July 11, 2025
After years of soaring rents, increasingly out-of-reach home prices and an enduring homelessness crisis that touches every corner of the state, California is finally creating a state agency exclusively focused on housing issues.
You might wonder what took so long.
Earlier this year, Gov. Gavin Newsom introduced a proposal to split up the Business, Consumer Services and Housing Agency — an awkward grabbag of disparate bureaucratic operations — into two fresh agencies: One just for housing and homelessness-related departments and one for everything else.
The Legislature had until July 4 to veto the plan. It didn’t (though some Republicans tried). Now the work of standing up California’s first housing agency begins.