This week in affordable housing news…:

State update:

• The Wall Street Journal published a detailed story this week on ongoing discussions in California’s state Legislature about applying new labor standards to affordable housing projects. The story highlights efforts by the Building Trades to apply stringent hiring rules to all new housing legislation—and features affordable housing advocates’ ongoing efforts to achieve a compromise that supports workers, while also allowing much-needed affordable housing development to continue, especially in rural and inland areas already facing labor shortages. “Until we come to a resolution, it’s going to make housing policy very hard in California,” Senator Wiener (D-San Francisco) told the Journal.

• Asm. Luz Rivas’s ambitious $2.4 billion funding proposal to combat homelessness was endorsed this week by Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti and Oakland Mayor Libby Schaaf. In a Sacramento Bee op-ed, Garcetti argue that the state can no longer afford “one-time” infusions of state funding to provide temporary shelters, permanent housing, and other services for the state’s growing homeless population. “This moral and humanitarian crisis is simply too vast,” they write: “If we want to end homelessness in California, it’s time for our state to treat homelessness with greater urgency, renewed determination and a comprehensiveness plan.” Garcetti and Schaff say AB 71, a CHC-supported bill that would direct billions of dollars in new funding each year to housing and homelessness programs, is the “bold, revolutionary thinking we need.”

• This week in Los Angeles, a federal judge ordered the city and county to offer some form of shelter or housing to the entire 4,600-person homeless population of Skid Row by October. “All of the rhetoric, promises, plans, and budgeting cannot obscure the shameful reality of this crisis — that year after year, there are more homeless Angelenos, and year after year, more homeless Angelenos die on the streets,” Judge David O. Carter wrote in a 110-page brief that also called on the city to put $1 billion into an escrow account to support housing programs. Earlier this week, Mayor Garcetti unveiled a new city budget with a $1 billion spending plan to fight homelessness, including major new investments in permanent supportive housing. Los Angeles County filed a notice to appeal the ruling, citing “judicial overreach” into an issue that should be handled by local governments.

Federal update:

• Major new legislation to expand and strengthen the federal Low Income Housing Tax Credit has been reintroduced in both houses of Congress—and could advance as stand-alone bills this year or as part of the Biden infrastructure package. The bills, H.R. 2573 and S. 1136, include a number of important improvements to the tax credit program, including a 50% increase in the overall tax credit allocation and a reduction of the “50% test,” which requires at least half of the cost of affordable housing projects to be financed from an oversubscribed pool of private activity bonds.

• “The Affordable Housing Credit Improvement Act is the solution we need now to provide affordable homes for struggling renters and to help rebuild our economy and infrastructure,” said Emily Cadik, executive director of the Affordable Housing Tax Credit Coalition, which hosted a webinar this week with more detail on the legislation. “This bipartisan legislation would provide more than 2 million sorely needed affordable homes over the next decade through a proven model that leverages both the public and private sectors.”

ICYMI – Top news stories:

California needs more affordable homes. This union stands in the way.
Wall Street Journal
California legislators proposed more than a half dozen major bills last year to address the state’s affordable-housing crisis. None of them passed. Most died or were withdrawn, according to people involved in the processes, in large part because of campaigns waged against them by the state’s powerful construction-workers union. California’s State Building and Construction Trades Council, which represents 450,000 ironworkers, pipe fitters and other skilled laborers, has blocked numerous bills it says don’t guarantee enough work for its members. Legislative insiders say the success of the union is one of the main reasons Sacramento politicians have struggled to pass bills streamlining construction approval and easing zoning restrictions.

Here’s what California’s mayors need to help solve the homelessness crisis
Sacramento Bee – Oped by Eric Garcetti and Libby Schaaf
Every year, we do the same dance: Mayors from California’s biggest cities head to Sacramento in search of funding to solve homelessness. We sit down with the governor. We harangue our legislators. We lay out what we need to build affordable and supportive housing and expand services for our unhoused constituents. We navigate the almost never-ending budget battle among our state leaders, pushing, nudging, imploring and eventually getting everybody on the same page. At the end of it all, in the last three years, we met our near-term goal — a one-time infusion of funding that allows us to supplement our local investments in temporary shelters, permanent units, public health aid and other support. We simply cannot afford this kind of piecemeal approach any longer. This moral and humanitarian crisis is simply too vast, extensive and expansive.

Ending homelessness on skid row won’t happen just because a judge orders it
Los Angeles Times – Column
U.S. District Judge David O. Carter’s order requiring Los Angeles city and county officials to offer shelter to the entire population of skid row by mid-October is a brash, bold move — and possibly marks a turning point in the enduring, shameful saga of homelessness in downtown Los Angeles. It was a kick in the pants to local elected officials that is sure to be cheered by many, especially those who want public spaces cleared of sprawling encampments, not just on skid row, but across our tent-draped metropolis. So hear, hear, for a judge who is saying loud and clear that if politicians can’t do their jobs, he’ll pound his gavel, flap his robes, take to the streets himself and show them how it’s done. But before anyone gets too carried away in celebration, I feel compelled to point out that Carter’s judicial activism and gavel-pounding bravado — while well-intentioned, I’m sure — presents more than a few big, vexing questions.