California is in the midst of a severe housing shortage that has locked many families out of homeownership, left many more spending most of their income on rent, and put hundreds of thousands of our neighbors on the streets. If we are going to tackle this crisis, we have to speed up the onerous permitting that stands in the way of new construction. The Fact Track Housing Package — a bold, bipartisan package of two dozen bills bringing together a diverse array of advocates — aims to do just that.

​​Pre-Application and Application

AB 1294 (Haney) 

Sponsor: Abundant Housing LA

AB 1294 requires the Department of Housing and Community Development to create a standardized housing entitlement application that every city and county must accept, adding clarity and consistency to the housing approvals process.

CEQA

AB 609 (Wicks) 

Sponsors: California YIMBY, Bay Area Council

AB 609 streamlines the permitting process for multi-family housing in existing, developed urban areas by creating clear, objective criteria for exempting these projects from the California Environmental Quality Act. 

SB 607 (Wiener)

Sponsors: Bay Area Council, Housing Action Coalition, Rural County Representatives of California, and Prosperity CA 

SB 607 makes several targeted refinements that refocus the scope of environmental analysis required by the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA) to the issues we know to be truly environmentally harmful. 

Entitlement

AB 357 (Alvarez)

Sponsors: Student HOMES Coalition, UC Student Association

AB 357 exempts certain student, faculty, and staff housing developments in the Coastal Zone from Coastal Commission review.

AB 920 (Caloza) 

Sponsor: Abundant Housing LA

AB 920 requires cities of a certain size to have a centralized application portal for all permits across departments, and allow real-time tracking of applications.

AB 961 (Avila Farias)

Sponsor: Bay Area Council

AB 961 extends the California Land Reuse and Revitalization Act of 2004, which protects innocent landowners from liability for pollution if they meet certain criteria.

AB 1007 (Rubio)

Sponsor: California Building Industry Association 

AB 1007 amends the Permit Streamlining Act to reduce the time limit (“shot clock”) for responsible agencies to act on permit applications for housing development projects from 90 to 45 days.

AB 1276 (Carrillo)

Sponsor: California Building Industry Association 

AB 1276 expands the protections of SB 330 (2019) to state and regional agencies. This bill also makes updates to the policies and standards governing statutory vested rights to provide greater clarity and predictability for housing projects.

SB 328 (Grayson)

Sponsor: Housing Action Coalition 

SB 328 caps the Hazardous Waste Generator Fee, charged by DTSC, for certain housing, infill, non- profit, and park and open space projects, for developers and projects who remediate contaminated soil. Additionally, the bill places timelines on DTSC to respond to post-entitlement permits.

SB 489 (Arreguín)

Sponsor: California Building Industry Association

SB 489 improves the Permit Streamlining Act (PSA) by requiring all public agencies to post online the information necessary for a housing development application to be deemed complete. SB 489 also eliminates gaps in the PSA and clarify the relationship of the PSA’s permitting rules and the separate rules governing post-entitlement phase permits so that all required public agency permits required to approve and build a housing project are expressly covered by either the PSA or the post-entitlement permit statutes, as appropriate.

SB 786 (Arreguín)

Sponsor: California Attorney General, Rob Bonta 

SB 786 resolves several ambiguities in Housing Element law and its relationship to other elements of the General Plan, and enhances accountability measures within that area of law.

Post-Entitlement

AB 1308 (Hoover)

Sponsor: California YIMBY 

AB 1308 allows home builders to hire a licensed and certified third-party inspector to complete final inspections if the local government cannot complete inspections of permitted work within 30 days.

AB 557 (McKinnor)

Sponsor: SoLa Impact

AB 557 updates the California Factory-Built Housing Law to include factory-built developments using at least 50% factory-built housing, shifts inspection and enforcement to the Department of Housing and Community Development (rather than local agencies), and allows licensed architects, under penalty of perjury, to approve factory-built plans on the department’s behalf.

AB 660 (Wilson)

Sponsor: California Building Industry Association  

AB 660 closes gaps and improves existing law regarding the timelines for local agencies to act on post entitlement permits (“shot clock”) and establishes remedies for housing project applicants in situations in which a local agency violates the applicable shot clock when considering post entitlement permit applications and applications for service.

AB 782 (Quirk-Silva)

Sponsor: California Building Industry Association  

AB 782 removes burdensome and costly double-bonding requirements imposed by some local governments on developers for private improvements.

AB 818 (Avila Farias)

AB 818 requires expedited reviews for permits necessary to rebuild or repair a residential property affected by a natural disaster, and place limits on the fees that local agencies can charge these projects.

AB 1026 (Wilson)

Sponsor: Housing Action Coalition 

AB 1026 streamlines housing development by bringing parity to the application review timelines for investor-owned utility companies.

AB 1206 (Harabedian)

AB 1206 streamlines the approval process for single-family and multifamily housing by requiring local agencies to establish pre-approved housing plan programs. 

Legal

AB 610 (Alvarez)

Sponsors: California Building Industry Association and SPUR

AB 610 aims to strengthen compliance with housing element laws by mandating a thorough analysis of governmental constraints and program requirements impacting housing development. 

AB 712 (Wicks)

Sponsor: California Building Industry Association

AB 712 increases remedies against public agencies that violate the rights established in existing housing law. It also prevents public agencies from requiring housing development applicants to indemnify those public agencies when they violate state housing law on the applicant’s projects.

AB 1050 (Schultz)

Sponsor: SPUR

AB 1050 facilitates the redevelopment of vacant commercial centers by establishing a procedure to remove existing private reciprocal easement agreements from property title deeds.