(The Center Square) – Gov. Gavin Newsom signed legislation on Monday to make building affordable housing easier throughout California.
In a press conference at a new residential building under construction in Oakland’s Chinatown neighborhood, Newsom signed Assembly Bill 179. The bill, which passed the Legislature on July 2, allocates more bond money and low-income tax credits to build affordable housing. The new law, which takes effect immediately, also lowers impact fees, which builders are required to pay when building new homes.
The bill also stipulates providing roughly $900 million of state money to the Homeless Housing, Assistance and Prevention program, with 97% of it going to large cities and counties. About 3% is allocated to tribes.
Newsom said the effort was a change in state and local policy that effectively made the development of affordable housing more difficult over the last several decades.
“It was intentionally designed – it wasn’t by chance,” Newsom said at the press conference. “It wasn’t by happenstance. It was designed not to build, and that required us not just to think differently and to argue for different results, but to rebuild the machine.”
The last several years saw a shift in the political will in Sacramento and in communities across the state to change laws to move building projects along faster, Newsom added – seeing the construction of more than 3.5 million new housing units across the state.
The building that housed the press conference in Oakland on Monday is the first phase of a two-block residential development that will ultimately provide 9,700 affordable homes for seniors, according to Janelle Chan, CEO of the East Bay Asian Local Development Corp. Roughly $26 million in tax credits from the state and tax-exempt bonds helped pay for that one development alone.
“This building is truly a result of years of community planning,” Chan said at the press conference. “The community rallied around this idea of re-connecting the site back into our neighborhood and filling it once again with homes, culture and life.”
According to a report released this year by the California Affordable Housing Partnership, California put state funds toward paying for 23,000 new homes in 2025, which was 20% of the funding needed to meet statewide goals of funding the necessary number of affordable housing units. Data from the National Low-Income Housing Coalition show that the state needs 982,000 more affordable homes to address an ever-worsening affordable housing shortage.
George Andrews, press secretary for the Assembly Republican Caucus, told The Center Square on Monday that while Newsom’s efforts to increase affordable housing is a good thing, it took too long to ramp up efforts to meet the state’s housing needs.
“Any effort to cut red tape is welcome,” Andrews said. “It also raises an obvious question: If this was the answer, why did it take until the final months of Gov. Newsom’s administration to do it?”
Newsom promised to build 3.5 million new homes by 2025, but as of last year, didn’t meet that mark, Andrews said.
“He didn’t come close,” Andrews added. “That was his benchmark, and by that measure, he fell short.”
