Key Housing Bills on Track in California Legislature’s Final Weeks

The California State Legislature is back from recess and within the last several weeks of this year’s session, they will have to make important decisions to help address our housing and homelessness crisis.

This is an important year for several key legislative efforts to advance our policy priorities. These bills focus on affordable housing production and preservation and securing resources at the state and regional level to support affordable housing, homelessness prevention, and anti-displacement.

You can support these bills by submitting letters of support to the California Legislature and by communicating your support to your legislators.

AB 1319 (Wicks): BAHFA Clean-Up Bill [Co-Sponsor] This bill would make specific changes that clarify the Bay Area Housing Finance Authority’s (BAHFA) range of lending powers, along with other minor and clarifying technical changes. Alongside the Metropolitan Transportation Commission, the Associations of Bay Area Governments, and the Nonprofit Housing Association of Northern California (NPH), Enterprise is proud to move this bill forward to ready the Bay Area for a transformational regional affordable housing bond in November 2024.
AB 1657 (Wicks): Affordable Housing Bond Act of 2024 This bill would enact the Affordable Housing Bond Act of 2024, which, if adopted, would authorize the issuance of bonds in the amount of $10 billion to finance programs to fund affordable rental housing and homeownership programs including, among others, the Multifamily Housing Program, the CalHome Program, and the Joe Serna, Jr. Farmworker Housing Grant Program. This includes preservation funding for acquisition and rehabilitation, as envisioned through SB 225 (Caballero) and the Community Anti-Displacement and Preservation Program (CAPP). This would authorize an affordable housing bond on the March 2024 ballot.
ACA 1 (Aguiar-Curry): 55% Vote for Local Affordable Housing and Public Infrastructure This constitutional amendment would empower local voters and communities to make critical affordable housing investments, address their local homelessness challenges, and invest in other critical infrastructure needs, by lowering the vote approval threshold from two-thirds to 55 percent for local revenue measures, including affordable housing bonds.
SB 18 (McGuire): Tribal Housing Reconstitution and Resiliency Act This bill would create a first-ever Tribal Housing Grant Program modeled after Federal housing programs and State programs like the Joe Serna, Jr. Farmworker Housing Grant Program. This program would provide equitable access to financing so Tribes can provide much-needed affordable, and sustainable homes for Tribal members and non-Native employees of Tribal governments in a manner that respects Tribal sovereignty and cultural heritage.
SB 4 (Wiener): Housing Production on Religious Properties This bill would make building much-needed affordable housing easier, faster, and more affordable on land owned by faith-based institutions and nonprofit colleges.
SB 567: Homelessness Prevention Act This bill strengthens the state’s Tenant Protection Act (AB 1482, 2019) to provide more specific tenant protections and greater housing stability for more renter households and provide mechanisms for accountability and enforcement.
AB 84 (Ward): Improves the welfare property tax exemption for affordable housing This bill will expand and update the existing welfare tax exemptions for affordable housing.
AB 799 (Rivas): Homelessness Accountability and Results Act The bill would establish a strong accountability and results framework that would allow the State and our local governments to set and achieve goals that would ensure local jurisdictions invest their homelessness resources in proven solutions that quickly rehouse people and reduce homelessness.
AB 1053 (Gabriel): Affordable Housing Construction Loans The bill would reduce the cost of affordable rental housing by allowing developers to receive funds from The Department of Housing and Community Development (HCD) during the construction period.
AB 1085 (Maienschein): MediCal Benefits for Housing Support Services This bill would require the Department of Healthcare Services to seek any necessary federal approvals to make housing support services a Medi-Cal benefit.
AB 1386 (Gabriel): Veterans Housing Tenant Referrals This bill will expand accessibility to much-needed affordable homes for veterans who are experiencing homelessness by authorizing entities referring veterans to housing units funded by the Veterans Housing and Homelessness Prevention Program (VHHP), or certain housing units supported by project-based housing vouchers, to place a veteran with higher income levels in a restricted unit under certain circumstances.
SB 341 (Becker): Removing Barriers to Affordable Housing This bill prevents private affordable housing developers, when applying for highly competitive award incentive programs, from being unfairly penalized because their city is out of compliance with their Housing element.
SB 482: Capitalized Operating Subsidy Reserves This bill requires the Department of Housing and Community Development (HCD) to offer capitalized operating subsidy reserves for supportive housing units after developers have sought capitalized reserves from other potential funding sources.
SB 225 (Caballero): Community Anti-Displacement and Preservation Program (CAPP) [Co-Sponsor] This bill will allow mission-driven organizations to prevent displacement and create stable, permanently affordable homes across California through the acquisition and preservation of unsubsidized affordable housing. Enterprise is proud to co-sponsor the bill alongside our Stable Homes Coalition partners Housing California and Public Advocates. This bill is now a two-year bill.

Budget

Several of our legislative priorities are connected to the need for additional resources for affordable housing and services. This year, for the first time, we worked together with a coalition of over 170 partners across the state to advance budget priorities via our Housing and Homelessness Budget Blueprint for Impact.

This year’s budget process concluded in June, and despite a significant budget deficit, the state budget maintains prior year commitments of investing $2.5 billion in affordable housing production and preservation, homelessness, and housing-related infrastructure.

While we thank state leadership for these important investments, one-time investments, especially at this limited scale, are not sufficient to meet California’s affordable housing and homelessness needs, which is why we’re looking ahead to the March and November 2024 ballot for additional sources of funding. To learn more about the budget, see our recent blog.

Take Action to Support!

Help us move housing legislation forward by submitting letters of support to the California Legislature Portal. Several of our partners have put together resources on many of these bills, including fact sheets and template letters of support, some of which you can find on California Housing Partnership’s 2023 State Policy website, NPH’s 2023 Legislative Agenda website, and Housing California’s Legislative Agenda website.

Additionally, the Bay Area Housing Finance Authority (BAHFA) is poised to put a 9-county, $10-20 billion affordable housing bond on the November 2024 ballot. If successful, this affordable housing bond will unlock billions of dollars for the creation and preservation of up to 45,000 affordable homes. Enterprise has been co-leading the campaign effort as a part of the Bay Area Housing for All Coalition. Learn more about and support the regional affordable housing bond campaign effort, it takes 30 seconds to endorse this effort today!

For more information on our legislative and budget efforts, please contact Justine Marcus.