In affordable housing news this week, there has been no shortage of end-of-session roundups highlighting the Legislature’s progress this year on housing. As CalMatters put it: Newsom wanted to go bold on housing. Have he and lawmakers delivered so far? While most coverage has highlighted the potential of this year’s new renter protection legislation and a bill that will stop communities from prohibiting new housing, outgoing HCD director Ben Metcalf notes another “important” bill on the governor’s desk: AB 1763 (Chiu), the most substantive proposal remaining this year to increase the production of affordable housing. This CHC-sponsored bill is an essential element of this year’s housing package—allowing every 100% affordable project in the state to include 80% more units than it does today, with more density options for projects near transit.

Outside the Capitol, the Wall Street Journal sat down with San Diego Mayor Kevin Faulconer to discuss how he has responded his region’s housing and homelessness crises—by eliminating parking requirements and streamlining reviews to encourage developers to “build the housing where it should be: along transit corridors, close to job centers.” The mayor says his approach has resulted in permits for nearly 74,000 new homes. “There’s a lot of pent-up demand,” he says. “I just need to make it easier to cut away the roadblocks—to actually get us out of the way—and allow these units to be built.”

Then there’s Trump, whose visit to San Francisco this week generated a wave of stories about his dismissive comments regarding the state’s response to its homelessness crisis. The San Francisco Chronicle editorial board acknowledged the “shameful situation that is homelessness in California,” but rejected the President’s off-the-cuff “solutions”—and in particular his administration’s ongoing proposals to cut HUD’s budget. “Homeless people aren’t in a position to compete for market-rate housing,” the board writes, “What they need is access to very low-income housing—the kind of housing that HUD is responsible for building and maintaining.” A group of 45 members of California Congressional delegation also responded quickly to the President’s visit, releasing a letter saying the administration—with its threats to cut funding for successful housing programs—has demonstrated a “fundamental misunderstanding” of the homelessness crisis and how to solve it.

STATE HOUSING POLICIES

Newsom wanted to go bold on housing. Have he and lawmakers delivered so far?
CalMatters
On the campaign trail and after taking office, Gov. Gavin Newsom promised bold action to confront the issue he called California’s greatest challenge: making housing affordable again. Or at least returning us to a world where this house doesn’t sell for $900 grand. The rhetoric was lofty: A “Marshall Plan” for affordable housing; unprecedented state action on homelessness; and most audacious, 3.5 million new housing units by 2025, a construction rate not seen since they started keeping track of that kind of thing.

The jury’s still out on Newsom as governor — but he did OK his first year
Los Angeles Times
“California should never be a place where only the well-off can lead a good life,” the new governor said. “It starts with housing, perhaps our most overwhelming challenge right now…. If we want a California for all, we have to build housing for all.” If anything, the problem has gotten worse because home builders are constructing fewer units this year than last. While campaigning for governor, Newsom talked about building 3.5 million new homes by 2025. That isn’t happening.

Housing action just half-a-loaf
CalMatters
Gavin Newsom’s first legislative session as governor began with promises to vigorously confront California’s huge and ever-growing housing shortage. “If we want a California for All, we have to build housing for all,” Newsom told legislators in his State of the State address in January, pledging to crack down on cities that don’t meet their quotas of zoning land for new housing and to reduce or eliminate red tape that discourages housing investment.

California still No. 1 in poverty
CalMatters
As the California Legislature churned toward adjournment last week, its members received another reminder that the state’s most vexing — and shameful — socioeconomic malady persists. The Census Bureau reported that California still has the highest level of functional poverty of any state, averaging 18.2% of its 40 million residents impoverished during the three preceding years.

Gimme Shelter talks Trump, Newsom and NIMBYs
CalMatters
As the name implies, “Gimme Shelter: The California Housing Crisis Podcast,” is never short on problems to discuss. The two hosts, Matt Levin of CalMatters and Liam Dillon of The Los Angeles Times, offer a regular take on the many (many, many) housing woes that bedevil California: Why is homelessness such an intractable problem in California’s biggest cities? What can state lawmakers do to rein in rising rents?

Editorial: The final verdict on Sacramento’s legislative session
San Francisco Chronicle
The two big changes that did make it out of the legislative process this year were SB330 from state Sen. Nancy Skinner, D-Berkeley, which will prohibit cities and counties from creating new rules that have been documented to prevent housing production (such as downzoning and housing development moratoriums), and AB1482 from Assemblyman David Chiu, D-San Francisco.

Editorial: Gov. Newsom should veto big-spending Senate Bill 5
Southern California News Groups
A new effort to revive the state’s redevelopment agencies, which were shuttered in 2011 in the midst of a state budget crisis, has passed the Legislature and is on Gov. Gavin Newsom’s desk. Senate Bill 5 recreates this process in a different form than before, but still poses a grave threat to Californians’ property rights – and to the long-term health of the state budget. Redevelopment was created in the 1940s to promote urban renewal. But like many government “tools,” it created troubling unforeseen consequences.

Opinion: A victory for Prop. 13
San Diego Union Tribune
Many in Sacramento spend a good amount of their time finding new ways to increase the financial burden on California taxpayers. Their most recent idea came in the form of a constitutional amendment that, among other things, would have severely weakened Prop. 13. Assembly Constitutional Amendment 1 (ACA 1) would have reduced the voter-approval threshold for bonds and special taxes from two-thirds to 55% for cities and counties, thus making it easier for local governments to increase property taxes.

TENANT PROTECTION

California Rent Control Bill, AB 1482, Still Sitting On Governor’s Desk
CBS Sacramento
After both houses of the California State Legislature passed a statewide rent control bill last week, it still awaits Governor Newsom’s signature. The bill would cap rent increases at 5% plus inflation until January 1, 2030. The California Senate approved voted 25-10 last Tuesday to approve Assembly Bill 1482 from Assemblymember David Chiu (D-San Francisco). The cap would not apply to housing built within the last 15 years, single-family homes not owned by corporations or trusts, and duplexes where the owner lives in one of the units.

Rents in Los Angeles, Orange counties grow at nearly twice the inflation rate
Orange County Register
Why is rent control a hot topic? Because of trends like this: The local Consumer Price Index shows the cost of renting in Los Angeles and Orange counties rising at a pace not seen in 12 years and those increases are nearly double the overall local inflation rate.

Open Forum: Rent control by any other name
San Francisco Chronicle
The so-called anti-rent-gouging measure the state Legislature passed last week attempts to hide a massive statewide imposition of rent control behind a political mask. But rebranding the policy does nothing to alter the fundamental facts: Virtually all mainstream economists agree that rent control reduces the supply of rental housing, obstructs new development, decreases property values and local tax revenue, and reduces housing opportunity and mobility.

Editorial: Keep a close eye on state’s new rent control law
Santa Rosa Press Democrat
One might have thought that after California voters soundly rejected last year’s rent control proposition the issue was settled. Think again. Never underestimate the willingness of lawmakers who think they know better to overrule the people. Statewide rent control is coming, and it’s a poor solution to the state’s serious housing affordability problems. The new law will cap rent increases at 5% plus inflation annually on apartment units that are more than 15 years old. 

LOCAL HOUSING INITIATIVES

San Diego mayor vetoing controversial proposal to require developers to build more low-income housing
San Diego Union Tribune
Mayor Kevin Faulconer said Tuesday he will veto new city regulations focused on requiring housing developers to build more low-income units, siding with the local business community over labor leaders and other supporters of the new policy. The mayor’s announcement came a few hours after the City Council voted 5-4 to finalize its approval of the regulations, which the council previously approved July 30 by the same tally.

Worried about rising rents, an L.A. councilman calls for ‘anti-displacement’ zones
Los Angeles Times
Los Angeles City Council President Herb Wesson called this week for the rejection of a proposed 577-unit housing project, saying the city should go further by establishing “anti-displacement zones” around certain market-rate housing developments. In a letter sent Tuesday to the South Los Angeles Area Planning Commission, Wesson said the six-story, market-rate project known as District Square would result in higher rents for the area’s low-income residents, displacing “lifelong community residents.”

Editorial: Prefab granny flats: Other cities should borrow San Jose’s good idea
San Diego Union Tribune
Granny flats — small housing units added to the property of single-family homes — are a smart way to add housing stock in a housing-starved state. The city of San Diego has helped encourage granny flats by collaborating with the San Diego Housing Federation, the Local Initiatives Support Corporation and the Pacific Southwest Association of Realtors on a 42-page handbook outlining how homeowners can add the units, known in bureaucratese as “accessory dwelling units.”

HOMELESSNESS

Trump sees ‘liberal policies’ fueling California homeless crisis. What can he do about it?
McClatchy DC
President Donald Trump is likely to run into stiff resistance if he pitches federal intervention to solve California’s rising homelessness crisis, absent buy-in from the state. Experts say there are steps the federal government can take to help California and other states get people off the streets, but they would require local cooperation. Any effort to “crack down” on homeless encampments in California, as the Washington Post reported the White House was considering, would face immediate legal challenges and local opposition.

Trump’s big idea to fix homelessness is to do what California is already doing — sort of
Los Angeles Times
President Trump’s big idea for fixing California’s homelessness crisis should look familiar to many prominent Democrats: Eliminate layers of regulation to make it easier and cheaper to build more housing. On the eve of a two-day swing through the state this week, Trump’s Council of Economic Advisers released a report blaming “decades of misguided and faulty policies” for putting too many restrictions on development and causing home prices to rise to unaffordable levels.

The surprising holes in our knowledge of America’s homeless population
Washington Post
President Trump seems close to declaring a war on homelessness or, depending on whom you ask, a war on the homeless. Top White House officials have spent the past two weeks in California studying possible changes. But what do we actually know about the population they hope to target? Homeless America has more residents than some rural states — more than 550,000 Americans experience homelessness on a typical night, and 1.4 million will spend some time in a shelter in a given year.

Editorial: Here’s how Trump can help California with homelessness
San Diego Union Tribune
Given the way President Donald Trump sometimes mocks California, many residents might be inclined to take his recent comments about wanting to help the state with its homelessness problems with a grain of salt. The White House budget actually sought to cut federal rental assistance for 250,000 families. And in comments to reporters aboard Air Force One on Tuesday as he flew west, Trump seemed to frame California’s population of tens of thousands of homeless people as a problem not because they represent an immense human tragedy but because they annoy the rich.

Editorial: President Trump is both right and wrong about California homelessness
San Francisco Chronicle
President Trump has discovered the shameful situation that is homelessness in California. Last week, his administration announced it was considering unilateral action to dismantle tent encampments and remove homeless people from the streets of California cities. On Monday, his Council of Economic Advisers released a 40-page report that painted a grim picture of homelessness in California, noting correctly that our state has just 12% of the nation’s population but about half of the nation’s unsheltered homeless people.

Op-Ed: Homelessness is reaching an emergency level in Los Angeles
CNN
Los Angeles is enduring a crisis of homelessness. We are in the eye of an economic storm — fighting the forces of high rents, stagnant wages, and a deficit of a half million units of affordable housing — that is pushing thousands from housed to homeless. And its cost, the moral expense to us as a community and region, deserves a statewide declaration of a State of Emergency.

Opinion: Solving the affordability crisis includes building housing for the homeless
UC Berkeley Daily Californian
Is the Housing Crisis Act, or SB 330, good for me? Is it good for the homeless community? Is it good for minimum wage employees? Is it good for seniors? Or is it good for developers? I set out to answer those questions. So, I read the bill, and read the bill some more. I read other people’s opinions. I read everything I could find. What I didn’t find was a solution to the homeless crisis.