This week in affordable housing news…:

State Update:

• The Legislature quietly approved a wave of affordable housing legislation this year—including several bills sponsored by CHC—that could represent a “sea change” in California’s response to the housing crisis, according to a story in CalMatters. “You may not have seen the headlines (there weren’t any). You may have missed the raucous debate (there wasn’t much of one),” says the piece. “But with the end of the legislative session last week, California is now on the verge of laying down a welcome mat for most major affordable housing projects across the state.” The source of this optimism isn’t just one piece of legislation or policy change—but the combined effect of a half-dozen bills, including the CHC-sponsored SB 423 (Wiener) and AB 1449 (Alvarez), paired with years of steady progress on state enforcement. “You’ve got really strong laws, clear exemptions, and an attorney general who’s willing to step up and say you got to build it,” Eden Housing’s Linda Mandolini tells CalMatters. “This is the best it has been in California.”

• The Los Angeles Times published a story on another CHC-supported bill that advanced last week, ACA 1 (Aguiar-Curry), which would let voters decide in the November 2024 election whether to lower vote thresholds for local housing bond measures. “Our state and local governments are under enormous pressure to address an ongoing crisis with housing and homelessness,” says the bill’s author, Asm. Cecilia Aguiar-Curry (D-Winters). “You cannot have housing without roads and sewers and public safety facilities. And approving ACA 1 will provide the most accountable transparent method in our state for doing so.” The story includes supportive comments from the League of Cities, noting significant numbers of local measures regularly fail under the current system, even with more than 60% of the vote. The Times reports that Asm. Aguiar-Curry plans to introduce clean-up legislation early next year to “clarify remaining questions and ease opposition to the measure.”

• Governor Newsom and State Insurance Commissioner Ricardo Lara took action this week to address the state’s increasingly precarious insurance market—a positive sign after a legislative deal on the issue collapsed before the end of session. Newsom issued an executive order on Thursday urging Lara to take “prompt regulatory action” to stabilize a market that has seen some insurers stop issuing policies in California. “It is critical that California’s insurance market works to protect homes and businesses in every corner of our state,” the governor said. Lara followed up late Thursday with an announcement that the state had reached an agreement with wildlife insurance companies—and was developing regulations for new rate-setting models that would be put in place by December 2024. Lara touted in particular a new provision requiring insurance companies to cover “all parts of California” by writing no less than 85% of their statewide market share in high wildfire risk communities. “We are in really uncharted territory,” Lara told Politico, “and we must make difficult choices.” Politico notes that Lara did not provide a direct answer on whether new models would lead to new models would lead to rate increases. Read Lara’s full release here. 

ICYMI – Top news stories:

The California conundrum: Fewer people, more homes, but an acute housing shortage
Los Angeles Times
In the last decade, California home prices and rents have soared, an upswing that’s put homeownership further out of reach and helped drive thousands into homelessness. For much of the last decade, the state’s population growth was historically low; in the last few years, it ground to halt and then dropped—and all the while developers continued to build. So why haven’t California housing costs come down? Experts interviewed by The Times said home prices and rents haven’t plunged for several interconnected reasons. But in general, it’s because for decades—even in years of slow population growth—California hasn’t added enough housing to meet demand, creating a backlog so large that it can’t be corrected by a few years of population loss.

Why churches could become California’s most important affordable housing developers
San Francisco Chronicle – Oped by David Garcia
SB 4 (Wiener) would streamline the process of securing local governmental approval for new affordable housing built on land owned by faith-based organizations—in part by creating a set of minimum development standards these organizations could rely on for housing projects. In practice, these new rules would allow faith-based organizations to bypass onerous discretionary approval processes and sidestep local land use rules or litigious neighbors. How much of a difference could this make in alleviating California’s housing crisis? New research from the Terner Center finds roughly 47,000 acres—around 1.5 times the size of San Francisco—are owned by faith-based organizations in California that would be eligible for the incentives proposed under SB 4 and are potentially well-suited for affordable housing development.

California AG lawsuit coaxes Elk Grove to take second look at rejected housing project
Sacramento Bee
Elk Grove will reconsider its rejection of a contentious affordable housing project in the city’s historic Old Town that prompted California’s attorney general to sue the city, alleging it broke state housing laws. Council members will discuss the proposed Oak Rose project at their Sept. 27 meeting. City staffers are recommending the city approve the project to avoid costly litigation. Elk Grove officials said in a lengthy statement Thursday that the costs of fighting lawsuits filed by state Attorney General Rob Bonta and Oak Rose’s developers challenging the July 2022 council decision would be too great. Bonta, announcing his office’s lawsuit in May, said Elk Grove had repeatedly violated state housing law requiring cities streamline construction of affordable housing, saying of his suit: “They left us no choice.”