A start to filling housing hole

From ever-rising prices to spreading homelessness, Californians face constant reminders of the need for the housing legislation Gov. Jerry Brown signed into law Friday. Nor is there any mistaking it for more than the first substantial attempt at an adequate response to the state’s vast housing shortage.

“Today California begins a pivot — a pivot from California’s housing-last policy to our future housingfirst policy,” state Sen. Scott Wiener, D-San Francisco, said at the signing in the city’s Bayview neighborhood. And yet, he added, “This is the beginning, not the end.”

Indeed, in just the two weeks since the Legislature passed the bills, a UC Berkeley poll found that half the state’s voters have considered relocating, UCLA forecasters doubted the state could build enough homes to tame prices, and the death toll from a hepatitis outbreak among the state’s homeless reached 17. Meanwhile, a plan to build 10,000 homes in Mountain View was jeopardized by Google’s demand for even more office space, Oakland Mayor Libby Schaaf considered deploying storage sheds to address makeshift homeless camps, and Palo Alto residents puzzled over the semi-permanent RVs lining El Camino Real.

Given the role of local obstructionism in the crisis, the most promising of the 15 measures Brown signed is Wiener’s Senate Bill 35. With a deficit of about 2 million housing units statewide growing by an estimated 80,000 a year, it aims to expedite approval of reasonable residential development in cities that aren’t producing enough housing. As Wiener told his fellow senators before the bill passed, “We are past the point where we can treat individual cities as kingdoms unto themselves, where they can decide whether or not they want to produce any housing.” While the governor on Friday was more defensive of the crush of state and local environmental, zoning and other rules that have suppressed development, he acknowledged, “Too many goods create a bad.”

Brown also signed worthwhile measures to fund affordable housing that the market won’t produce and provide services to the homeless. Senate Bill 3, by state Sen. Jim Beall, D-San Jose, will put a $4 billion bond measure for affordablehousing programs before voters next year. SB2, by state Sen. Toni Atkins, D-San Diego, will raise about $250 million a year for the same purpose by adding fees of $75 to $225 to some real estate transactions.

Given the pace of governmentdriven housing production and the scope of the shortage, the overall impact of the funding bills is likely to be modest.

The practical effects of SB35 could in turn be limited by the conditions it imposes on projects, including union-level wages for construction workers, as well as by residents and officials who remain determined to keep housing at bay.

Still, Assembly Housing Committee Chairman David Chiu, D-San Francisco, noted that given all the “blank stares” he got when he asked colleagues about the crisis three years ago, Friday was “a day that I have to say I never thought was going to happen.”

After many fruitless efforts to start filling the state’s housing hole, the new laws represent hard-won progress toward a more humane housing policy.