Amidst today’s uncertainty surrounding COVID-19 and its implications for the daily lives of California’s lowest-income families, now more than ever we need our state leaders to strengthen our ability to house and protect low-income families, seniors, and individuals. We applaud Governor Newsom’s Executive Order protecting renters and ask the Legislature to move forward with longer term plans and resources.This is why the California Housing Partnership is proud to sponsor four bills that, if passed, will ensure the preservation of existing affordable apartment properties, reduce the cost of developing new affordable homes, and collect comprehensive rental housing data to inform important policy decisions.
You can help enact these bills into law by providing a letter of support by April 13th before committee hearings begin. Links to sample letters are below. Please act today to put the sample letter for each bill on your letterhead, upload each letter to the Legislature’s Position Letter Portal, and send copies to mstivers@chpc.net.
AB 1907 (Santiago) exempts from California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA) review shelters and permanent supportive housing for the homeless as well as affordable homes funded with MHP, CDBG, or HOME dollars. While CEQA provides important protections to the environment, it also gives opponents of affordable housing and emergency shelters additional opportunities to block desperately needed facilities that have already received city or county approval, potentially tying them up in court until they become financially infeasible. This narrow exemption to CEQA will help California address its massive homelessness and affordable housing crises without endangering the environment as affordable housing is higher density and built close to services and amenities its residents need.
AB 2058 (Gabriel) creates the Affordable Housing Preservation Tax Credit to incentivize the preservation of existing affordable apartment properties and mobile home parks. By offering sellers a 50% credit (up to $20,000 per unit and $1 million per transaction) against the state and federal capital gains otherwise owed, the bill encourages property owners to voluntarily sell vulnerable properties to experienced affordable housing organizations who will keep them affordable to low-income households for 55 years.
AB 2406 (Wicks) requires landlords with more than five units to register all units in a statewide database and include information on rents and evictions. This ensures that public entities, academic researchers, and the public have access to a statewide, by-unit rental housing database that provides the information needed to understand the severity of displacement pressures, geographic variation, or trends in the marketplace and to measure the effect of policy initiatives.
AB 3144 (Grayson) encourages cities and counties to waive or reduce impact fees for affordable rental housing developments by creating the Housing Cost Reduction Incentive Program to reimburse them 50% of the value of fee waivers or reductions granted. This bill will significantly reduce the cost of development and allow for available subsidies to support increased production of affordable rental homes.
Legislative information and fact sheets for each of these bills can be found by visiting the following page on our website:
The California Housing Partnership greatly appreciates your support on these important measures. Feel free to contact our Director of Legislative and Regulatory Advocacy, Mark Stivers, with any questions at mstivers@chpc.net.