By June 6th in Sacramento, pending legislation faced a major deadline: each bill had to pass a floor vote in its house of origin. That means Assembly Bills needed to be passed out of the Assembly to start getting reviewed by the State Senate, and, similarly, all Senate Bills needed to be passed out of the Senate so the Assembly can start reviewing them. Any bill that hadn’t been approved in a floor vote in its house of origin by that date is done for the year.
Luckily for us, all the bills we had already formally supported* made it through this filter, and are now being considered in the second house! To review, we had already supported:
- AB-609 (Buffy Wicks) to exempt infill housing development from CEQA.
- AB-670 (Sharon Quirk-Silva) would allow jurisdictions to count existing housing preserved with new deed restrictions, without displacing current tenants, toward their RHNA obligation
- AB-736 (Buffy Wicks) would place a $10B housing bond on the ballot.
- AB-906 (Mark Gonzalez) would require cities to demonstrate that they have accommodated a meaningful portion of their share of regional housing need for lower income households on sites located in higher income, racially exclusive areas; and rezone if their inventory of sites (in their housing element) does not affirmatively further fair housing.
*As a backup to AB-609, we had also supported SB-417 (Christopher Cabaldon), which is no longer moving. However, with AB-609 still alive and now in the Senate, SB-417 would have been redundant.
Additional endorsements
We are also taking positions in support of these bills:
- SB-79 (Scott Wiener) would establish state zoning standards around train stations and major bus stops (bus rapid transit stops) that allow for multi-family homes up to seven stories immediately surrounding major transit stops, with lower height standards extending up to half a mile away from such stops. It would also streamline permitting for homes built within half a mile of major public transit stops. Notably, amendments to this bill when it was in the Senate removed a provision which we had been concerned could undermine affordability in housing developments near transit, and we appreciate the author and his colleagues listening to feedback and working to dramatically improve the bill.
- SB-328 (Tim Grayson) would “make it more financially feasible for developers to clean up sites contaminated by previous uses (or users) for housing by reforming the Department of Toxic Substances Control (DTSC) Generation and Handling Fee. These fees can often be a major barrier to redevelopment of urban infill land, particularly for affordable or nonprofit projects. This bill helps unlock more underutilized land for housing by reducing the cost of environmental remediation” according to our friends at HAC, who are sponsoring the bill.
- SB-522 (Aisha Wahab) would apply the state’s existing just-cause eviction protections and rent increase limits to replacement housing built after a disaster if the damaged unit had a certificate of occupancy before its destruction.
- SB-634 (Sasha Pérez) would prevent local governments from criminalizing provision of care to people experiencing homelessness.