• Major progress this week on AB 2011 (Wicks)! The Senate Appropriations Committee voted 5-1 in support of the CHC-sponsored Affordable Housing and High-Road Jobs Act, which now moves to the Senate Floor. The author took on a number of amendments to strengthen the bill this week and ensure it will provide housing for Californian struggling the most—including a new sunset date (January 2032), deeper affordability targeting, and new relocation assistance for small businesses impacted by new housing development, among other provisions. The bill advanced out of the Assembly in May by a vote of 48-11 and will need to be approved by the Senate before the session ends on August 31.

• Attorney General Rob Bonta threw his support behind a 130-unit Eden Housing project that remains in legal jeopardy a year after being approved by the City of Livermore, amidst an ongoing CEQA lawsuit and an attempt by neighborhood groups to qualify a referendum that would kill the project. The Attorney General filed an amicus brief on Tuesday in the CEQA case, noting in a release that a trial court has already “flatly rejected” the neighborhood group’s complaints and that continued delays threaten the project’s funding. “I commend the city for its efforts to address the housing needs of its community,” Bonta said. “Our state is continuing to face a housing shortage and affordability crisis of epic proportions. CEQA plays a critical role in protecting the environment and public health here in California. We won’t stand by when it is used to thwart new development.”

• HCD also took action this week to accelerate affordable development, opening the first-ever investigation by the state’s new Housing Accountability Unit into the City of San Francisco’s plans to add 82,000 new homes over the next RHNA cycle. “We are deeply concerned about processes and political decision-making in San Francisco that delay and impede the creation of housing and want to understand why this is the case,” said HCD Director Gustavo Velasquez. “We will be working with the city to identify and clear roadblocks to construction of all types of housing, and when we find policies and practices that violate or evade state housing law, we will pursue those violations together with the Attorney General’s Office.” San Francisco Mayor London Breed, who has championed several affordable housing projects in recent years that have stalled in the city’s ponderous approval process, said state intervention is sorely needed: “I welcome this review…For years, San Francisco has made it too hard to approve and build new homes. That must change.”

ICYMI – Top news stories:
Antonio Villaraigosa is Newsom’s new infrastructure czar
Los Angeles Times
Gov. Gavin Newsom declared Antonio Villaraigosa his new infrastructure czar Thursday in a shrewd political maneuver that brings one of his toughest rivals into the fold of his administration. Newsom said “we’re lucky to have” Villaraigosa at a news conference on drought where he announced the appointment. He lauded Villaraigosa’s ability to draw down federal funding as mayor and said he will work with local and state leaders to do that again as an infrastructure advisor. “We have resources,” Newsom said. “We have grants that we can match in order to draw down those funds, and we’ve got someone who’s going out there and hustling to get them.” Villaraigosa said he was “honored to be working with” Newsom.

House is set to pass climate, tax, and health package
New York Times
The House was poised on Friday to pass major components of President Biden’s domestic agenda, capping Democrats’ effort to push into law a climate, tax and health care package that appeared dead just weeks ago. Lawmakers are set to return from their scheduled summer recess for one day to vote on the legislation, which faces unanimous Republican opposition. Mr. Biden is expected to sign the measure soon after. The Senate approved it on Sunday. The legislation would pour more than $370 billion into climate and energy programs aimed at helping the United States cut greenhouse gas emissions by an estimated 40 percent below 2005 levels by the end of the decade. It would also extend for three years expanded subsidies under the Affordable Care Act, as well as fulfill a long-held Democratic goal to lower the cost of prescription drugs by allowing Medicare to directly negotiate prices and capping the annual out-of-pocket cost for recipients at $2,000.

Sacramento County supervisors don’t care about the homeless—they just want them to disappear
Sacramento Bee
Watching Sacramento County government at work on Wednesday was like watching a flash flood travel through a bone-dry canyon. Once the tedium of procedures gave way to public comments, supervisors waited for the deluge to pass over them from their high ground on the dais. And so it was, when dozens of speakers used their three minutes to plead with the Board of Supervisors to ban homelessness encampments on the American River and Dry Creek parkways. The anger was palpable, but the cognitive dissonance was stunning. How can anyone look at the thousands of homeless people and not hold their government leaders accountable for a dereliction of basic duty? If unhoused people live on the fringes of our communities—amidst piles of trash, mattresses, tires, and rusted shopping carts—it’s because we pushed them there. Rather than offer a hand up, Sacramento County chose no hand at all. Instead, they chose to criminalize a form of human existence without addressing basic needs for shelter, relief, food and water.