Calif. Just Got 90 New Laws In 4 Days: Here They Are
From housing to business to healthcare, the governor has had a busy work week.
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It certainly has been a busy week for California's governor, who has signed nearly 100 bills into law in the last four days alone. On Friday, he capped off his most recent efforts with the high-profile signing of 15 new laws that are part of a legislative package aimed at increasing the state's housing supply and affordability.
"These new laws will help cut red tape and encourage more and affordable housing, including shelter for the growing number of homeless in California," Gov. Jerry Brown said while signing the package at Hunters View, an affordable housing project located in the Bayview Hunters Point neighborhood of San Francisco.
"This package has everything from A to Z – affordability to zoning," said Assembly Speaker Anthony Rendon. "It’s not a magic wand, but it is going to put a lot of drafting tools, backhoes, hammers, and door keys to work. I’m proud of how the Assembly helped shape this package and of the real results it will deliver for Californians."
Among the bills that were signed Friday, along with a brief synopsis from the governor's office, are:
- SB 2 (Atkins), the Building Homes and Jobs Act, establishes a permanent funding source for affordable housing through a $75 fee on real estate transaction documents. The fee is capped at $225 per transaction and exempts real estate sales. The fees would generate roughly $250 million a year, which would be split among state and local housing programs.
- SB 3 (Beall) authorizes $4 billion in general obligation bonds for affordable housing programs and a veteran’s home ownership program. SB 3 must be approved by voters next November.
- SB 35 (Wiener) streamlines the approval process for infill developments in local communities that have failed to meet their regional housing needs.
- SB 166 (Skinner) ensures that cities maintain an ongoing supply of housing construction sites for residents of various income levels.
- SB 167 (Skinner) increases the standard of proof required for a local government to justify a denial of low- and moderate-income housing development projects. (SB 167 is identical to AB 678.)
- SB 540 (Roth) streamlines the environmental review process for certain local affordable housing projects.
- AB 72 (Santiago/Chiu) strengthens the state's ability to enforce laws that require local governments to achieve housing goals.
- AB 73 (Chiu) gives local governments incentives to create housing on infill sites near public transportation.
- AB 571 (E. Garcia) makes it easier to develop farmworker housing by easing qualifications for the Farmworker Housing Tax Credit.
- AB 678 (Bocanegra) increases the standard of proof required for a local government to justify its denial of low- to moderate-income housing development projects. (AB 678 is identical to SB 167.)
- AB 879 (Grayson) authorizes a study of local fees charged to new residential developments that will also include a proposal to substantially reduce such fees.
- AB 1397 (Low) makes changes to the definition of land suitable for residential development to increase the number of sites where new multifamily housing can be built.
- AB 1505 (Bloom/Bradford/Chiu/Gloria) authorizes cities and counties to adopt an inclusionary ordinance for residential rental units in order to create affordable housing.
- AB 1515 (Daly) allows housing projects to be afforded the protections of the Housing Accountability Act if the project is consistent with local planning rules despite local opposition.
- AB 1521 (Bloom/Chiu) gives experienced housing organizations a first right of refusal to purchase affordable housing developments in order to keep the units affordable.
Since the legislative deadline of Sept. 15, Brown has been sifting through hundreds of proposed laws from lawmakers across the state. All of them need to be reviewed by Oct. 15, or they become law by default. Over the weekend, these 14 laws were signed — one of which included the naming of an official state dinosaur.
A series of laws that rams through State power over local municipalities and the wishes of their citizens.
I attempted to write a clear cogent letter to the editor of the Sf Chronicle today. I haven't done this ever still... I got hamstrung by the 200 word cap on a letter.. here's what I had left after my too harsh editting left me unsatisfied and now I wait for tomorrow to have another go at it.
Despite the back-slapping and glad handing in Sacramento with signing the recent housing bills, the people of California are not served by this blind reaction to ‘the crisis’.
California is becoming more and more unlivable not just because of the dramatic differential in those on board the new Corporate wave and those who would choose a career far from that – for instance one that serves communities. We are becoming unlivable through the shear numbers of newcomers that clog our highways and have transformed daily life in to a wretched slog.
That there is ‘a deficit of 2 million housing units and growing by 80,000 per year’ as stated in your editorial should point to an alarming truth. The damage is not just loss in quality of life, that damage is real, but the impending damage of a very living geologic California event striking on a regular basis requires all persons who claim leadership via Democratic elections to brace and prepare for that fact and represent the families and children whom live here now not the flood of potential newcomers.
Unlimited growth is the biological definition of cancer. While business leaders and housing advocates celebrate, democracy takes another hit, ‘we are past the point where we can treat individual cities as kingdoms unto themselves, whether they can decide whether or not they want to produce housing’. Megalopolis grows with no thought of for how long or whether it ever should decide to stop ‘growing’. Steamrolling California in the name of Humanity. We need some new thinking on the world’s great Environmental Challenge …Us.
A series of laws that rams through State power over local municipalities and the wishes of their citizens.
I attempted to write a clear cogent letter to the editor of the Sf Chronicle today. I haven't done this ever still... I got hamstrung by the 200 word cap on a letter.. here's what I had left after my too harsh editting left me unsatisfied and now I wait for tomorrow to have another go at it.
Despite the back-slapping and glad handing in Sacramento with signing the recent housing bills, the people of California are not served by this blind reaction to ‘the crisis’.
California is becoming more and more unlivable not just because of the dramatic differential in those on board the new Corporate wave and those who would choose a career far from that – for instance one that serves communities. We are becoming unlivable through the shear numbers of newcomers that clog our highways and have transformed daily life in to a wretched slog.
That there is ‘a deficit of 2 million housing units and growing by 80,000 per year’ as stated in your editorial should point to an alarming truth. The damage is not just loss in quality of life, that damage is real, but the impending damage of a very living geologic California event striking on a regular basis requires all persons who claim leadership via Democratic elections to brace and prepare for that fact and represent the families and children whom live here now not the flood of potential newcomers.
Unlimited growth is the biological definition of cancer. While business leaders and housing advocates celebrate, democracy takes another hit, ‘we are past the point where we can treat individual cities as kingdoms unto themselves, whether they can decide whether or not they want to produce housing’. Megalopolis grows with no thought of for how long or whether it ever should decide to stop ‘growing’. Steamrolling California in the name of Humanity. We need some new thinking on the world’s great Environmental Challenge …Us.
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