Villaraigosa puts his focus on housing
Saying the state has been “missing in action” on housing affordability issues, gubernatorial candidate Antonio Villaraigosa called Thursday for a $10 billion loan fund to help build more in-law units as part of his plan to increase California’s housing stock.
Speaking Thursday at the University of San Francisco, Villaraigosa said improving affordable housing will be a priority of his administration, which would be welcome in the Bay Area, where the median price for a new or existing home or condo in December was $750,000. In Santa Clara, the media price hit a record $1 million, up 24 percent from a year earlier, according to a CoreLogic report released this week.
Increasing the number of secondary units could help alleviate one third of California’s housing shortage, Villaraigosa said Thursday.
Villaraigosa, the former Los Angeles mayor, proposed reincarnating local redevelopment agencies as a way to help cities use tax revenue to build major construction projects. The Legislature, at the urging of Gov. Jerry Brown, discontinued the local redevelopment program six years ago after widespread reports of redevelopment funds being used for projects that had little to do with construction.
And he promised Thursday to streamline the California Environmental Quality Act, commonly known as CEQA, which is intended to identify the environmental impacts of a project but is frequently used by opponents to stall an unwanted development.
“Progressives need to acknowledge that CEQA is broken,” Villaraigosa said Thursday. He was appearing at the university as the first of a series of one-on-one interviews with the top gubernatorial candidates co-sponsored by Politico and the Leo T. McCarthy Center for Public Service and the Common Good at the University of San Francisco. Politico senior reporter David Siders conducted the interview.
Repealing the Costa-Hawkins Housing Act of 1995, which prevents cities from placing rent control on single-family homes and all rental properties built after 1995, “should be on the table,” too, Villaraigosa said.
Villaraigosa said the state needs to “think outside the box” to meet the crisis. He cited a 2016 McKinsey Global Institute Report that found that California must build 3.5 million housing units by 2025 to reduce costs. He is also calling for more public-private partnerships and the creation of a statewide lending institution to help renters buy homes.
Villaraigosa is closing the gap on front-runner Lt. Gov. Gavin Newsom in the polls. Newsom was the top choice of 26 percent of the likely voters responding to a December 2017 Berkeley IGS Poll, with Villaraigosa at 17 percent. Two Republicans — Rancho Santa Fe businessman John Cox and Assemblyman Travis Allen, R-Huntington Beach — each grabbed 9 percent, with state Treasurer John Chiang and former Superintendent of Public Instruction Delaine Eastin each getting 5 percent. Another candidate, former Sacramento-area GOP Rep. Doug Ose, entered the race in January and was not included in the polling.