This week, the state Department of Housing and Community Development and UC Berkeley’s Terner Center for Housing Innovation released a long awaited report on the impact local fees have on housing development. As the Los Angeles Times reports, fees that communities charge developers to build housing can add tens of thousands of dollars in costs per unit to many projects. “While fees offer a flexible way to finance necessary infrastructure, overly burdensome fee programs can limit growth by impeding or disincentivizing new residential development, facilitate exclusion and increase housing costs across the state,” said the report, which includes a set of “policy considerations” for the Legislature to address the issue.

Also this week, Governor Newsom traveled to Los Angeles to announce a new source of potential funding to help assist renters and tenants facing unfair rent increases and unjust evictions. Newsom is proposing to deposit California’s share of a 2012 federal mortgage settlement into a legal services trust fund to support renters and homeowners facing foreclosure. “The issue of housing unaffordability is destroying not just the California dream, but the American dream,” Gov. Newsom said.

Lastly, the Los Angeles Times editorial board called on legislators to find the political will to address the state’s housing crisis—and achieve the governor’s goal of producing 3.5 million more homes. The editorial notes “lots of reasons” for high costs, from the rising cost of materials to local fees imposed on development, and concludes that “California has to reduce the barriers to building if the state is ever going to end its housing shortage.”

STATE HOUSING POLICIES

Newsom puts $331 million from settlement into legal aid for housing
San Francisco Chronicle
Gov. Gavin Newsom is proposing to deposit the state’s share of a 2012 nationwide bank settlement into a legal assistance fund for renters and homeowners, following a California Supreme Court ruling last month that he must use the money for its intended purpose. Newsom announced the plan Wednesday with a visit to a legal aid clinic in Los Angeles. Pending the Legislature’s approval, California would redirect $331 million previously spent on debt repayment into a trust for nonprofits that assist with borrower relief in foreclosure cases and represent renters facing eviction.

California housing crisis podcast: Why Oregon passed big housing bills that eluded California
Los Angeles Times
As residents of Oregon became increasingly alarmed about housing costs this year, Oregon lawmakers acted quickly. In February and then June, state legislators passed measures to limit annual rent increases and open up many single-family home neighborhoods to greater development. Both measures were first-in-the-nation responses to rising housing costs, and ideas that have struggled to gain traction in the California Legislature.

L.A. judge denies Huntington Beach’s request to dismiss state’s housing lawsuit
Los Angeles Times
A Los Angeles County Superior Court judge Thursday denied Huntington Beach’s request to dismiss a state lawsuit accusing the city of falling out of compliance with a state housing mandate. Judge James Chalfant reaffirmed his tentative ruling, published Wednesday, siding with the California attorney general’s office and Department of Housing and Community Development.

State threatens to sue Cupertino over housing policy
Marin Independent Journal
Cupertino, often criticized by activists over a perceived reluctance to build homes, is now officially on notice — the city must shape up its housing efforts or face the consequences, according to a warning letter from the state. In the letter, the California Department of Housing and Community Development (HCD) threatened a lawsuit if Cupertino does not meet its housing obligations under state law.

Editorial: In the midst of California’s housing crisis, construction slows and lawmakers stall
Los Angeles Times
At a time when California desperately needs to be building a lot more housing to ease the statewide shortage that is driving up prices and fueling homelessness, the pace of residential construction is going down instead of up. Even as Sacramento and local governments began taking small steps to make it easier to build, permits for new housing fell 16% over the last year.

Editorial: California leaders downplay the dangerous effects of sprawl during wildfires
Los Angeles Times
The devastating and deadly wildfires that swept across California were supposed to be a wake-up call that would finally force local governments to rethink new housing development in high-fire-risk areas. From Redding to Santa Rosa to Ventura, suburban neighborhoods once thought to be fireproof were destroyed by fast-moving flames. Even new homes built to the most up-to-date standards were charred.

California Legislature should recognize that housing is a right, not a Wall Street commodity
CalMatters
We remember the pain and dislocation brought about by the housing melt-down of 2008, when foreclosures spiked by more than 81% and more than 3 million people lost their homes. It was precipitated by deceitful, predatory loans, subprime mortgages, and fanciful financial tools like derivatives.

HOUSING CRISIS

One reason housing is so expensive in California? Cities, counties charge developers high fees
Los Angeles Times
A long-awaited study detailing how much cities and counties charge developers to build housing in California found that such costs are often hidden, vary widely across the state and have slowed growth. The report, released this week by the state Department of Housing and Community Development, comes as Gov. Gavin Newsom and state lawmakers continue to search for ways to lower construction costs to help remedy a shortage of available homes.

California home builders are pulling back, deflating hopes for housing relief
Los Angeles Times
Home builders are pulling back from new construction, the opposite of what economists say is needed to ease California’s housing affordability crisis. In the first six months of 2019, builders gained approval for 51,178 new homes in California, nearly 20% fewer than the same period a year earlier. That puts the state on track for the first meaningful annual decline since the recession.

Housing crisis looms large
CalMatters
When the state Legislature returns to Sacramento this month after its summer vacation recess, it will have just four weeks to do something meaningful about California’s single most important issue – a housing shortage that takes a heavy economic and psychological toll on many Californians and is getting worse. While legislators enjoyed their summer break, the Public Policy Institute of California issued a rather startling report that “the first half of 2019 saw a substantial decline in the number of new housing units authorized by building permits.”

Some of the Bay Area’s biggest property owners don’t pay property tax. Here’s why
San Francisco Chronicle
When a company develops an office, housing or other commercial project in California, it generally has to pay one-time impact fees designed to offset the cost of additional public facilities and infrastructure it will require. It also pays property taxes each year, which helps fund continuing needs such as additional teachers, police and public services.

TENANT PROTECTION

Rent control is likely coming to Sacramento. How a new plan will affect renters, landlords
Sacramento Bee
The Sacramento City Council is expected to approve a local rent control measure Tuesday in a compromise between city officials, labor unions and developers. The agreement – which will cap rent increases for older housing – will avoid what likely would have been a bitter, multi-million dollar political campaign next year.

Long Beach renters forced to move days before new city law would entitle them to thousands in relocation payment
Long Beach Press Telegram
Catherine Yang has walked into the same metal, gated entrance of her two-story apartment building, squeezed between rows of wooden garages painted orange, for the past nine years. That’s how long 1761 Park Ave., in Long Beach, has been her home. But sometime within the next two months, she was notified earlier this week, she’ll have to move. “I don’t know what we’re going to do,” she said Wednesday, July 31.

Oakland landlords lose courtroom battle, after paying $6,500 to move back into their house
Mercury News
A pair of landlords forced to cough up more than $6,500 to move back into a house they own lost their courtroom battle against the city, ending — for now — the fight over Oakland’s controversial relocation payment ordinance. A federal judge dismissed the lawsuit, which challenged Oakland’s right to demand that landlords pay their tenants thousands of dollars in relocation assistance for owner move-in evictions.

Equity Ripples: Bay Area Gentrification Displacing Communities Of Color
Bay City News Service
Alma Blackwell was born and raised in West Oakland but after years of intense gentrification followed by waves of displacement, she barely recognizes her old neighborhood.  “There’s almost no one left,” Blackwell said of her former neighbors and friends, many of whom were forced out by skyrocketing rents.  “We see rent increases but folks’ wages aren’t increasing, and we see folks having to work two or three jobs to make ends meet,” said Blackwell, who three years ago moved to Oakland’s Allendale neighborhood.

Editorial: Why California Legislature should kill rent control bill
Mercury News & East Bay Times
California voters made their views on rent control clear last November when they rejected Proposition 10 by nearly 20 percentage points. While Californians face an unprecedented housing crisis, they understood that rent control doesn’t work. Period. Instead, it discourages development that’s essential for bringing down housing prices.

LOCAL HOUSING INITIATIVES

Huge rejected housing project may be revived due to pressure from state officials
San Francisco Chronicle
A massive housing project that San Bruno killed in a controversial vote last month could rise from the dead. Facing possible lawsuits and state fines over its recent rejection of the 425-unit project, the City Council will meet privately in the coming weeks to consider its options for the proposed development.

‘Sue the suburbs’ group strikes again, attacking another Bay Area city over housing
Mercury News
In a low-key San Francisco office decorated with “legalize housing” T-shirts and a fluffy, avocado-shaped throw pillow, a tiny group of advocates is trying to sue their way out of the Bay Area housing crisis. The four-person California Renters Legal Advocacy and Education Fund, or CaRLA, has one reason for being — to sue cities that reject housing projects without a valid reason. The litigious nonprofit with YIMBY roots struck again last month, suing Los Altos after the city rejected a developer’s bid to streamline a project of 15 apartments plus ground-floor office space.

HOMELESSNESS

Newsom sidesteps right-to-shelter plan, but says homeless on streets ‘cannot persist’
Los Angeles Times
Gov. Gavin Newsom said Wednesday that he wasn’t ready to back a legal “right to shelter” for those without housing, even though the idea was put forward by two key allies who lead his task force to help find solutions to homelessness. A right-to-shelter measure would force municipalities to construct enough shelter beds so that any homeless person requesting to come indoors can do so.

The Californians forced to live in cars and RVs
The Guardian
The faded, creased photograph shows a 13-year-old Vallie Brown smiling shyly as she pulls back her hair in the back of a large van. She is wearing a white one-piece swimsuit and at first glance, she looks like she’s coming back from a sun-soaked day at the beach. Looking at the picture of Brown, few people would suspect that the girl in the snapshot was living out of that van with her mother. That each night after it grew dark, she curled up on the backseats to sleep.

New law eliminates appeals for new Navigation Centers
San Francisco Chronicle
Challenging the construction of new Navigation Centers in California got significantly harder last week, after lawmakers and Gov. Gavin Newsom quietly passed legislation intended to speed up creation of the service-rich homeless shelters statewide. State Sen. Scott Wiener, D-San Francisco, introduced a bill in December to require cities to approve new Navigation Centers, as long as they comply with local zoning laws, building codes and safety requirements, and if they provide the intensive health and housing services the centers are intended to offer.

Even a home not always enough to save long-term homeless
San Francisco Chronicle
Marcus Emery called me every few weeks to update me on his life — and to give me his new phone number. I’ve got four numbers saved under his name in my cell phone. “Mr. Otis, this is Marcus,” he’d say in his slow, velvety baritone that made his name sound like “Maaar-cus” when he left messages.

Column: Would forcing homeless people to move inside and off the streets work?
Los Angeles Times
Steve Saad, who has camped out in the Sepulveda Basin for eight years, had to find a new place to sleep last week after fire raged through his campsite. I asked if he’d prefer living in a shelter to being homeless, if a bed were available, and he said no. Some of those places have too many rules about coming and going, he said, and some of them separate couples.

Editorial: Unless homeless people in cars and RVs have places to park, they’ll end up sleeping on sidewalks
Los Angeles Times
The city of Los Angeles is constantly wrestling with how to balance the rights of desperate homeless people living outdoors with the rights of the rest of its residents. One area of conflict has been what to do about homeless people who live in their cars or RVs, which many Angelenos say take up too much space and dump too much trash in residential neighborhoods.

Editorial: Homeless and need to find a shelter bed in Los Angeles? Good luck
Los Angeles Times
For years, overnight shelters have had a bad reputation for being crowded, cot-filled caverns where homeless people can’t bring all their belongings and where violence and stealing are all too common. I’ve rarely met a homeless person on the street who wanted to go to one. But the homeless woman sitting on the sidewalk on an industrial stretch of Cotner Avenue in West L.A. was different.

Editorial: California makes it easier to built homeless shelters
Los Angeles Times
Affluent San Francisco NIMBYs have filed a lawsuit to prevent the construction of a badly needed Navigation Center planned for the Embarcadero. It’s a destructive action that may not prove successful — the center has already been approved by the Port Commission and the Board of Supervisors — but it goes to the heart of why San Francisco’s homelessness problem is so persistent and distressing.

Editorial: The housing crisis has forced people to live in cars. Can we make it safe and legal?
Sacramento Bee
It’s tragic when making it easier for people to live in cars is what passes for a bold solution to California’s escalating housing crisis. But that’s what it has come to in the Golden State in 2019. Every night in Sacramento County, hundreds of people – including approximately 100 children – lay their heads down to sleep on the seats of the cars they call home. A survey of the county’s homeless population conducted earlier this year found homeless people using approximately 340 vehicles as shelter.