On Thursday, Governor Newsom released his much anticipated first state budget. His energetic and nearly 2-hour presentation provided many highlights, including significant investments for affordable housing, and as CALmatters reported: “It’s a big deal.” The Los Angeles Times shares details about the Governor unprecedented plan to withhold or cut transportation funding if cities and counties fail to create new housing developments and block home building. Finally, KQED looks at how students who are experiencing homelessness manage their daily lives and what effect homelessness has their ability to learn.

STATE BUDGET

It’s a big deal: Newsom’s housing budget, explained
CALmatters
No wonder Gov. Gavin Newsom dropped those hints earlier this week about an upcoming “Marshall Plan” for affordable housing. Sure, he’d made ambitious campaign promises to combat California’s housing crisis: leading the effort to build 3.5 million units over the next seven years (an unprecedented rate), jacking up state subsidies for housing reserved for lower-income Californians, and easing regulations so it would be easier to build all types of new housing. But what would he deliver? We got the first glimpses of his plans today, as Newsom unveiled his first governor’s budget. And yeah, it’s a big deal.

‘This is a crisis.’ Help for housing costs, homeless in Gavin Newsom’s first budget
Sacramento Bee
Gov. Gavin Newsom unveiled his first California budget proposal on Thursday with a plan to pour hundreds of millions of dollars into housing and homelessness, a start on fulfilling one of his major campaign promises. He said he wants to cut red tape to spur housing construction, too, by waiving environmental reviews for certain projects and reviewing the state’s developer impact fees. “We have a supply and demand imbalance in this state,” he said. “Until we get serious about it, the state will continue to lose its middle class….If we continue down this path, the state is going to be a vestige of itself.”

Gov. Gavin Newsom threatens to cut state funding from cities that don’t approve enough housing
Los Angeles Times
For 50 years, California has required cities and counties to plan for enough new housing so that residents can live affordably. But many local governments fail to approve new development, contributing to the state’s housing crunch. Now, Gov. Gavin Newsom is proposing a radical new step: punishing communities that block homebuilding by withholding state tax dollars. Newsom unveiled his proposal Thursday at his state budget presentation, which also included more than $2 billion in new funding for housing and homelessness initiatives.

‘I want to see the Valley step up:’ Gov. Newsom pressures companies to help build housing
Mercury News
Gov. Gavin Newsom on Thursday called on Silicon Valley companies powering the state’s economy to step up and match the money he intends to set aside to build workforce housing, in an effort to ease California’s housing crisis. Speaking to reporters after unveiling his first proposed budget as California’s new governor — which earmarks $500 million for the creation of middle-income housing — Newsom said he expects “corporate California” to help build the state out of its housing shortage.

A cautious budget with a bold housing plan
CALmatters
Jerry Brown is a hard act to follow but his successor as governor, Gavin Newsom, acquitted himself well – if very lengthily – in presenting his first state budget on Thursday. For nearly two hours, Newsom explained his $209.1 billion 2019-20 budget and fielded questions from reporters, displaying in minute knowledge its provisions and underlying issues. It was three times as long as the typical budget unveiling each January, an exercise that Brown’s first budget director four-plus decades ago, Roy Bell, once described as a “dog and pony show,” and maybe the longest news conference ever held in and around the Capitol.

HOUSING CRISIS

Even Habitat for Humanity can’t build Bay Area homes cheaply enough for lower-income buyers
Mercury News
Rising construction costs and a big drop in public funding is forcing an organization that builds inexpensive homes for low-income buyers to sell them for higher prices than many of those people can afford. The group, Habitat for Humanity, says it can’t raise money fast enough to cover the gap between what very low-income residents can pay and the actual costs of providing homes, even with the help of legions of volunteers.

Minneapolis just eliminated single-family zoning. Should California cities follow suit?
CALmatters
“Zoning reform”—changing how cities decide what types of homes can be built where—isn’t just a hot topic in California. Minneapolis, Minnesota made national headlines earlier this month when the city council adopted a plan that would force neighborhoods previously zoned only for single-family homes to allow the construction of duplexes and triplexes. The plan also calls for denser housing like apartment buildings around public transportation hubs. On this episode of “Gimme Shelter, the California Housing Crisis Podcast,” Minneapolis City Council President Lisa Bender talks about whether Minneapolis can reverse decades of racist housing policy through zoning reform, and what lessons the city can impart to California.

Can Building Housing Lower Rents?
East Bay Express
In 2014, Nick Hodges and Charlotte Wheelock were living with their two kids in Albuquerque, N.M. Wheelock then got a good job offer in Seattle. They did not know much about the Seattle housing market but Hodges told me, “We figured there were a lot of places to live in and around Seattle, so housing was not an issue.” They soon learned that Seattle’s housing prices were higher than they ever imagined. “We couldn’t believe it was so cutthroat. We had figured on staying with friends until we found a place, but as months dragged on, we could not afford anywhere.”

Housing crisis won’t be solved in a house divided
San Francisco Business Times
We’ve learned a few things about housing in 2018, and now it’s time to roll up our sleeves to make real progress in 2019. Last January, the California Legislature rejected more onerous rent control as the solution to the housing crisis. Voters did the same, overwhelmingly rejecting Prop. 10 on November 6 after a wasteful, nasty $100 million campaign that only diverted time and resources better spent on housing. As the Legislature and a new governor prepare for 2019, we need to stop having the same old fights and focus on solutions that are viable and that we know will work.

Op-Ed: Housing Woes Threaten California’s Middle Class
Fox & Hounds Daily
California’s housing crisis is the worst threat to our middle class lifestyle since the recession. Our median home listing price is nearly twice the national average, and besides Hawaii is higher than any other state. Our median rental rate is half again higher than the national average, and is also the highest in the nation (other than Hawaii). When factoring in housing costs and other basic necessities, nearly one in five Californians lives in poverty, according to  the U.S. Census Bureau.

HOMELESSNESS

Los Angeles spends big to end homelessness, but the crisis drags on
Los Angeles Times
This was the year that local tax money to tackle Los Angeles’ homelessness crisis began to flow in earnest: $442 million for housing, and $177 million for services, with $400 million more due by the middle of next year. Officials were quick to credit the new services with a January dip in the homeless population count, although critics questioned the numbers. And while eight housing projects broke ground, not a single unit financed by voter-approved money opened by the end of 2018, two years after voters approved Proposition HHH, the $1.2-billion city bond measure to build new housing for the chronically homeless.

For Many Students in Salinas, Homelessness Has Become the Norm
KQED
On a normal school night, 5-year-old Esther has to compete with 12 other people in a cramped apartment for space at the kitchen table to do her homework. At bedtime, she and her three sisters share a queen-size bed, while her mother and father sleep on the floor. Down the hall, a family of seven shares the other bedroom. In the morning, there’s usually a line for the bathroom. This kind of overcrowding has become commonplace in parts of the Central Coast, as low-income families struggle with increasingly steep rents. And it’s having serious repercussions on kids and their teachers.

Across a diverse landscape, L.A’s hidden homeless live hard lives in fanciful ‘homes’
Los Angeles Times
More than 20 years ago, Charles Ray Walker spotted green bamboo shoots growing along a drab warehouse by the Los Angeles River in Boyle Heights. A Texan, Walker turned a wedge of urban wasteland into a wildly colorful wonderland of vegetables and thousands of toys arrayed along carved, earthen terraces. He built a shack under the shade of a tree and even a home entertainment room with a television set and sofa. Largely hidden from the world, “Bamboo Charlie” nevertheless welcomed visitors, taking pride in the awe that his creation inspired.

STATE POLITICS

Fact-checking California Gov. Gavin Newsom’s Inauguration Speech
PolitiFact
During his inaugural address, California Gov. Gavin Newsom claimed California’s rents are rising, its wages are stagnant, and described homelessness in the state as an “epidemic.” The 51-year-old Democrat and former San Francisco mayor also pledged to build what would be the “largest fiscal reserve of any state in American history,” and weighed in on the cost of President Trump’s border wall. PolitiFact California fact-checked these statements, offering our early analysis on each.

It can’t get much better for Gavin Newsom as California’s next governor. But it’s almost certain to get worse
Los Angeles Times
Within an hour of being elected California’s 40th governor, Gavin Newsom cast the occasion as not just a win, but a watershed. “As Californians, we’ve been granted the extraordinary opportunity to write history’s next chapter,” he told supporters on election night, with the ornate former Los Angeles Stock Exchange as a backdrop. “And the extraordinary obligation to help every Californian write their own California story — even from the darkest of circumstances.”

Jerry Brown’s ‘Two Legacies’ on Housing
KQED
Even as Gov. Jerry Brown took his most decisive action to address California’s crisis of housing affordability, he did so with a declaration of weariness. In September 2017, he signed a 15-bill package that aimed to boost housing construction. At the signing ceremony in San Francisco, Democratic lawmakers said the package was just a “down payment” on easing the affordability crunch. Brown hoped otherwise. “Not so many bills next year, guys,” the governor said.

Proposition 13 is no longer off-limits in California
San Francisco Chronicle
Proposition 13 is untouchable. That’s been the thinking for 40 years in California. Politicians have feared for their careers if they dared suggest changes to the measure that capped property taxes, took a scythe to government spending and spawned antitax initiatives across the country. However, that is beginning to change. With Republican influence in California on the wane and ascendant Democrats making tax fairness an issue, advocates are confident that the time is right to take a run at some legacies of the 1978 measure.

PROP 2

Op-Ed: Care for those with serious mental illness is now possible in California
Fresno Bee
The seriously mentally ill (SMI) are only about 4 percent of all mentally ill people, but the havoc and pain they, their families, victims and the public endure from their illnesses are incalculable. Since California closed most of its psychiatric hospitals some 50 years ago, jails, prisons, hospital emergency departments and the streets have been dismal substitutes for quality locked psychiatric facilities. It has otherwise been practically impossible for a concerned relative or friend to obtain a court order requiring the person to get necessary care.

2020 Election

Will housing issues gain traction in 2020 election?
Curbed
As Democratic presidential contenders start announcing their candidacies—kick-started by Sen. Elizabeth’s Warren’s announcement on January 1—pundits have begun to handicap the race. And in a potentially crowded field, everyone will be looking for ways to stand out and solidify their connection with the party’s energized progressive wing. Affordable housing advocates see this as an opportunity to elevate the policy issues they’re most enthusiastic about.