This week in affordable housing news…:

State update:

• The San Francisco Chronicle highlighted the potential of a CHC-supported bill, AB 215 (Chiu), which would create a new checkpoint partway through the eight-year RHNA cycle for the state to assess how close cities are to meeting their housing production targets—and intervene if needed. The bill would require cities that fall behind on their housing numbers to consult with HCD about how to speed up their progress. “We are creating a race to the top so that all cities in California are pro-housing cities,” Asm. Chiu told the Chronicle. The paper’s Editorial Board also weighed in on the bill, calling Chiu one of the “few lawmakers…still fighting the inertia” that continues to slow housing construction across the state.

• Geoffrey Ross, deputy director of federal financial assistance at the California Department of Housing and Community Development, spoke to the San Jose Mercury News about the status of the billions in renter assistance funds approved by Congress in the last two COVID relief bills—including $2.6 billion from the December stimulus package and $2.2 billion from the bill signed in March. Ross says HCD anticipates “potentially one million” renters applying for the funds, and reports that in the first two weeks of the money being available, the state had more than 120,000 active applications totaling $367 million worth of assistance. Will incoming federal resources be adequate to keep renters in their homes? “We hope this is more money than we need, but we worry that this won’t be enough,” says Ross. “We just don’t know how big that need is.”

• The Sacramento Bee takes a look back at Project Roomkey and Homekey—the state’s efforts to help get 35,000 homeless people off the street during the pandemic. “It’s been a tremendous success,” says Dr. Margot Kushel, director of the University of California San Francisco Center for Vulnerable Populations and the Benioff Homelessness and Housing Initiative. “I do think that at the end of the day, it will become clear that this is the main reason we had fewer horrendous outcomes of people who were homeless.” With the program expected to shut down by the end of the year, the Bee notes that high costs (totaling around $4,000 per person per month) may limit its viability in the long-term—saying “the challenge now will be using Project Roomkey’s momentum to build other programs to scale.”

Federal update:

• Major new investments in affordable housing—and the Low Income Housing Tax Credit, in particular—are expected to be included in the Biden Administration’s $2.25 trillion infrastructure proposal, according to reports released this week. President Biden has outlined plans to invest $213 billion in building, preserving or retrofitting more than two million affordable and energy-efficient homes, including one million affordable units through “targeted tax credits, formula funding, grants, and project-based rental assistance.” A Treasury Department report released this week highlighted additional plans to provide “a marked increase in the resources available through the Low-Income Housing Tax Credit and other housing incentives.”

• HUD Secretary Marcia Fudge unveiled nearly $5 billion in new grants that will be made available to states and local governments for rental assistance, affordable housing development, and homelessness services as part of the $1.9 trillion stimulus bill signed in March. “These funds could not come at a more critical time,” Fudge said. “With this strong funding, along with additional emergency rental vouchers that we will be announcing soon, communities across the country will have the resources needed to give homes to the people who have had to endure the COVID-19 pandemic without one.”

ICYMI – Top news stories:

Locals and state deserve blame for housing crunch
Orange County Register – Editorial
Local decisions are preferable to Sacramento control, but California can’t meet its housing needs if cities that are charged with zoning resist projects that aggravate local residents. Consider us frustrated at state and local officials. Locals chant “local control” whenever it suits them, but few Orange County cities mind when the state sends strings-attached revenues their way. Meanwhile, the state continually passes environmental rules that limit developable land and building mandates (such as solar) that drive up housing prices. There’s no simple solution, but it helps to recognize the fundamental problem. Governments have too much control over housing development, which they’ve used to limit supply and drive up costs. Officials at all governmental levels need to promote the obvious free-market solution – making it easier for developers and builders to meet intense demand.

Where are the least fortunate Americans supposed to live?
New York Times – Opinion
Part of what makes the American Jobs Plan so far-reaching, besides the cost, is its expansive definition of “infrastructure.” Biden wants $213 billion to “build, preserve and retrofit more than two million homes and commercial buildings,” according to the White House fact sheet on the plan. He would pair this with incentives and regulations to “eliminate state and local exclusionary zoning laws.” Biden’s housing proposal is not as generous as the housing plan developed by his campaign, which called for up to $300 billion in new construction of affordable housing and full funding for Section 8 housing vouchers to serve 17 million low-income families. Still, if passed into law, the housing elements of the American Jobs Plan would be the largest federal investment in affordable housing in a generation.

Modular housing could be an answer
Two years ago, CalMatters housing writer Matt Levin described a factory in Vallejo that was building housing modules that could quickly — and relatively inexpensively — be assembled into multi-story apartment houses. Levin described the factory as more resembling an automobile assembly line than a construction site. “They build one floor approximately every two and a half hours,” Larry Pace, co-founder of Factory OS, told Levin. “It’s fast.” Modular construction offers a potential solution to one of the most vexing aspects of California’s housing crisis — the extremely high costs of building apartments meant to house low- and moderate-income families.