2021-2022 Legislative Priorities

The California Housing Consortium and our members have seen firsthand the essential role affordable housing has played during the pandemic, providing shelter, support, and community to some of our state’s most vulnerable groups—including seniors and veterans, teachers and firefighters, disabled persons and the far too many working families that cannot afford the rising cost of market rents.

California has a gap of 1.2 million homes affordable to struggling lower-income households and on any given night, approximately 150,000 people in California experience homelessness. More than one million Californians live in homes built by the state’s successful affordable housing programs, and the state has long prioritized building affordable housing close to jobs, schools, transit, services, and other daily destinations.

Affordable housing remains a critical piece of the state’s safety net, as well as an essential element of the state’s climate strategy, and there is much to do to bring this invaluable resource to every community.

CHC is supportive of the Governor’s January Budget proposals to continue the $500 million expansion of the state Low Income Housing Tax Credit and make additional investment in the Infill Infrastructure Grant Program, Affordable Housing and Sustainable Communities Program, and Portfolio Reinvestment Program.

We are also working this year to encourage the Legislature and Governor to do more to adequately address the many urgent housing challenges exposed by the pandemic. We believe the 2022-23 budget investments below are an appropriate place to start:

  • $5 billion for the Multifamily Housing Program (MHP) and the California Housing Accelerator Program to increase production of desperately-needed affordable housing. MHP will issue its final Proposition 1-funded NOFA in 2022. Absent this investment, the affordable housing pipeline will stall. Just as important, a large number of HCD-funded developments, with many more joining the list as HCD makes more awards this year, still cannot access critical Low-Income Housing Tax Credits and therefore cannot move to construction. Funding the Housing Accelerator Program will finish the job. As No Place Like Home and the Veterans Housing and Homelessness Prevention Program also wind down, we further recommend amending the MHP statute to allow for the funding of capitalized operating reserves which are so critical to the financing of permanent housing for persons experiencing homelessness, including Homekey units.
  • $500 million to preserve at-risk and “naturally” occurring affordable housing. Between 1997 and 2020, California lost 18,043 affordable homes with project-based rental assistance contracts and/or loans from HUD, CalHFA, and HCD, or LIHTC due to owner decisions to opt out, sell, or allow their developments to convert to market rate. This does not account for the loss of low cost, private market rental housing, where the overwhelming majority of low-income Californians live. Keeping or bringing these units into the affordable housing realm is an efficient way to prevent displacement and homelessness.
  • $200 million for CalHOME. This will assist in the production of new deed-restricted owner-occupied home for qualifying families and help address racial and ethnic wealth gaps.
  • Ensure that the state fills federal funding gaps in the state and local COVID rental assistance programs so that all eligible applicants can be served and that eviction protections remain in place for eligible tenants until the substantial backlog in applications has been cleared.

Read our letters to the Assembly and Senate leadership and Governor.

CHC is advocating for several critical pieces of legislation this year:

Click here to view all the housing bills we are tracking.

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