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Dozens of Priority Housing Bills Move Forward
Jacqueline Woo, Senior Associate
Dozens of bills that address the State’s housing and homelessness needs met the deadline of June 2nd to move out of their house of origin. Those that received the needed votes to progress to the second house now will begin to move through the Committee process. All bills must be approved and forwarded to the Governor for consideration by September 14th.
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Controversial Homeless Bills Fail to Move Forward
Yelba Carrillo, Principal
Two bills that seek to address the State’s homeless crisis did not make it through committee this year, though the authors will continue to pursue the bills in the second year of the two-year session. Senator Blakespear (Encinitas) introduced SB 7—the Homeless Housing Obligation Act - which would require cities to plan for sufficient temporary and permanent housing to address their homeless need when completing their housing element.
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LACAHSA Takes its First Steps
Natalie Donlin-Zappella, Principal
On May 18th, the Los Angeles County Affordable Housing Solutions Agency (LACAHSA) held its first board meeting with all five County Supervisors and elected representatives from all 88 cities in attendance, an important milestone in the creation of a new regional housing body for the County. First on the agenda was to elect leadership and determine a regular meeting schedule. Holly Mitchell, Los Angeles County Supervisor, was selected to chair the board, with Long Beach Mayor Rex Richardson selected as Vice Chair, Weingart Foundation CEO Miguel Santana as Second Vice Chair, and Zertia Jones as Interim Chair of the Oversight Committee.
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Mayors Call for $2 Billion in State Funding for Homelessness
Yelba Carrillo, Principal
In the middle of a challenging budget process, 13 large city mayors called on Governor Newsom to provide $2 billion in annual, ongoing funding for the Homelessness Housing, Assistance, and Prevention (HHAP) grant program to help communities respond to the homeless crisis. The cities represent more than a quarter of the State’s residents and the lion’s share of the State’s homeless population. In addition, the mayors asked that $1.5 billion in State funding be allocated to Project Homekey’s Third Round to ensure that current applications that will house 2,300 households can be funded, that streamlining measures be approved to help projects avoid red tape, and that the Governor support behavioral health measures SB 43 and SB 363 (both from Senator Eggman), which seek to reform the State’s conservatorship laws. See the letter signed by the 13 mayors here.
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Debt Ceiling/Budget Update
There is some good news to report. Federal spending for nondefense discretionary programs, including housing and homelessness, appears to hold steady in the debt ceiling agreement reached late last week.
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Parking Bill Introduced in Congress
Congressman Robert Garcia (Long Beach) introduced legislation - the People Over Parking Act - to ban minimum parking requirements for new affordable residential, retail, industrial, and commercial developments located near public transportation hubs in an effort to reduce the cost of building new higher-density homes and encourage transit ridership.
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Federal Support for Homelessness Announced
The Biden Administration announced a new program - the All INside Initiative - which will roll out in six places, comprised of the State of California and five major U.S. cities, including the City of Los Angeles.
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Terner Center Releases Report on Homeownership in California
The Terner Center for Housing Innovation released a report on California’s homeownership challenges entitled The First Step is the Hardest: California’s Sliding Homeownership Ladder, which finds that the number of homeowners in the State continues to decline, with only 43.5% of all adults owning a home in 2021, which is “more than 15 percentage points lower than the rest of the United States.”
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California Affordable Housing Needs Report for 2023 Released
The California Housing Partnership Corporation (CHPC) released its 2023 report on the state of housing in California, along with detailed statistics for all 58 counties. Among other findings, the report found that California renters face median rents that are 38% higher than in 2000 while median household income only rose 7% (adjusted for inflation).
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Bloomberg Highlights Racial Disparities in Home Appraisals
Bloomberg highlighted a new study by Junia Howell that looks at appraisals throughout the country to identify any racial disparities in the valuation of housing. The author uses data from the 2022 Federal Housing Finance Agency’s Uniform Appraisal Dataset Aggregate Statistics to arrive at the report’s findings that homes in predominantly white neighborhoods were valued nearly three times higher than homes in predominantly non-white areas.
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Imagine a Renters’ Utopia. It Might Look Like Vienna | New York Times Magazine, May 23, 2023
Visualized: The Decline of Affordable Housing in the U.S. | Visual Capitalist, May 18, 2023
Five Ways Urban Planners are Addressing a Legacy of Inequity | Lincoln Institute of Land Policy, May 16, 2023
Opinion from Michael Tubbs: Add a Right to Housing to the California Constitution | San Jose Mercury News, May 12, 2023
This Data Shows One Huge Reason California’s Housing Shortage is at Crisis Level | San Francisco Chronicle, April 27, 2023
California Housing Crisis: Inside the Push to Ramp Up the “Backdoor Revolution” | San Francisco Chronicle, April 21, 2023
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LeSar Development Consultants works with leaders in creating large-scale, lasting social change through customized consulting services focused on creating physically, economically, and environmentally resilient communities.
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