Last night, Governor Newsom issued an executive order directing the entire state to ”Shelter in Place”. This order requires all individuals living in the State of California to stay home or at their place of residence except as needed to maintain continuity of operations of the federal critical infrastructure sectors, critical government services, schools, childcare, and construction, including housing construction.
Senior officials in the Governor’s Office have confirmed that all activities associated with affordable housing construction may continue.
CHC is seeking additional guidance to ensure that project sponsors and contractors with active affordable housing construction sites may continue their production and public health and safety inspectors must also continue their inspections of affordable housing construction sites.
CHC has also sent a letter to TCAC, requesting guidance and extensions on several due dates. More than 800,000 lower-income households live in affordable housing in California, and CHC is committed to supporting *all* vulnerable community members throughout this crisis.
Some of the issues CHC is tracking:
1) Homelessness: The state is working to rapidly house and protect more than 150,000 homeless people, with the governor working to identify hotels, motels, and shelters to help get people off the streets, as reported by the Los Angeles Times. State models show 60,000 homeless people could be impacted by coronavirus in the next eight weeks, with up to 20% of them needing hospitalization. “People experiencing homelessness are among the most vulnerable to the spread of COVID-19,” Governor Newsom said this week. “Helping these residents is critical to protecting public health, flattening the curve, and slowing the spread.”
2) Eviction and mortgage-holder protections: Governor Newsom issued an executive order this week authorizing local governments to halt evictions, and many cities have begun to move forward with their own ordinances. Senator Wiener announced Friday two bills that would extend eviction protections statewide. As the state and federal government work to support renters, it is equally important to support financially vulnerable rental housing providers—including affordable housing. Affordable housing organizations are urging Congress to adopt a relief package similar to its response in 2008 that would provide immediate assistance to affordable housing providers, including funds to assist tenants unable to pay rent due to lost income as well as to funds to increase the supply of affordable rental housing. This week the Affordable Housing Tax Credit Coalition, the ACTION Campaign, and others also made a series of specific recommendations to Congress regarding updating federal tax credit programs as part of a broader stimulus package.
3) Maintaining affordable production and planning for recovery: If this week’s temporary shutdowns trigger longer-term economic impacts, Carol Galante, director of the Terner Center for Housing Innovation at UC Berkeley and former HUD official under President Obama, tells CalMatters that she hopes state leaders will apply lessons learned from the Great Recession: “I think we need to be preparing and thinking about that recovery today and part of that means doing the hard things”—including investing in affordable housing development and reducing obstacles to building, which will be critical to providing stability for the homebuilding industry in the event of an economic downturn. Read more from Carol in her latest blog post, “Lessons from the Great Recession for Today: Housing Aid Now!”