The Homework: April 2, 2025
Welcome to the April 2, 2025 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
It’s been a busy time for housing legislation in Sacramento. In late March, Assemblymember Wicks, joined by a bipartisan coalition of legislators, introduced the Fast Track Housing package—over 20 bills designed to streamline approvals and accelerate the construction of much-needed housing. The package is focused on a set of targeted interventions that will help make housing more affordable, and ensure projects move forward without unnecessary delays – which drive up costs.
Some of California YIMBY’s sponsored bills were included in the package:
- AB 609 (Wicks): Creates a CEQA exemption for housing projects that comply with local laws and are located in environmentally friendly areas, reducing risks and increasing feasibility for these developments.
- AB 1308 (Hoover): Speeds up the post-entitlement process by requiring building departments to provide estimated timeframes for permit inspections and allowing applicants to contract with private professionals for inspections.
With the legislative session in full swing, many of our sponsored and high-priority bills have already advanced through key committee hearings in the past few weeks.
- AB 253 (Ward): This bill will speed up the approval process for new homes by allowing home builders to hire a licensed and certified third-party reviewer for review of housing permit applications if the local government cannot or does not complete their permit review within 30 days.
- Status: Passed the Assembly Floor and is now making its way to the Senate.
- AB 1154 (Juan Carrillo): This bill will remove owner-occupancy requirements for JADUs that do not share sanitation facilities with the existing structure. It will also exempt small ADUs under 500 square feet from parking requirements, similar to existing exemption for JADUs.
- Status: Passed the Assembly Housing Committee on consent and is set for a hearing on April 9th in the Assembly Local Government Committee.
- AB 1061 (Quirk-Silva): This bill will make it easier to increase the number of homes—including duplexes—in single-family neighborhoods by allowing the California HOME Act (SB 9, 2021) to be used in historic districts.
- Status: Passed the Assembly Housing Committee and now heading to the Assembly Local Government Committee.
The rest of our sponsored and priority bills are still awaiting their hearing dates, which are expected to be in April:
- SB 79 (Wiener): This bill will make it faster and easier to build multi-family housing near transit stops, like train and rapid bus lines, by making it legal for more homes to be built in these areas, and streamlining existing permit review processes.
- SB 677 (Wiener): This bill will update both SB 9 and SB 423, improving both bills to make it faster, easier, and more affordable to build homes of all types in the neighborhoods where they are needed the most.
- SB 315 (Grayson): The bill imposes reasonable limits on park fees for infill housing and establishes better oversight and accountability for the application of these fees.
- AB 413 (Fong): This bill will require the California Department of Housing & Community Development (HCD) to translate key state housing guidelines and handbooks into the non-English languages commonly spoken in California.
- SB 9 (Arreguín): This bill clarifies that all Accessory Dwelling Units (ADUs) are exempt from owner-occupancy requirements as required by AB 881 (Bloom 2020), not only those built after the law went into effect.
- AB 595 (Carrillo): This bill will create more affordable homeownership opportunities for working families and communities of color by providing tax credits for the construction of for-sale homes affordable to Californians who earn moderate income.
To stay current on what housing bills California YIMBY is sponsoring and supporting, you can now use our Abstract link to track with us.
Be sure to stay tuned for future editions of The Homework (and follow California YIMBY’s Twitter and Bluesky channels, @cayimby and cayimby.bsky.social), to stay current on housing policy research, news, and legislative updates.
Housing Research & Analysis
Meet Me in the Middle: Housing lessons from Houston, Portland, and Auckland
Eight states have recently passed laws allowing smaller homes like duplexes and townhomes, also known as “middle housing,” in areas previously restricted to only large, expensive houses.
In “Missing No More: Planners Should Harness Private Developers to Build Middle Housing,” Nicholas J. Marantz and Jake Wegmann examined how these new homes affect affordability and neighborhood stability in Houston, Portland, and Auckland, New Zealand. Their research findings challenge common concerns about allowing developers to build diverse housing types.
Key Takeaways:
- In Portland, a study cited by Marantz and Wegmann suggests the city’s middle housing reforms could reduce costs by roughly one-third in affected neighborhoods, potentially making homes affordable to households earning below the area’s median income.
- In Houston, townhouses built after reform were $215,000 cheaper than new single-family homes while still providing family-sized living spaces.
- Auckland’s rents rose just 11-15 percent over six years after middle housing reform, compared to a 41-59 percent increases in other New Zealand cities that didn’t reform zoning.
The Power of Housing Choice: Lessons from Gautreaux
California cities remain racially segregated, with significant economic disparities between predominantly minority and white neighborhoods. In “The Long-Run Effects of America’s Largest Residential Racial Desegregation Program: Gautreaux,” researchers Eric Chyn, Robert Collinson, and Danielle H. Sandler examined what happened when low-income Black families moved from Chicago’s segregated Black neighborhoods to equally-segregated white neighborhoods.
In 1966, residents of Chicago’s public housing projects – including Dorothy Gautreaux, for whom the case is named – sued the Chicago Housing Authority for racial segregation. Their Supreme Court victory in 1976 led to a program that provided housing choice vouchers to Black families who voluntarily joined the program.
Key Takeaways:
- Children whose families moved to predominantly white neighborhoods earned 20% more as adults and accumulated $34,000 more in lifetime earnings by age 38.
- These children were 10 percentage points more likely to become homeowners as adults, helping close the racial homeownership gap.
- Benefits lasted generations – 40 years later, these individuals lived in more diverse neighborhoods with better opportunity measures.
Houser Headlines
- Scott Wiener rolls out another plan to build housing at transit hubs — with a more surgical approach
- New push to exempt urban housing from CEQA reignites statewide reform battle – Axios San Diego
- ‘Too damn hard to build’: A key California Democrat’s push for speedier construction
- Build, Baby, Build: How to Replace Thousands of Lost Homes – and Speed Up L.A.’s Slow Permitting Process
- Study tells California legislators to declare war on red tape — but will they?
- The Political Fight of the Century
- How LA wildfires are making an already tough rental market even worse
- San Diego has one of the lowest homeownership rates for people under 30
- Even the California Assembly sees the need for permit reform
- No new ADUs here: When California law and homeowner association rules collide
- To encourage homebuilding, San Diego moves to rein in historic building protections, tax breaks
- Plan to turn this S.F. neighborhood into a historic district is sparking conflict: ‘Absolutely abusive’
- Palisades could rebuild with more affordable housing. But many in the wealthy area oppose the idea
YIMBY Social – Top Posts
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