For several years now, the state Legislature has struggled to find a solution to one of the biggest challenges facing California: How to build more affordable housing for the millions of families, seniors, workers and veterans who can’t keep up with rising rents — while also growing the thriving, well-paid, middle-class construction workforce every community needs.
Dozens of bills have been introduced over the last two sessions that sought to address one part of this housing puzzle or the other, but none has been able to earn the support of both affordable housing advocates and labor organizations. The result has been a political stalemate — and a missed opportunity to support lower-income Californians in desperate need of access to housing.
That finally changed last week with the introduction of AB 2011 by Assemblywoman Buffy Wicks, D-Oakland. This thoughtful proposal, authored by the chair of the Assembly Committee on Housing and Community Development, combines a new approach for accelerating production of a huge amount of much-needed affordable housing with a smart strategy for growing tens of thousands of well-paying construction jobs in every community.
We are proud to say this legislation is supported by both of our organizations — the California Housing Consortium, a statewide coalition of affordable housing providers, and the California Conference of Carpenters, representing more than 82,000 union carpenters across the state.
Both of our groups have been working for almost the entirety of the pandemic trying to develop workable solutions for addressing California’s affordable housing crisis. With the state facing a shortfall of at least 1 million homes affordable to lower-income households — and with more than 160,000 Californians living on the streets — we believe there are a few things we all agree on: Every community needs more sites for affordable housing, along with a faster way to get these new units built. And every worker on these projects should have access to a stable, well-paying job with health benefits and other protections.
Wicks has developed a proposal that does both, pairing new opportunities to build affordable housing on underutilized commercial sites with strong labor standards that ensure all construction workers earn prevailing wages and receive health benefits. Workers in state-approved apprenticeship programs will be given first dibs on these jobs. If these workers are not readily available — as is the case today in many parts of the state, especially rural and inland areas — these vital affordable housing projects will still be able to move forward until the supply of workers catches up to demand.
The official title of AB 2011 is The Affordable Housing and High Road Jobs Act, and we believe this legislation fairly checks both boxes. It will unlock a huge number of new, underutilized sites for the development of 100% affordable and mixed-income housing — including as many as 2 million units of affordable housing on sites currently zoned for office, retail and parking in the Bay Area and Los Angeles County alone. It will provide by-right approvals for these projects to reduce uncertainty and accelerate construction timelines. And it will level the playing field for contractors to create tens of thousands of jobs with good wages and benefits for construction workers and their families.
California desperately needs affordable homes and jobs. Wicks has found a way for every community to produce more of both.
Our groups and our members are ready to work together to do the job.
