaring rents on older Californians is a frequently overlooked element of the state’s affordable housing crisis. As industry giants Apple, Google and Facebook announce collective pledges of $4.5 billion toward addressing the affordable housing in the state, it is critical to recognize the impact of population aging on our housing needs over the next decade.

LOCAL HOUSING INITIATIVES

Huntington Beach weighs providing loan for affordable-housing development, plus changes to housing plans
Los Angeles Times
A new affordable-housing project could soon be on the horizon in Huntington Beach, depending on what the City Council decides on a loan agreement with developer Jamboree Housing Corp. If the council agrees Monday, the city would provide a $3-million loan for Jamboree, a nonprofit housing developer based in Irvine, to acquire the land for the project, which it needs to secure funding for the proposal from the state and county, city staff said.

HOMELESSNESS

Living on the edge in the homeless encampments of Los Angeles
Reuters
After years on the street, Kimberly Decoursey spends her nights at a Los Angeles temporary housing site called the Hollywood Studio Club. But by day, she can still be found at a highway off-ramp with her homeless fiance and a less rule-bound street community.

Los Angeles sued over homeless housing money by AIDS nonprofit
Los Angeles Times
An AIDS foundation that has tangled with the city over real estate development and lambasted its handling of the homelessness crisis is now suing Los Angeles, arguing that it was improperly turned down for funding to house homeless people. In its lawsuit, the AIDS Healthcare Foundation accused the city of violating L.A. rules when the foundation was rejected for nearly $25 million in funding from Proposition HHH, a $1.2-billion bond measure approved by voters.

‘Homeless courts’ are meant to get people off the street. But is it working in Sacramento?
Fresno Bee
Before the lawyers assembled in the modest conference room at the Tommy Clinkenbeard Legal Clinic, nearly two dozen women and men were already lined up against the lobby walls waiting for a fleeting chance at relief. Inside, they hoped to be freed from a revolving door of debt impossible for some to escape. 

Column: Is homeless battle really becoming mental health care vs. housing?
San Diego Union Tribune
The number of homeless people with mental health or substance abuse issues is eye-popping. A large majority of the people living outdoors in San Diego have problems with one or both, according to this year’s annual homeless count report. It’s not just here. Studies report high levels of mental illness and substance abuse among homeless people elsewhere.

Commentary: Why conservatorship won’t help with San Diego homelessness crisis
San Diego Union Tribune
Recently, two San Diego County supervisors announced they are “moving quickly” to implement a pilot program for a revised conservatorship law — Senate Bill 40. The bill claims to “assist” unsheltered people with serious mental illness and substance abuse disorders, and the supervisors stated: “We must seriously scrutinize every viable option to help address the homeless epidemic in San Diego and throughout California.”

To solve homelessness, Californians must treat certain crimes as cries for help
CalMatters
Those of us who have watched a friend or family member wrestle with addiction or cope with mental illness recognize that certain acts are a cry for help.  For one of my friends, it was getting into a car accident while under the influence, with her young children inside.