Affordablehousing bills run into trade union wall
SACRAMENTO — When state Sen. Scott Wiener, DSan Francisco, shelved a bill to promote the conversion of church parking lots into affordable housing last week because he couldn’t reach an agreement on labor provisions, it marked another loss in a legislative session that is shaping up to be a dud on housing production.
Despite promises that California’s housing shortage would be a priority this year, a package to streamline project approvals and spur more construction has been thinned out by conflicts over local control, gentrification and environmental protections, as well as the sheer lack of time in a session cut short by the coronavirus pandemic.
Affordablehousing developers have raised concerns after numerous bills withered in the face of opposition from the State Building and Construction Trades Council of California, a powerful advocate at the Capitol for legislation that could bring jobs to the hundreds of thousands of construction workers in its unions.
The trades pushed to include hiring guarantees for skilled workers in measures meant to make it easier to build — including for projects designed to be affordable for lowincome Californians, which were exempted in a legislative deal on the issue three years ago. As lawmakers prepare to break at the end of August until next year, the conflict remains unresolved.
“Some of what happened this year, quite frankly, came out of the blue,” said Ray Pearl, executive director of the California Housing Consortium, which represents builders and other advocates for affordable housing. “We were genuinely surprised. This is new. And this is not the deal we came up with in 2017.”
Robbie Hunter, president of the building trades council, said construction workers are trying to ensure they do not get left behind as the Legislature accelerates its efforts to remove obstacles in the housing approval process, which unions often use to win concessions on projects. Without those protections, he said, workers are at risk of being exploited by developers and contractors.
“You’re taking away our voice. And if you’re taking away our voice, then we should be included in the deal,” Hunter said. “We’re not the problem here. We’re the answer to the problem.”
Affordablehousing developers and the construction trades have long been at odds over labor provisions that builders say drive up the cost of projects and unions argue are necessary to keep workers out of poverty themselves. State lawmakers previously required that builders of lowincome housing projects subsidized by taxpayers pay the prevailing local wage, which is generally a higher rate because it aligns with what union workers earn.
The construction trades have also been pushing for more types of projects to include a “skilled and trained workforce” provision, which mandates that at least 30% of workers be graduates of a stateapproved apprenticeship program. Since unions run nearly all those programs, it is essentially a jobs guarantee. Builders don’t like the requirement because they say it limits who they can hire, driving up costs.
But in 2017, as Wiener negotiated a bill to fasttrack project approvals in communities that have not hit their state housing targets, the unions agreed to exempt buildings with 100% affordable units from the skilled workforce requirement.
That compromise laid the groundwork for developers and the construction trades to campaign together to pass two affordablehousing bonds the following year. It also created a framework that lawmakers have since used to streamline approval for other types of housing projects, including several bills this session whose authors suddenly found the unions were no longer on board.
“They’ve taken that position before and this year it’s sort of crystallized. The trades have drawn sort of a red line,” Wiener said. “Anyone is entitled over time to reevaluate their approach.”
The building trades are an important political ally of the Democrats, who dominate the Capitol. They are known for their combative lobbying tactics and publicly feuded with Gov. Gavin Newsom last fall after he vetoed several bills they supported.
Hunter argues that the skilled workforce requirement creates an important pathway to middleclass jobs for young construction workers and is more efficient for developers because “you’re having a workforce that is driven by using the least amount of people, doing the least amount of time, do it once, do it right.”
He said the trades took a particularly aggressive approach this year in response to “an absolute tsunami of bills from every direction” giving builders the right to skirt environmental reviews, votes by local officials and other processes where unions can raise concerns. Many affordablehousing developers are forprofit companies, Hunter added, and should not be held to a more lenient standard.
“We absolutely believe that they can afford to pay a worker enough to take care of his family,” he said.
With marketrate housing construction likely to take a hit during the recession caused by the pandemic, locking down jobs on affordable projects became even more important to the trades.
The tension burst to the surface throughout the session, including during a May hearing of the Assembly housing committee. Construction worker unions lined up against AB2580, which would have streamlined the process for converting hotels and motels into housing, even after Assemblywoman Susan Talamantes Eggman, DStockton, added prevailing wage and skilled workforce requirements for all but 100% affordable projects. Eggman urged her colleagues to have courage to say “no to our friends,” but the bill later died in committee.
SB899, the Wiener measure that would have cleared the way for religious institutions and colleges to build affordable housing on their parking lots, became the subject of a unionbacked social media ad campaign that accused the senator of selling out to real estate interests by depicting him in front of a Monopoly board. It was eventually pulled over complaints that it used antiSemitic tropes. As negotiations over the bill dragged on, the trades convinced the state labor federation to drop its endorsement of Wiener in his competitive reelection bid.
Earlier this month, the trades began running ads against two bills encouraging affordable housing by Assemblyman Richard Bloom, DSanta Monica, that depicted him riding a “developers’ Trojan horse.” Both measures stalled.
A session shortened by the pandemic prevented the factions from brokering a solution before hitting accelerated deadlines. The California Housing Consortium’s Pearl said he hoped they could return with legislation next year that provides a win for both sides.
“There were no grand bargains to strike this year,” he said. “If it’s going to be more union jobs, it needs to be more affordablehousing production.”