Flurry of new laws opens door to more housing
California will try to boost housing production by freezing local regulations and lowering the barriers to build backyard cottages and other secondary units on properties.
Gov. Gavin Newsom signed a package of legislation Wednesday that aims to jumpstart construction rates and ease the state’s housing shortage.
“At the end of the day, the state vision of affordability will be realized at the local level,” Newsom said in a signing ceremony at a private home in Los Angeles — “local housing project by local housing project, in every single part of the state.”
The construction industry is building fewer than 80,000 houses and apartments annually, less than half what state experts
project is needed to keep pace with population growth in the next decade.
California last saw sufficient levels of construction before the 2008 recession. Newsom has been far more ambitious, pledging during last year’s campaign that the state would build 3.5 million homes by 2025.
Among the bills the governor signed Wednesday was SB330 by Sen. Nancy Skinner, DBerkeley, which places a fiveyear moratorium on local policies that make it harder to build in cities without enough housing. Those policies include putting caps on the number of permits, adding fees, and rezoning land to accommodate less housing. The law will also streamline the approval process for projects.
Skinner said the law “gives a green light to the housing that each and every one of our communities has already planned for.”
The governor also signed several bills to make it easier to build secondary homes, such as garage conversions and basement apartments. Advocates are optimistic that could eventually add tens of thousands of units per year for renters being squeezed out of California’s housing market.
SB13 by Sen. Bob Wieckowski, DFremont, reduces the fees that cities charge to offset the cost of providing services to new secondary homes, and eliminates them for small units. AB68 by Assemblyman Phil Ting, DSan Francisco, prohibits cities from requiring minimum lot sizes for the construction of a secondary unit. AB881 by Assemblyman Richard Bloom, DSanta Monica, freezes for five years any local requirements that owners live on properties where they apply to build secondary homes.
Newsom signed another bill in August to forbid homeowners associations from banning secondary units.
The new measures build on recent changes to state and local regulations that have led to a boom in secondary homes. California’s two dozen largest cities reported approving 5,308 applications for secondary units last year, nearly 15 times as many as in 2016, according to the state Department of Housing and Community Development.
California YIMBY, a group that advocates for more housing construction, celebrated the “de facto elimination of singlefamily zoning throughout the state.”
“We now have more tools in the toolkit to help cities overcome NIMBYism and allow the construction of more homes,” Brian Hanlon, the group’s president and CEO, said in a statement.
The governor and legislators included money in the state budget this summer to tackle the housing shortage, including $1 billion to expand tax credits and loans for lowand mixedincome projects. They also created a process to fine cities that do not meet their obligations to plan for new housing while rewarding those that make it easier to build. Newsom signed the firstever statewide cap on rent increases Tuesday.
But experts say changing land use remains the major missing piece of California’s efforts to get the housing crisis under control.
Attention at the Capitol will likely turn again to SB50, the bill from Sen. Scott Wiener, DSan Francisco, that would rezone transit corridors, job centers and many suburbs to allow more small to mediumsize apartment buildings. It was supported by business and labor groups, but was held early in the legislative session amid intense opposition from local governments. It is eligible for consideration again next year.
Earlier Wednesday in San Diego, Newsom signed a law to deposit California’s share of a 2012 nationwide bank settlement into a legal assistance fund for homeowners in foreclosure cases and renters facing eviction.
Former Gov. Jerry Brown and the Legislature previously redirected $331 million of that settlement, linked to abusive lending practices leading up to the 2008 economic recession, to pay off housing bonds and other debts owed by state agencies. That prompted a lawsuit by community groups.
Newsom’s administration defended the diversion of the money until this summer, when the state Supreme Court ruled that it must be used for its intended purpose.