Lawmaker aims to take politics out of housing for homeless
SACRAMENTO >> A San Francisco lawmaker and fellow Democrats aim to speed up approvals of affordable housing developments that include support services for the homeless by making it harder for local officials throughout California to slow or deny such projects in the face of community resistance.
San Francisco Assemblyman David Chiu also announced Monday a proposal to spend $1 billion of California’s $6.1 billion budget surplus to build affordable housing for low-income families and permanent shelter for the chronically homeless.
“If you look at the streets in almost any city in California,” Chiu said Monday, “it’s clear we have an enormous homelessness crisis, and I think the Legislature should respond with an investment that matches the magnitude of the crisis.”
Roughly 25 percent of the nation’s homeless — about 134,000 people and rising — live in California.
Chiu’s Assembly Bill 2162 would make it easier to gain the necessary local approvals to build permanent
housing, also known as “supportive housing,” for the chronically homeless — a process that now can take years, he said. If a proposed development is made up entirely of affordable housing, offers support services for homeless residents, and meets a city’s zoning rules, it would not be subject to public hearings or other lengthy approval hurdles under the bill.
“The local politics around supportive housing are far more of a challenge
than they need to be,” he said.
A second bill from Chiu, Assembly Bill 2161, would require the state to create a centralized database to track and monitor homelessness.
The one-time, $1 billion budget request, signed by Chiu and three other lawmakers, would funnel $500 million to efforts to house the homeless and the remaining $500 million on a state program that builds below-market-rate homes
for low-income families.
The Assembly Budget Committee will likely take up the budget request in a hearing this spring. The committee releases its proposal for the state budget in late May. The Legislature must, by law, approve the state budget by June 15. It then goes to Gov. Jerry Brown, who has the authority to veto any of the items included in it.