This week, Governor Newsom delivered his first State of the State address and invited leaders of 45 cities are not adequately planning for housing to a conversation aimed at addressing the barriers to growth and finding ways to work together, as reported by the Orange County Register.

The Mercury News details the decline of affordable housing in the Bay Area and array of reasons, noting the pressures of gentrification, existing lack of available units for low-income residents and financial incentives for landlords to convert units to market rate are increasingly pushing already vulnerable communities – especially low-income residents and communities of colors – away from being able to live near their jobs, families, and other support networks.

Finally, the Huffington Post looks at ambitious housing policies across cities and state that are being attempted and trends to expect in 2019.

STATE HOUSING POLICIES

Gov. Gavin Newsom calls out cities that fail to plan for housing
Orange County Register
Gov. Gavin Newsom announced Tuesday he plans to invite leaders of 45 noncompliant California cities and two counties to a “candid conversation” aimed at encouraging them to find “the political courage to build their fair share of housing.” The list includes 15 cities in Los Angeles County and six in Orange, Riverside and San Bernardino counties that have failed to draft general plans meeting minimum housing needs at all income levels.

California housing crisis podcast: All you need to know about Gov. Newsom’s fight with Huntington Beach
Los Angeles Times
Within the last month, the state of California and the Orange County city of Huntington Beach have filed three lawsuits against each other over the state’s housing laws. California’s case, pushed by Gov. Gavin Newsom, contends that Huntington Beach violated state rules requiring cities to set aside sufficient land for housing development to meet growth projections. Huntington Beach is countering in two separate cases that new state laws designed to force cities to approve housing projects and increase the amount of land they need to zone for development are unconstitutional incursions on local authority.

Huntington Beach legislator: Newsom housing lawsuit “seemed like selective prosecution”
CALmatters
A conservative Huntington Beach legislator called a state lawsuit aimed at compelling the Orange County city to build more housing a “literal cannonball” from Gov. Gavin Newsom—adding that it “seemed like selective prosecution” when dozens of other California cities could be blamed for not doing their share to alleviate California’s housing shortage. On “Gimme Shelter: The California Housing Crisis Podcast,” state Sen. John Moorlach, a Republican who represents about half of the seaside city of 200,000, wouldn’t go so far as to call the state lawsuit politically motivated.

PolitiFact California: Gavin Newsom’s Housing Tax Credit Promise Is ‘In The Works’
PolitFact
On the campaign trail, Gavin Newsom promised a “Marshall Plan” to confront California’s affordable housing crisis. He said he’d help the state build its way out of the problem by cutting red tape and, notably, boosting money for the state’s low-income tax credit by more than five-fold. Here’s the specific promise now-Gov. Newsom made about the tax credit: “Increase affordable housing tax credit from $85 million to $500 million, phased in over a few years,” to spur new housing development.

Here’s who invested in Gavin Newsom – and what they want him to do
Sacramento Bee
While campaigning for governor last year, Gavin Newsom said he wouldn’t be swayed by political donations. Just because an organization supports you, he said, you’re not necessarily “an apologist for their point of view.” That doesn’t mean donors aren’t trying. Labor unions, housing developers and wealthy entrepreneurs are among the thousands of people and groups who gave money to help elect Newsom, according to the final disclosure reports filed by his campaign.

HOUSING CRISIS

Housing meant for the Bay Area’s poorest residents is slowly vanishing
Mercury News
As Bay Area communities struggle to build enough housing for their poorest residents, one factor keeps threatening their progress: the affordable housing they already have is slowing disappearing. The five-county Bay Area has lost 2,128 subsidized affordable homes since 1997, according to a report released Tuesday by the California Housing Partnership. Another 5,128 homes — or 5 percent of the region’s existing affordable housing stock — are at risk of becoming too expensive for their low-income tenants.

More Californians are considering fleeing the state as they blame sky-high costs, survey finds
CNBC
A growing number of Californians are contemplating moving from the state — and not due to wildfires or earthquakes but the sky-high cost of living, according to a survey released Wednesday. The online survey, conducted last month by Edelman Intelligence, found sentiment of leaving the nation’s most populous state highest among millennials. Fifty-three percent of Californians surveyed are considering fleeing, representing a jump over the 49 percent polled a year ago.

Aging in place—with someone else
Curbed
When Cate first received an informational postcard about the services offered by Affordable Living for the Aging, she tucked it away. Cate, who is in her 50s, has a body-work practice and thought it might be a good resource for one of her older clients. “But then my situation started to change,” remembers Cate, “and I thought, huh—maybe this is for me.” Cate lived in Culver City, a small city on the west side of Los Angeles. She loved Culver City’s walkable neighborhoods, public amenities like parks and a sparkling city pool, and having a short commute to work in the nearby city of Santa Monica—without paying Santa Monica rent prices.

Editorial: As the Bay Area’s housing crisis continues, segregation grows
San Francisco Chronicle
The Bay Area’s housing crisis isn’t just straining residents’ wallets. According to a new study from UC Berkeley and the California Housing Partnership, it’s resegregating cities, displacing minority communities and exacerbating historical patterns of racial and ethnic inequality. The researchers found that communities of color are particularly vulnerable to rapid increases in rental and housing prices. Since the Bay Area has experienced consistent, dramatic spikes in the cost of housing since the end of the Great Recession, it follows that these communities have been hit the hardest by the housing crisis.

Op-Ed: Restoring the California Dream, not nailing its coffin
Orange County Register
Virtually everyone, including Gov. Gavin Newsom, is aware of the severity of California’s housing crisis. The bad news is that most proposals floating in Sacramento are likely to do very little to address our housing shortage. Newsom has promised to have 3.5 million homes built over the next seven years to solve the problem. That is, conservatively stated, more than 2.6 million that would be built at the current rate of construction.

LOCAL HOUSING INITIATIVES

Breed prepares bill to make affordable housing cheaper to build
San Francisco Chronicle
San Francisco Mayor London Breed is readying legislation to eliminate thousands of dollars in fees the city charges when 100 percent affordable housing projects and accessory dwelling units are built or renovated. The ordinance — which could be introduced at the Board of Supervisors’ meeting Tuesday meeting or next week — is Breed’s latest effort to chip away at what she sees as the administrative forces that make it harder to build housing.

Bay Area granny flats: When in-law units become outlaws
Mercury News
Stacey Sonnenshein got some bad news when she spoke to Contra Costa County planners about making a minor addition to her 60-year-old hillside home. The county had no record that a decades-old basement apartment, rented to a friend, was built legally. Sonnenshein was told to either evict the tenant or do a renovation that she and her partner couldn’t afford. Sonnenshein wishes she had never said a word to the county. “I would tell people to never apply for a permit. Never let them on your property,” said Sonnenshein, a veterinarian in Berkeley. “Don’t engage with them in any way.”

NATIONAL HOUSING POLICIES

The Four Ideas That Could Define Housing Policy in 2019
Huffington Post
2019 is only two months old and it is already the most ambitious year for housing policy in a decade. States and cities are taking up laws that once seemed impossible and issues that once seemed intractable. The scale of the problem is immense. Home prices are rising twice as fast as wages. According to the National Low Income Housing Coalition, a minimum-wage worker can’t afford to rent a two-bedroom apartment anywhere in the country.

HOMELESSNESS

Sacramento Mayor Darrell Steinberg To Head California’s New Homelessness Commission
Capital Public Radio
Health care and housing advocates are increasingly trying to address mental illness, substance addiction and homelessness all at once, instead of providing one-time assistance in emergency rooms and shelters. Sacramento Mayor Darrell Steinberg has long pushed for this strategy — and now he’ll be championing it for California Gov. Gavin Newsom. At his State of the State address Tuesday, the governor announced that Steinberg will lead the new Commission on Homelessness & Supportive Housing, with the goal of addressing the underlying causes that keep people on the streets.

Frustrated With The Slow Response Of Government, Californians Are Serving Their Homeless Neighbors Themselves
KPCC
Sidewalk shantytowns are as iconic as palm trees in California these days. Though state and local governments are finally spending big on the homelessness, they’re not moving fast enough. That’s the case argued by a new generation of homeless advocates in California, despite billions of dollars earmarked to address homelessness by state and local governments. As inequality increases, and encampments sprout in virtually every city statewide, some Californians are taking it upon themselves to address the pressing needs of homeless people in their neighborhoods, doing the work they think government should be doing, but isn’t.