This week in affordable housing news…:

State update:

• One of CHC’s sponsored bills, AB 115 (Bloom), was pulled this week from consideration by the Assembly Committee on Local Government and will not advance this session. The bill, which sought to allow affordable housing development on some commercial property, was supported by a large coalition of housing and equity advocates committed to building affordable homes for millions of rent-burdened Californians. The bill was opposed by labor unions seeking to add strict new hiring rules on these projects. CHC shared this Twitter thread after the bill was killed highlighting affordable housing groups’ ongoing efforts to promote “win-win” solutions that will get more housing built *and* and provide stable, high-wage jobs for construction workers.

• California’s Big City Mayors, a coalition of mayors from the state’s 13 largest cities, called on the state this week to spend $20 billion over the next five years to end homelessness—10 times more than any funding cities have received in the past and roughly half of the state’s $40 billion surplus. “There’s no question it’s a big investment,” San Jose Mayor Sam Liccardo said at a virtual news conference. “But spending half of a surplus on the biggest problem we faced in California, and making that commitment last for a half decade, that’s money well spent.” The mayors are seeking to pair state funds with $26 billion in federal dollars from the American Rescue Plan to build more than 100,000 homes—or, as they put it in a letter to state legislative leaders, “enough to permanently house nearly every Californian who entered a homeless shelter in 2020.”

• The California Debt Limit Allocation Committee agreed this week to change its allocation formulas in future rounds of funding to factor in the high cost of construction in the Bay Area—bumping the region’s allocation from 17% to 21%. The San Jose Mercury News reported earlier this week on leaders of the Bay Area’s three largest cities pushing back on CDLAC’s proposed allocations and noting that no projects in San Jose, Oakland, or San Francisco were set to receive funding in the current round, delaying 3,000 units of affordable housing. By increasing the Bay Area’s share, CDLAC reduced the share in other regions—dropping Los Angeles, for example, from 18% to 17%.

Federal update:

• California will lose a congressional seat for the first time in its history based on new data released this week by the Census Bureau—the result of declining birthrates, slowed immigration, and, many experts noted, the state’s serious shortage of affordable housing. California’s population increase of 6.1 percent over the last decade was the smallest in at least a century, according to the New York Times, which noted that large numbers of lower-income families are being forced out of the state due to the high cost of living. “We are at a tipping point,” H.D. Palmer, a spokesman for the State Department of Finance, told the New York Times. The new Census numbers will require California to trim its House delegation to 52 members.

• In a speech to Congress this week, President Biden redoubled his commitment to his $2.3 trillion infrastructure plan, which includes at least $213 billion for affordable housing, while introducing another major new spending initiative, a $1.8 trillion “American Families Plan” that will seek to expand access to education and child care. “With the plans outlined tonight, we have a real chance to root out systematic racism that plagues America and American lives,” the president said. “A chance to deliver real equity: good jobs, good schools, affordable housing, clean air, clean water, [and] the ability to generate wealth and pass it down to generations.” Both proposals continue to face political uncertainty in Washington, according to the Los Angeles Times, as a result of the narrowly divided 50-50 Senate.

ICYMI – Top news stories:

Eliminate parking requirements: Housing people is more important than housing cars
Los Angeles Times – Editorial
With California deep in a housing crisis that is degrading the state’s quality of life, it’s time to prioritize housing people over housing cars. The vast majority of California cities require new residential and commercial developments to be built with ample on-site parking — no matter whether the parking spaces are needed or desired, or whether the projects are next to light-rail stations or half-empty parking garages. The state’s obsession with providing abundant parking means the cost of new construction, particularly for housing, is unnecessarily inflated. It doesn’t have to be this way.

Biden’s $4 trillion economic plan, in one chart
New York Times
President Biden released the second portion of his economic plan on Wednesday: $1.8 trillion in new spending and tax cuts over 10 years for workers, families and children. That’s on top of the $2.3 trillion infrastructure plan he released at the end of March. Here’s what’s included—in one chart.

Why California’s growth has slowed (and why demographers aren’t surprised)
New York Times
For generations, California has been America’s boomtown writ large, with a population that nearly doubled to some 40 million in the last four decades alone. California remains the nation’s most populous state, an immense, churning window into a majority-minority national future. But new data from the Census Bureau released on Monday confirms what demographers have suspected for years. The boom is gone. Dampened by declining birthrates and federal policies that drastically slowed immigration, California’s population increase of 6.1 percent over the past decade was the smallest in at least a century. For the first time in its 170-year history, the state will lose a congressional seat, with the new numbers trimming its delegation in the House to 52 members.