This week in affordable housing news…:

State Update:

• A few weeks after this year’s bill introduction deadline, the Terner Center at UC-Berkeley has published a comprehensive roundup of housing legislation to watch—highlighting more than 50 bills that propose changes to everything from affordable housing developer fees to local parking minimums. Terner includes CHC’s two sponsored bills: AB 2334 (Wicks), which seeks to increase the number of sites qualifying for expanded Density Bonuses available to 100% affordable projects, and AB 2006 (Berman), which aims to streamline the state’s compliance monitoring system.

• Don’t forget to submit support letters for AB 2006 and AB 2334! Place your letterhead on each of CHC’s sample support letters and upload them through the Legislature’s Position Letter Portal. Sample letters are available here. Once uploaded, please send copies to our Policy Associate, Jennifer Armenta, at jarmenta@calhsng.org.

• A San Francisco ballot measure introduced last week seeking to streamline the city’s notoriously ponderous housing approval process includes a detailed labor compromise that could send ripples through this year’s Sacramento housing policy debate. The measure, sponsored by YIMBY Action, the Housing Action Coalition, SPUR, and Grow SF, would exempt a subset of high-priority affordable housing projects from the city’s complex discretionary review system. Only 100% affordable projects, teacher housing, and certain types of inclusionary projects would be able to access the new streamlined process. To qualify, projects with more than 10 units would also have to abide by new hiring requirements—with prevailing wage required for developments up to 40 units and new, flexible apprenticeship rules for projects larger than that. The full language of the measure is here.

• The Associated Press took a closer look this week at the prospects of SCA 2 (Allen), a perennial legislative proposal to repeal a section of the state constitution that allows local voters to quash publicly-funded housing projects. As the AP reports, there is strong support in the Legislature for repealing the provision, which was added to the constitution in 1950 to keep black families out of white neighborhoods. But even after the Senate voted 37-0 last year to move the idea forward, the proposal has nonetheless failed to gain traction—or move closer to the statewide ballot—not because of organized opposition, but due to lack of financial support. “It’s not the type of ballot measure that automatically draws in money,” said Sen. Scott Wiener (D- San Francisco), who has backed the repeal along with Sen. Ben Allen (D-Redondo Beach). “The polling is not rock solid. It’s a winnable campaign. We can win. But it will require strong funding.” Lawmakers have until June 30 to put the measure on the ballot this year or wait until 2024.

ICYMI – Top news stories:
Berkeley vs. Berkeley is a fight over the California Dream
New York Times
A reasonably priced education at a world-class public university. A single-family house in a neighborhood that is clean and peaceful. For generations, these have been pillars of the California dream. Now an epic clash between the two ideals is forcing state lawmakers to confront the limits of California’s promise, as growth collides with the state’s ability to sustainably house and educate its 40 million people. With admissions envelopes due out in weeks, state lawmakers are mulling short-term remedies to the court’s order and longer-term responses to the possibility that similar lawsuits could sharply restrict enrollment.

Assembly bill would tax house flippers, those who sell homes a few years after buyingSan Diego Union TribuneHouse flippers could be taxed 25 percent of their profit under the California Speculation Act, a bill introduced by Assemblymember Chris Ward, D-San Diego. Assembly Bill 1771 aims to discourage real estate speculation that Ward said drives up home prices as equity investors outbid individual home buyers. “We’ve heard of people getting into their first home getting beat by cash offers” from investors, Ward said at a press conference Wednesday at the San Diego County Administration Building. Those investors typically resell the properties soon afterward at inflated prices, stoking competition for limited housing and driving up market prices for comparable homes. The bill, introduced last week, would impose a 25 percent tax on the profits from a home resold within three years after it’s bought.

Spending $800,000 for a single unit of homeless housing is a red flag for L.A.
Los Angeles Times – Column: Steve Lopez
Way back in 2016, when I voted for the $1.2-billion housing bond known as Proposition HHH, I expected a different picture than the one we’re looking at now. We all knew it would be impossible to erect 10,000 units overnight and bring immediate relief to the city’s homeless multitudes. In fact, a 10-year timeline was laid out. But HHH, sold as a centerpiece of the strategy to end homelessness, has underdelivered so far. “It isn’t what Angelenos voted for six years ago,” said former city and county executive Miguel Santana, who cited multiple bureaucratic hurdles and worried that public frustration will make it difficult to win needed support for future investments in housing for homeless people.