This week in affordable housing news, Governor Newsom has appointed Lourdes Castro Ramírez, a former HUD official who has also worked at the Housing Authority of the City of Los Angeles, as the secretary of the Business, Consumer Services and Housing Agency—which oversees HCD and CalHFA. As reported in the Sacramento Bee,Ramírez served as the principal deputy assistant at the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development from 2015 to 2017 and was president and chief executive officer at the San Antonio Housing Authority from 2009 to 2015. She held several positions at the Housing Authority of the City of Los Angeles from 1999 to 2009, including director of housing assistance programs, interim director of the resident relations department, and project director for the jobs plus national demonstration program.

The Los Angeles Times highlighted a newly introduced CHC-sponsored bill by Assembly Miguel Santiago in an editorial this week—calling the legislation a “no-brainer.” The bill, AB 1907, would expand statewide a successful policy that is accelerating development of homeless shelters and permanent supportive housing projects in Los Angeles by exempting the developments from CEQA. Asm. Santiago’s legislation would also extend these provisions to 100% affordable housing projects receiving certain types of state and federal funding. “It’s a no-brainer to expand…exemptions for homeless housing projects statewide,” said the Times. “But Santiago is also right to go further. If California really wants to slow the growing number of homeless residents, the state also has to dramatically increase the number of affordable housing units available.”

In the Capitol this week, a looming January 31 legislative deadline for advancing bills introduced last year has generated renewed attention around several high-profile housing proposals. Senate President Pro Tem Toni Atkins received praise in the Los Angeles Times, San Diego Union Tribune, and San Francisco Chroniclefor taking action that has allowed negotiations to continue on Senator Scott Wiener’s, SB 50, which could receive a vote in the Senate next week. Another major housing proposal—AB 22 by Asm. Autumn Burke—which would have established a new statewide “right to housing,” was held by the Assembly Appropriations Committee. According to the Sacramento Bee, the proposal would have declared that California children and families have a “right to safe, decent and affordable housing”—and required state agencies to keep people in shelters if they don’t have stable housing.

One week after Governor Newsom extended an “open hand” to the Trump Administration—seeking more federal resources to help the state combat homelessness—Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti was not able to reach a deal on specific federal action in a meeting on Friday with Secretary of Housing and Urban Development Ben Carson. Before the meeting, according to the Los Angeles Times, Mayor Garcetti expressed optimism that the two sides were making progress toward an agreement to provide federal resources, including land, to augment local efforts to erect more shelter space for people living on the streets. After the meeting, the Times reported that “both sides say that a deal remains within reach,” but noted that no specific agreement had been reached on dollar amounts or available land.

STATE HOUSING POLICIES

Gov. Gavin Newsom’s top strategist retiring after decades shaping California policy
Sacramento Bee
Lourdes Castro Ramírez was appointed secretary of the Business, Consumer Services and Housing Agency after serving as president of the University Health Systems Foundation since 2017. She previously worked for the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development. Castro Ramirez replaces Alexis Podesta, whom Newsom appointed to the State Compensation Insurance Fund Board of Directors.

‘Right to housing’ bill dies mysteriously in California Capitol. What happened?
Sacramento Bee
A California bill that would have created a “right to housing” mandate died a mysterious death on Thursday. Assembly Bill 22 would have declared that California children and families have a “right to safe, decent and affordable housing” and required state agencies to keep people in shelters if they don’t have stable housing.

New opposition leaves future of controversial housing bill SB 50 up in the air
Los Angeles Times
With less than 10 days until a key deadline, major legislation that aims to increase housing growth in California is facing new opposition. State Sen. Holly Mitchell (D-Los Angeles) and a coalition of groups representing low-income communities are now opposed to Senate Bill 50, a bill that would allow mid-rise apartment complexes near transit stops and job centers and fourplexes in most single-family neighborhoods across the state.

State Senate head saved California’s most important housing bill, showing what leadership is made of
Los Angeles Times
A big part of effective legislative leadership is knowing when and how to exercise extraordinary power. The answer is rarely but emphatically. State Senate President Pro Tem Toni Atkins (D-San Diego) showed a textbook example of how it’s done last week when she rescued from certain death the year’s most important housing bill.

Editorial: Bring SB50 home
San Francisco Chronicle
Articulating the case for SB50, state Sen. Scott Wiener’s bill to legalize apartment construction near mass transit and jobs, a knowledgeable observer noted last week that “local municipalities like Palo Alto are incapable of solving the housing crisis. … When local governments cannot, or will not, solve a problem of regional or state concern, then that is precisely when the state government should step in.”

Editorial: Atkins deserves praise for keeping needed housing bill alive
San Diego Union Tribune
The only way that California can make serious progress in addressing the housing crisis that impoverishes many families and drives others into homelessness is by limiting obstacles to housing construction, so Senate Bill 50, by Sen. Scott Wiener, D-San Francisco, is the single most promising housing measure now before the Legislature.

Opinion: Status quo means higher rents and more homeless people. California must pass SB 50
Sacramento Bee
I grew up in public housing in San Francisco’s Western Addition neighborhood, where I was raised by my grandmother. Violence was never far away, poverty was all around us and the odds were never in my favor that I would be the first person in my family to go to college, let alone one day become the Mayor of San Francisco.

Opinion: California must get serious about housing supply in 2020
CalMatters
Lawmakers who worked to fix California’s housing shortage and affordability crisis learned hard lessons in 2019. Despite much fanfare and commitments, the gap between housing supply and demand actually worsened. As a new decade dawns, we will soon determine if California has learned the lessons of 2019 or will simply repeat them.

HOMELESSNESS

L.A. Mayor Garcetti foresees progress on homelessness via talks with HUD Secretary Ben Carson
Los Angeles Times
Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti said Thursday that he hopes to reach a preliminary agreement with the Trump administration on a joint plan to help combat the city’s swelling homelessness crisis when he meets with Secretary of Housing and Urban Development Ben Carson on Friday.

Require homeless housing? Darrell Steinberg makes his pitch in D.C.
Sacramento Bee
Sacramento Mayor Darrell Steinberg Thursday brought his bid to make housing the homeless a government mandate to Washington, D.C. Thursday, explaining how funding the massive effort would work without offering a specific price tag. Steinberg spoke at a forum of the U.S. Conference of Mayors, where mayors from around the country, including Los Angeles’ Eric Garcetti, offered their own solutions.

You’ve just been named California’s homelessness czar — what’s your first move?
CalMatters
Gov. Gavin Newsom has taken grief for failing to fulfill what seems like a pretty achievable campaign promise: appointing a homelessness “czar” to help the 150,000 Californians living in shelters and on the streets. Newsom’s quest, which at various points had the mayor of Sacramento, the state secretary of health and human services and a Washington DC-based consultant co-wearing the “czar” crown, culminated earlier this month in a Truman-esque “buck stops here” declaration.

Faulconer launches committee to back 2022 homelessness initiative
Politico
San Diego Mayor Kevin Faulconer told POLITICO Friday he’s launching a committee to back a 2022 ballot initiative aimed at reducing homelessness, particularly the growing encampments he says represent a health and criminal justice crisis in California. A 2022 ballot measure would coincide with the next gubernatorial election, and the Republican mayor is widely seen as the most viable candidate for the party that continues to shrink in California.

Moms 4 Housing: Deal reached to negotiate sale of West Oakland house to nonprofit
San Francisco Chronicle
The company that owns the Oakland home where protesting mothers were evicted last week said Monday it will sell the residence to a nonprofit affordable housing group — a decision it reached after speaking with Gov. Gavin Newsom and city leaders. Under a “good faith” agreement announced Monday, Wedgewood Properties, which specializes in house-flipping, will negotiate the sale with the Oakland Community Land Trust, a nonprofit organization that acquires land and property for affordable housing, said the office of Mayor Libby Schaaf.

Editorial: NIMBYs beware: California could make it harder to block homeless and affordable housing
Los Angeles Times
Last fall, state lawmakers passed a narrowly tailored bill that exempted homeless shelters and permanent supportive housing projects in Los Angeles from the California Environmental Quality Act, or CEQA, for five years. The bill was designed to make it faster and easier to build much-needed homeless housing and to block Not-In-My-Backyard lawsuits against such projects.

Editorial: Should California force cities to house homeless people?
Los Angeles Times
Homelessness may be a particularly grim problem in the city and county of L.A., but there is a desperate scramble for housing and shelter throughout the state as well. According to the 2019 homeless count, about 151,000 people are homeless in California, and most of them are unsheltered. California Gov. Gavin Newsom’s statewide task force on homelessness has come up with a proposal that it believes will compel local jurisdictions to house most of those people.

Editorial: Newsom’s optional homelessness mandate
San Francisco Chronicle
Gov. Gavin Newsom’s homelessness task force last week urged the state to treat the problem as the intolerable social failure it is by making shelter a constitutional requirement rather than a policy option. While California mandates that education and health care be available to its residents, as the task force noted, the more than 150,000 Californians without housing have no such legal recourse.