This week in affordable housing news…:

State Update:

• CalMatters published a detailed profile this week on the ongoing campaign to lower local vote thresholds for affordable housing bonds, an issue that could appear on the ballot next year. CHC continues to support a measure moving through the Legislature, ACA 1 (Aguiar-Curry), that would amend the constitution to allow 55% of voters to approve local bonds for housing and other public infrastructure, instead of the two-thirds required today. “Why should one-third of the local voters have the power to overrule fiscal decisions in your community?” Aguiar-Curry told CalMatters. The proposal has earned the support of Speaker Robert Rivas, but still faces an uphill climb in the Assembly, where a similar measure was defeated on the floor in 2019. CHC and a coalition of housing groups shared a joint letter to state leaders this week highlighting the urgent need to pass this measure, along with several multi-billion state housing bonds making their way to the 2024 ballot.

• Sharp increases in affordable housing insurance premiums—or carriers dropping insurance entirely—are causing an “existential” crisis for affordable housing in rural areas, KQED reported this week, while threatening the state’s goals of producing a million new affordable homes in the next decade. In the Bay Area, Burbank Housing told reporters its premiums have doubled since 2018 across its portfolios, while in the rural northern part of the state, insurance costs have doubled between 2021 and 2022 alone. “It’s a disaster,” said Ryan LaRue, executive director of Rural Communities Housing Development Corporation. “It’s a lose-lose for anyone in our part of the industry.” While rising threats of wildfires are the main reason for the increases, many properties in urban areas are also seeing insurance costs spike. Advocates are pushing the state Department of Insurance to review insurance modeling rules. The state also has created a new state-supported insurance backstop for “high-risk” properties, the FAIR Plan, that will begin offering coverage by the end of the year.

ICYMI – Top news stories:

Stop worrying, NIMBYS — affordable housing shouldn’t squash your property values
Los Angeles Times – Oped by Rob Eshman
In Los Angeles County, home prices have risen twice as much as wages in the last decade, and the lack of affordable housing drives homelessness, poverty, population loss and glaring income inequality. That’s why Gov. Gavin Newsom and L.A. Mayor Karen Bass have both called for every neighborhood, rich, poor or in-between, to accept affordable housing. But the more upscale the neighborhood, the more resistance there is. Upper-income residents who stand in opposition wield a variety of excuses—increased traffic (Manhattan Beach), overcrowding (Redondo Beach), or potential harm to migrating mountain lions (Woodside, really?). But the fact is, studies find low-income housing actually has a positive impact on neighborhood house values—or at the very worst, no impact at all.

3 state buildings along Capitol Mall to turn into hundreds of affordable housing units
CBS News
The State of California is doing its part to help meet a goal of 2.5 million new housing starts by 2030. One plan is to turn empty office buildings into affordable housing. Three state buildings standing tall along Capitol Mall in downtown Sacramento will see a new use in the next several years. The development company decided to perform the task of upgrading the buildings, which have housed the Employment Development Department and state personnel board, and turn them into 400 apartments. The project was jumpstarted by an executive order from Governor Newsom in 2019 directing the state to make excess properties available for conversion to affordable housing.

Even the Half Moon Bay massacre hasn’t changed affordable housing on California’s NIMBY coast
San Francisco Chronicle
Six months after a shooting on a mushroom farm in the idyllic seaside town of Half Moon Bay left seven people dead, the region continues to be plagued by the inadequate farmworker housing highlighted in the disaster. Prosecutors said after the attacks that the man facing murder charges was a disgruntled worker who had been living with co-workers in derelict conditions on one of the farms. The shootings exposed to the world what local advocates have long understood: After decades of obstructionism by local communities, decent homes for those who cultivate the nation’s food supply were the exception, not the rule, in San Mateo County. While there has been some progress worth celebrating, the root causes of the region’s housing insecurity remain to be addressed.