This week, CHC’s Board of Directors met in Sacramento and took advantage of their time near the Capitol, welcoming Sen. Scott Weiner to the Board meeting on Wednesday. A day later, CHC Board Chair Doug Shoemaker represented CHC’s members at the Senate Budget Committee’s Informational Hearing on Affordable Housing and Homelessness.

Earlier in the week, Governor Newsom convened dozens of California mayors to address their city’s inadequate efforts to build affordable housing, as reported by the Long Beach Press Telegram. Many leaders reportedly left the meeting ready to collaborate with the state to find solutions and opportunities to do better to provide housing opportunities Californians need. Finally, the Mercury News and East Bay Times chronicle the changing culture and demographics of the Bay Area and Central Valley due to the rising cost of housing and the choices people are making – specifically long commutes – to have a home they can afford.

CHC AT THE CAPITOL

Senate Budget and Fiscal Review Committee Informational Hearing: Housing and Homelessness
Cal Channel
CHC Board Chair Doug Shoemaker and President of Mercy Housing California testified Thursday before the Senate Budget Committee at its Informational Hearing on Affordable Housing and Homelessness. He urged state leaders to keep sustained investment in affordable homes a top priority and expand support for the successful Low Income Housing Tax Credit, a proven private-public program that builds the affordable homes people need to live and work in their communities. Find the hearing agenda here. Doug’s testimony begins at 2:38:00.

STATE HOUSING POLICIES

Gov. Newsom talks housing with California mayors, ‘can’t promise’ not to sue another city
Long Beach Press Telegram
Since his swearing in just over a month ago, Gov. Gavin Newsom has made no secret of his intent to buckle down on California’s housing crisis. He has already sued Huntington Beach for its alleged failure to build enough affordable housing. But the governor isn’t pursuing a purely combative approach to dealing with cities, which he made clear when he met with dozens of California mayors at Long Beach City College’s campus on Tuesday, Feb. 19.

Gavin Newsom’s housing lawsuit put 47 California cities on notice. Is yours on the list?
Sacramento Bee
Encinitas is just the kind of place Gavin Newsom might want to sue. A local voter-approved initiative from 2013 makes planning for affordable homes nearly impossible, preventing the wealthy city of 60,000 from complying with a state law that requires local governments to build more housing. The city has already spent $3.5 million in the last few years fighting a pair of housing-related lawsuits. The bill could climb if Newsom follows through on a threat to hold local governments accountable to the state housing law.

California lawmaker makes aggressive push against local development restrictions
Los Angeles Times
Citing the increasing cost of housing across California, a Bay Area lawmaker wants to sweep away a host of local restrictions on development in an effort to spur new homebuilding. Sen. Nancy Skinner (D-Berkeley) has introduced new legislation that would block high-cost regions from imposing new prohibitions on housing construction or decreasing the number of homes allowed on certain pieces of land. It would also prohibit local governments in those areas from enforcing requirements that developers install parking spots alongside buildings among a number of other proposals.

Could this new bill help solve California’s housing crisis? New study suggests otherwise
Sacramento Bee
It’s often held up as a key strategy for solving California’s housing crisis: increase the supply of cheaper housing by encouraging more dense construction near transit centers. New research, however, suggests that the approach known as “upzoning” isn’t necessarily a magic bullet. A study published in Urban Affairs Review last month found that such zoning policy changes in Chicago over a five-year period led to higher housing prices and no increase in housing supply in the affected areas.

5 things from a new state report on housing policy
Sacramento Business Journal
A newly released report from the state Legislative Analyst’s Office suggests changes to Gov. Gavin Newsom’s plan to address California’s housing shortage. Here are some key points from the report released Wednesday, meant to act as guidance for state officials, particularly legislators, who craft policy. Much of the need for housing is felt by lower incomes, with the percentage of cost-burdened households above 60 percent in both urban counties like San Francisco and rural ones like El Dorado and Kings, according to the report.

Op-Ed: Housing is a right. Lawmakers should work to provide it
CALmatters
It’s simple: housing is a necessity, a human right. Our state policies must be designed to ensure that everyone, regardless of income, race, or age, has safe, stable, affordable housing. When people earning lower incomes have housing they can afford near their jobs and important family resources, we all get less traffic, a healthier community, a stronger economy, and more diverse neighborhoods and schools.  In other words, when we prioritize people with the greatest need, everyone wins.

HOUSING CRISIS

Stretching the Boundaries
Mercury News
Jared Rusten saw the tide turning. He had been renting a warehouse in San Francisco’s Mission District, where he worked and also lived with his then-girlfriend and another tenant, when they got their first rent increase in 2014: It doubled. The next year, his landlord wanted to increase the rent by another 30 percent. Rusten could see what was coming. “We didn’t want to move to West Oakland to be there for three years and get priced out and have to move further east,” said Rusten, a furniture maker.

Rising Bay Area rents hit communities of color hardest
Mercury News
Rising Bay Area rents have taken the heaviest toll on minority communities, displacing more low-income black, Latino and Asian residents than poor white residents, according to a new study. The study from the California Housing Partnership of the nine-county Bay Area found a 30 percent increase in rents between 2000 and 2015 was tied to a 28 percent loss in the number of poor households of color but no changes in white households.

LOCAL HOUSING ISSUES

SF’s affordable housing projects hit hard by rising costs, softening market
San Francisco Chronicle
The slowdown in new market-rate, residential development is starting to take its toll on San Francisco’s affordable housing pipeline, as rising construction costs and a softening market are resulting in less money flowing to the city programs that support affordable projects. The amount of fees that market-rate housing and office developers pay into the city’s affordable housing fund has plummeted 70 percent from the high in fiscal year 2015-16, declining from $111 million to $35 million in the current fiscal year.

Over 1,000 affordable homes could disappear in Sacramento County, new report says
Sacramento Bee
Sacramento County could lose a significant share of its government-subsidized housing units in coming years, according to a new report that warns about an affordability crisis threatening low-income Californians. More than 1,000 of those units in Sacramento County are “at risk” of being converted to market-rate housing, according to the report from California Housing Partnership Corporation. That represents about 4 percent of the county’s 22,952 designated affordable housing units.

Editorial: SF Mayor London Breed’s wise plan to lower housing fees
San Francisco Chronicle
Unlike many mayors in the Bay Area, San Francisco’s London Breed has made it clear she’s determined to fight the housing crisis with every tool at her disposal. Her latest effort is a new ordinance to eliminate city fees for the development and renovation of 100 percent affordable housing projects and accessory dwelling units. The legislation, which Breed plans to introduce to the Board of Supervisors this month, won’t shift the dynamics of San Francisco’s unacceptably unaffordable housing market overnight.