This week in affordable housing news…: 
State Update: 

• Yesterday, over 200 guests and sponsors joined us at CHC’s 2022 Policy Forum and Housing Hall of Fame in Los Angeles. Thank you to Speaker Rendon for his dynamic keynote speech about the multidimensional role housing plays and to Cedric Bobo, CEO of Project Destined, for the engaging conversation on training the next generation of affordable housing leaders. Congratulations to our three lifetime achievement honorees: Robin Hughes, Mary Kaiser and Carol Galante.
• CHC’s sponsored bill, AB 2011 (Wicks), was the subject of a new episode of the Gimme Shelter podcast, with CalMatters reporter Manuela Tobias and the Los Angeles Times’ Liam Dillon interviewing Peter Calthorpe, the San Francisco-based architect, urban designer and urban planner who helped develop the legislation’s approach to promoting affordable housing on underutilized commercial land. The episode also delves into the end-of-session labor deal that allowed AB 2011 to move forward without opposition from the Building Trades—while allowing another, similar commercial land bill, SB 6 (Caballero), to move to the Governor’s desk as well. As the podcast hosts put it: “To pass a housing bill without support from the union—and for two very similar bills to survive in tandem—is quite the feat in California’s legislature.” 
• After years of efforts in the state Legislature, California voters will finally have an opportunity to vote on a ballot measure repealing a 75-year-old provision of the state’s constitution that makes it harder to build affordable housing. The measure, SCA 2 (Allen, Wiener), would repeal Article 34 of the state constitution, which requires the development, construction, or acquisition of publicly-funded, low-rent housing projects to be approved by a majority of voters in a community. The measure was approved by the Assembly and Senate in late August and will appear on the November 2024 ballot. The real estate industry originally sponsored the 1950 campaign introducing Article 34 into state law—appealing to racist fears at the time about integrating neighborhoods, according to the Los Angeles Times. The bill’s authors argue that it’s far past time for the language to go: “It’s a stain on the constitution,” said Sen. Ben Allen (D-Santa Monica). “It was put in place at a very different time where there were very different attitudes. It’s become a barrier.”

ICYMI – Top news stories:
Newsom should sign the bill creating a unified affordable housing agency for L.A. County
Los Angeles Times
Finally, a bill that can help resolve the desperate lack of affordable housing in Los Angeles has passed the state Legislature. Senate Bill 679 creates the Los Angeles County Affordable Housing Solutions Agency and lays out an enterprising plan bringing representatives from every region of the county together to build and preserve affordable housing and offer struggling renters emergency rental assistance and access to legal counsel for disputes with landlords. Gov. Gavin Newsom should not hesitate to sign it into law. This is the right approach and past time to put it into effect.

How can California rein in skyrocketing cost of building affordable housing
KQED
A recent Los Angeles Times report examined seven affordable housing projects in Northern California in which the cost of development surpassed $1 million per unit. Part of the reason for the exorbitant cost of building is skyrocketing construction prices with rising material and labor costs exacerbated by the pandemic and supply chain shortages. But local and state requirements add a sizable amount to the total expense. As California looks for ways to alleviate the housing crisis, a KQED panel discusses how the state can bring down the price tag on affordable housing. Guests include: Liam Dillon, Los Angeles Times; Heather Hood, Enterprise Community Partners; Asm. Tim Grayson (D-Concord), and Ben Metcalf, Terner Center of Housing Innovation at the University of California-Berkeley. 

Here’s the one thing San Francisco can teach California about building new housing.
San Francisco Chronicle – Oped by Michael Manville, UCLA Luskin School of Public Affairs; Zack Subin, Urban Environmentalists
Last week, the California Legislature passed AB 2097, a bill that would exempt new housing within a half-mile of transit from minimum parking requirements. That might not sound momentous—it is, after all, a law about parking spaces—but it is. Parking policy is both climate policy and housing policy; done right, it can also make California a more affordable place that offers more opportunities to more people. This reform has precedent in California: While San Francisco is rarely called a leader in removing onerous building regulations, the city did, to its vast credit, eliminate its parking mandates in 2018. The result? The sky did not fall; instead, the city got less driving and more housing. If Gov. Newsom signs AB 2097 into law, he will not just take a big step for California on climate change and affordable housing—he’ll also show other states the way forward.