This week in affordable housing news…:

State update:

• The Senate and Assembly on Thursday overwhelmingly approved the final trailer bill outlining how billions of dollars for affordable housing in this year’s budget can be spent—including $1.75 billion for backlogged projects awaiting tax credit allocations and $2.7 billion over the next two years for Project Homekey. “The package, once signed into law by Gov. Gavin Newsom, will mark the state’s largest financial commitment to date in assisting people without adequate and safe housing,” according to the Los Angeles Times. With no major new labor provisions added to this new funding, thousands of units of much-needed affordable housing can now move toward construction without further delay. A summary of this year’s major affordable housing provisions can be found in this week’s CHC Member Update.

• Rising home prices continue to put pressure on the state’s efforts to close California’s 1.2 million shortfall of affordable homes. It now takes the equivalent of more than four full-time minimum wage jobs for a worker in San Jose or San Francisco to afford a two-bedroom apartment, according to an analysis released this week by the National Low Income Housing Coalition. In Los Angeles and San Diego, low-wage workers need to juggle almost three full-time jobs to make rent and put food on the table. “This year’s Out of Reach report from the National Low Income Housing Coalition outlines the urgent need for our government to expand affordable housing,” says HUD Secretary Marica Fudge in the report’s preface. “We can and must do more.”

• After skyrocketing materials prices threatened this spring to have a dramatic impact on affordable housing construction, lumber prices fell more than 40% in June, the biggest monthly drop on record, according to CNBC. At their peak in May, lumber prices had climbed more than six times higher than their pandemic low last year—and were adding almost $36,000 to the cost of an average newly built home, reports the Los Angeles Times. A recent Bloomberg story, however, concludes that even as prices ease, strained supply chains and labor shortages could continue to affect the finances of affordable housing projects until 2022.

ICYMI – Top news stories:

California will spend a record amount on homelessness. Here’s where it’s going

Los Angeles Times

California will spend a record $4.8 billion over two years to alleviate homelessness after legislators Thursday unanimously passed key details of a new state budget. In a deal reached last month, Newsom and lawmakers agreed to expand last year’s program to convert former hotels into permanent housing with federal coronavirus relief dollars and provide an additional $2 billion over two years to local governments. “Big city mayors have been longing for a day like this,” said Sacramento Mayor Darrell Steinberg, who has served as an advisor to Newsom on homelessness issues. “We are enormously grateful to the governor and to the Legislature for making homelessness a priority by consistently providing direct allocation to cities and counties.”

Lawsuit could delay affordable housing project in Livermore

San Francisco Chronicle

Opponents of a recently approved affordable housing project in downtown Livermore have filed a lawsuit to block the project, arguing in a court filing that the city failed to sufficiently investigate potential toxic substances at the site. For Eden Housing, nonprofit developer building the project, the lawsuit could put off the start of construction for several years. “I am disappointed by the lawsuit and the delay it will cause in building homes for Livermore’s essential workforce,” said Eden Housing President Linda Mandolini. “Sadly, it is another example of why the state is so behind in meeting its housing goals. Even if a city does everything right, which we believe Livermore did, opponents can still sue to slow or halt the process.”

Is homelessness a property rights issue or a human rights issue? We have to decide

Los Angeles Times

Everyone in Los Angeles seems to agree that homelessness is an emergency, and that consensus has existed for years. But there’s a major disagreement about what kind of problem homelessness actually is. For one group, the crisis is about the unchallenged misuse of public and private property. It’s a problem of wounded civic pride, lowered property values and dwindling tourism and investment dollars, with a seemingly easy solution: Just get homeless people out of our parks and off our sidewalks. For the other side, the crisis is one of people lacking homes and the maelstrom of medical, psychological and addiction problems that accompany a life on the streets. To them, the main problem is a rapacious, profit-maximized real estate market that generates evictions and homelessness faster than we can house homeless people. With elections approaching, we have to ask ourselves what kind of issue we believe homelessness to be.