The Homework: April 22, 2026
Welcome to the April 22, 2026 Main edition of The Homework, the official newsletter of California YIMBY — legislative updates, news clips, housing research and analysis, and the latest writings from the California YIMBY team.
News from Sacramento
We’re gearing up for legislative committee hearing season, and the deadline for all bills with a fiscal impact to clear their policy committees is April 24. So far, these California YIMBY priority and sponsored bills have passed their initial policy committees:
- AB 2074 (Haney) will accelerate the recovery of dense, urban neighborhoods in California’s largest cities by streamlining the construction of high-rise, residential developments near regional transit hubs. Passed the Assembly Housing Committee, the Assembly Local Government Committee, and the Assembly Natural Resources Committee, the bill now heads to the Assembly Appropriations Committee.
- SB 1116 (Caballero) will streamline the construction of smaller, lower-cost “starter” homes for home ownership by making several improvements to the existing state housing law. Passed the Senate Housing Committee and now heads to the Senate Local Government Committee.
- SB 1117 (Cervantes) will make it less costly to build ADUs by removing an arbitrary financial penalty that many jurisdictions impose on ADUs over 750 square feet. Passed the Senate Housing Committee with full bipartisan support and now heads to the Senate Local Government Committee.
- SB 1014 (Grayson) will require cities to disclose all infrastructure requirements (such as sidewalks and sewers) within 30 days of a housing application and prohibit adding new requirements more than 30 days after a permit application. Passed the Senate Local Government Committee and now heads to the Senate Housing Committee.
AB 1903 (Wicks) will reduce housing costs and increase opportunities for homeownership by allowing builders to fix problems in newly-constructed homes before costly legal fees and court proceedings are triggered. This is one of our top priority bills this year, and it successfully cleared the Assembly Judiciary Committee on April 21 with bipartisan support.
The remaining bills are still waiting for their hearing dates, or are two-year bills that won’t be heard until later in the year:
- AB 1406 (Ward) will give more Californians a pathway to affordable homeownership by raising current limits on homebuyer deposits in new housing developments. The bill helps builders lower their construction and financing costs by reducing risk to lenders.
- AB 1294 (Haney) will create a single, statewide application process for new home construction in California, making it faster, cheaper, and easier for home builders to complete.
- AB 1070 (Ward) will direct state agencies to study how using the residential building code for small, multi-family home projects could accelerate the construction of “missing middle” housing.
- AB 956 (Quirk-Silva) will increase the housing potential of single-family lots by empowering homeowners to build up to two detached ADUs (accessory dwelling units) on their properties.
- SB 1216 (Cabaldon) will create a new housing leadership designation to recognize and reward cities and counties that demonstrate measurable success in building new homes.
Be sure to follow California YIMBY’s Twitter and Bluesky to get more up-to-date news on housing policy, legislation, and research. If you find this newsletter valuable, forward it to a friend! And if you want to support these bills in Sacramento, sign up for Lobby Day on May 19.
|
We want to make sure this newsletter is as useful to you as possible. Tell us what’s working, what’s not, and more in this 4-5 minute survey. |
Housing Research & Analysis
L.A.’s Mansion Tax Was Meant to Fund City Services. It May Be Backfiring.
New research suggests Los Angeles’s “Mansion Tax” cancels out a portion of the revenue it was meant to generate. Measure ULA, passed by voters in November 2022, adds a 4% to 5.5% levy on property sales above $5 million to fund affordable housing and homelessness prevention. According to the researchers, California’s Proposition 13 creates an unintended complication: assessments reset only when a property sells, so every sale the tax discourages is also a reassessment — and a property tax increase — that gets deferred.
In Fiscal Externalities of Transaction Taxes: Evidence from the Los Angeles Mansion Tax, academic researchers Daniel Green, Vikram Jambulapati, Jack Liebersohn, and Tejaswi Velayudhan examine how Measure ULA interacts with Proposition 13 to erode the city’s broader property tax base and what that means for the tax’s net fiscal impact.
Key Takeaways:
- Transaction suppression: Measure ULA reduced the monthly sales rate of eligible properties by approximately 38%, a sustained decline in high-value real estate transactions.
- Fiscal offset: Under several realistic alternative scenarios, Measure ULA costs the city more in lost property tax revenue than it raises. Even under the researchers’ baseline estimates, every dollar the tax brings in offsets 63 cents from the property tax base.
- Commercial fragility: While the policy targets “mansions,” commercial properties bear the brunt: monthly turnover plummets 78% compared to a 25% decline for single-family homes, and commercial properties account for roughly half of all Measure ULA revenue.
We’ve Built 500,000 Apartments a Year Before. Here’s How.
America is short somewhere between 2 and 7.4 million homes, depending on how you count, and half of all renters now spend more than 30% of their income on housing. Yet a new report shows annual apartment construction has held near 350,000 homes for 40 years. That’s through strong job markets and recessions.
In Raising the Housing Investment Level: The History and Future of Multifamily Investment Policy, Center for Public Enterprise Executive Director Paul Williams argues that the absence of federal construction financing policy helps explain the stall. He points to two postwar periods when lending and tax programs pushed annual home starts well above 500,000. Those tools, he contends, remain available but largely dormant today.
Key Takeaways:
- Pipeline stagnation. An estimated 750,000 apartments have cleared zoning and land-use approvals but remain unbuilt. That’s six times the number of homes with permits but haven’t yet broken ground.
- Historical precedent. The last two times annual apartment starts exceeded 500,000 homes coincided with deliberate federal financing policy, and both ended when that policy was repealed.
- Financial bottlenecks. The Federal Housing Finance Agency’s (FHA) flagship construction loan program finances just 4% of new apartments despite offering better terms than private lenders, because its approval process takes three to five times longer.
Houser Headlines
- California bills target condo deposits and defect liability
- New California bill seeks to spur more high-rise housing developments in cities’ urban cores
- If YIMBY is winning in California, where are all the houses?
- Gavin Newsom Issues ‘Final Warnings’ Amid California Housing Crisis
- How Austin’s stunning drop in rents explains housing in America
- San Diego rents declined more than 19 of nation’s top 20 markets following surge in supply
- Are condos the answer to Downtown Fresno’s housing hopes? ‘One piece of the puzzle’
- State bill could make high-rise apartments in downtown Sacramento easier to build
- Marin fees would add another barrier to housing
- Almost no housing is getting built in S.F. Could this proposal change that?
- ‘People can’t move into a permit’: California cities struggle to plan for enough housing
YIMBY Social – Top Posts
Share the good word
We welcome your ideas and feedback — send story tips and ideas to Homework@cayimby.org.