The Homework: August 30, 2024
Welcome to the August 30, 2024 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
Earlier this week, California Governor Gavin Newsom signed into law AB 3057, a bill authored by Assemblymember Lori Wilson (Solano) and sponsored by California YIMBY that will make it faster, cheaper, and easier to build accessory dwelling units (ADUs) within existing homes, known as “junior” ADUs. Read our press release here.
In addition to the signing of AB 3057, most of our sponsored and high-priority bills made it through the final week of the legislative session, and are now on the Governor’s desk. The Governor has until September 30th to sign or veto bills – stay tuned for more alerts from California YIMBY about the signing (and Victory Alert!) process.
California YIMBY sponsored and high-priority bills that await the Governor’s signature include:
Sponsored Bills:
- SB 1123 (Caballero): This bill updates SB 684 (2023) to make it legal to build up to 10 homes on single-family zoned vacant lots.
- SB 937 (Wiener): This bill will authorize deferrals of impact fees and extends entitlements in order to provide developers tools to pencil out projects.
- SB 1211 (Skinner): This bill will encourage more ADUs on multifamily properties by providing more flexibility around how ADUs can be built alongside existing multifamily housing.
- AB 1820 (Schiavo): This bill will require cities to provide a precise estimate of the fees required for a proposed housing development at the time of building permit application
- SB 312 (Wiener): This bill fixes an error in SB 886 to ensure that projects that qualify for LEED certification receive streamlined approvals prior to their final LEED certification – which can not be granted until construction is complete.
High Priority Bills:
- SB 450 (Atkins): makes a number of changes to SB 9 (Atkins, 2019) to improve access and certainty for homeowners to the streamlined housing options provided by SB 9.
- SB 1210 (Skinner): This bill will help to eliminate uncertainty around utility connection fees by requiring that fees are clear, transparent, and posted online.
As of this writing, one final California YIMBY sponsored bill, AB 2580 (Wicks), was awaiting a concurrence vote on the Assembly floor on amendments made in the Senate. This bill will require local governments to monitor how new historic designations could impact their ability to meet housing needs under existing state law, and report new historic buildings and districts to the California Department of Housing and Community Development (HCD) during the Annual Progress Report of the Regional Housing Needs Assessment process.
To review all the housing bills California YIMBY has sponsored, supported, and tracked this legislative year, you can now use our Abstract link to track with us.
Stay tuned to future editions of The Homework, and follow the California YIMBY Twitter channel, @cayimby, to stay up to date on developments on the legislative session and related news.
Housing Research & Analysis
We Can’t Build, and it’s Very, Very Bad: On the Politics of Urban Growth
Leaving aside the specific policy barriers to building—strict zoning, onerous permitting processes, environmental review laws that empower litigious neighbors, and so on— most jurisdictions and states across the United States struggle to build housing and infrastructure, and most policymakers fail to adequately serve the public good on these issues.
But why?
In “Why Can’t We Build? Explanations And Reasons For The Building Crisis,” Yale law professor David Schleicher goes beyond the specific policy explanations for why building is difficult to get at the deeper structural and governance reasons why building housing and infrastructure is so difficult.
Key Takeaways:
- First, decisions about building are mostly made at the state and local levels; and the elected officials responsible for building do not face meaningful electoral competition or an informed electorate that can evaluate their performance.
- Second, “authority is too local.” Local control over land use privileges the voices of incumbent residents and structurally excludes outsiders and would-be in-movers from decisions about housing growth, while the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) and state-level “mini-NEPAs” give neighborhood groups disproportionate power to block infrastructure projects.
The Accessory Success Story: How San Diego Builds Multi-Family ADUs
In 2016 the California state legislature passed a series of bills that broadly legalized accessory dwelling units (ADUs), sometimes known as “granny flats” or “in-law units.” These “accessory” homes – so-called because they are legally a part of the existing home on the site, but “accessory” to the primary residence – are now legal on essentially every single-family lot in the state.
Tens of thousands of ADUs have been permitted and built in California under these new rules, which have been updated and expanded several times to permit up to two ADUs on every lot.
In 2020, San Diego went beyond the requirements of state ADU law and created a “Bonus ADU Program” that allows property owners to build several ADUs on a lot, so long as some of them are deed-restricted as moderate-income, affordable housing – with surprising and unexpected results. Researchers Jake Wegmann, Karen Chapple, Andrew Wofford, Li-Ping Lee, Annie Flom, Victoria Beckley, and Holly Armstrong offer “An Early Assessment of the San Diego Bonus ADU Program” in their new report, Not So Gentle Density.
Key Takeaways:
- While the overwhelming majority of Bonus ADU Program projects have fewer than 12 units, a few enterprising developers are using it to quickly permit “ADU” projects with hundreds of homes on large parcels.
- Builders overwhelmingly prefer a higher rent level to a shorter deed restriction term: every single Bonus ADU project applicant has chosen 110% AMI rents for 15 years over 80% AMI for 10 years.
- The cost of upgrading utilities connections is a major pain point for these projects.
Houser Headlines
- Governor Newsom signs new laws to help communities further address homelessness
- Kamala Harris’ YIMBY push for more housing hitting overdrive
- Why The YIMBY Pro-Housing Movement Is So Excited About Kamala Harris
- California YIMBY Aims to Make it Legal to Build More Homes
- Lawmakers can revitalize the California dream by removing the chokehold of single-family zoning – Orange County Register
- Los Angeles Has a Climate Crisis and a Housing Crisis. Infill Housing Can Help Solve Both.
- With Housing Costs High, Democrats Hone YIMBY Message
- What does ‘Yes in my backyard’ look like for housing? Ask California.
- ‘America is not a museum’: Why Democrats are going big on housing despite the risks – POLITICO
- The Way America Builds Homes Is Putting People in Serious Danger – Business Insider
- Wildfire Risk Harms California Home Values, San Francisco Fed Study Finds
- California Homeowners Are Concerned about Climate-related Insurance Price Hikes
YIMBY Social – Top Posts
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