When Governor Newsom signed his first state budget last week—investing more than $2 billion in affordable housing, local infrastructure, and homelessness programs—he took a historic first step toward fulfilling his campaign pledge to be a champion for the millions of Californians struggling to find a safe, affordable place to live.

This is real, substantive progress, and it’s important to acknowledge and applaud it when we see it.

The 2019-20 budget includes billions of dollars for vital programs CHC and our partners have spent years advocating for—including a $500 million expansion of the state Low-Income Housing Tax Credit, one of the best tools available for financing construction of new affordable projects. CHC has sponsored tax credit legislation every year for the last four years, and thanks to the leadership of housing champions like Assemblymember David Chiu and others, this year’s budget has made our hard work a reality.

With the support of legislative leadership and a governor who continues to prioritize affordable housing, there is no shortage of other budget items to celebrate. After the administration took action earlier this year to accelerate development of affordable housing on surplus state land, the final budget also strengthens the provisions of AB 72 (2017) to hold cities accountable for planning broadly for affordable development. Additional new housing investments range from a $500 million boost to the Infill Infrastructure Grant Program and $500 million for CalHFA’s mixed-income loan program to $650 million to combat homelessness.

There is a lot we can do as affordable housing advocates to make these dollars go even further—and to help even more Californians access the affordable housing they need—starting with making this year’s tax credit expansion permanent.

But overall, this budget offers three important lessons for CHC and our members:

First, together with the passage of Propositions 1 and 2 last year and the many important bills still moving through the Legislature, this budget clearly demonstrates state leaders understand the scale of the affordable housing challenge—and are committed to advancing bold solutions to address it.

Second, California’s affordable housing crisis is no longer struggling for attention. We hear heart-wrenching stories every day about the thousands of struggling families applying for a place in every new affordable housing development—and the thousands more who have been forced to live on the streets.

Finally, as painful as these stories are, they have helped us all understand that our job isn’t even close to done: To bring supplies into balance with growing demand, we need to find a way to produce at least 1.4 million more units of affordable housing. That will require ongoing funding, to be sure. It will mean reducing barriers to producing new affordable housing—as Asm. Chiu has proposed in the CHC-sponsored AB 1763. It will also force us to rethink how to preserve existing affordable stock that allows millions of low- and moderate-income households renting today to live in their communities. These are our priorities. We recognize how much more work there is to do on each of them. And we also see more and more each day that the governor and legislative leaders share the same goals. Now comes the next step: Keeping these ideas at the forefront of state housing policy for years to come.

Sincerely,

Ray Pearl
Executive Director