The Homework: July 22, 2025
Welcome to the July 22, 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 is now officially summer recess for the State Legislature (July 19 through August 18), but the week of July 14 saw a flurry of pro-housing bills advance through their final committee hearings. The next stop – any bills that have a fiscal cost are headed to the Appropriations Committee; the rest will move straight to the Floor for votes.
We expect the Appropriations Suspense Hearing to be scheduled for the last week of August, followed by Floor Session until September 12, the final day for each house to pass bills.
We are happy to announce that all of our sponsored bills passed out of their last policy committees, and are now heading to the Appropriations Committees:
- SB 79 (Wiener): 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.
- Passed out of the Assembly Local Government Committee.
- AB 1061 (Quirk-Silva): Makes 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.
- Passed the Senate Housing Committee.
- AB 253 (Ward): Speeds 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 business days.
- Passed out of the Senate Housing Committee.
- AB 1154 (Juan Carrillo): Removes owner-occupancy requirements for “junior” ADUs (ADUs built within an existing home) that do not share sanitation facilities with the existing structure.
- Passed out of the Senate Local Government Committee.
- SB 9 (Arreguín): Ensures that local laws governing the construction of accessory dwelling units (ADUs) align with state law, and provides a pathway to eliminate unlawful local barriers to ADUs.
- Passed the Assembly Local Government Committee.
- AB 413 (Fong): Requires 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.
- Passed the Senate Housing Committee.
- AB 1308 (Hoover): This bill will help bring new homes to market faster by legally requiring a jurisdiction’s building department to perform final inspections for certain projects within ten business days, once the builder notifies the city or county that construction is complete and ready for inspection.
- Passed on consent in the Senate Housing Committee.
Our only bill that is going straight to the floor is SB 9 (Arreguín), which ensures that local laws governing the construction of accessory dwelling units (ADUs) align with state law, and provides a pathway to eliminate unlawful local barriers to ADUs. Most recently, this bill made it out of the Assembly Local Government Committee.
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), to stay current on housing policy research, news, and legislative updates.
Housing Research & Analysis
How California’s Sky-High Rents Cancelled Out $11 Billion in Food Stamp Benefits
California’s 17.7 percent poverty rate—more than double Minnesota’s 7.4 percent—stems almost entirely from housing costs that have spiraled beyond what typical families can afford. In San Jose, a family of four needs $57,673 just to meet basic needs, compared to $39,674 for the same family in Minneapolis. This creates a situation where California workers earning decent wages still can’t afford basic living expenses.
In “Housing Policy and Poverty: The Case of California,” Zachary Parolin of the Niskanen Center analyzed decades of rental price data and poverty measurements across all 50 states to understand why California consistently ranks among the worst states for poverty, despite its economic prosperity.
Key Takeaways:
- Housing costs alone explain California’s poverty crisis: Removing housing cost adjustments drops California’s poverty rate from 17.7 percent to near the national average.
- Rental price growth tends to track the incomes of wealthy families, rather than those of low-income families. From 1985 to 2023, California rents rose 75 percent, closely aligning with the growth of family incomes in the 90th percentile. However, the incomes of families in the 10th percentile increased by only 40 percent.
- Rising housing costs erased food stamp gains: California’s $13.3 billion increase in poverty costs from housing completely offset $11.4 billion in additional SNAP benefits since 1980.
America’s Highway to Hell (And Poverty)
Cities across America spend billions expanding highways and building parking lots, under the commonly-held assumption that more driving equals more prosperity. However, new research suggests the opposite: regions with the highest car dependency tend to exhibit lower economic productivity, while walkable areas with good public transportation generate significantly more wealth per person.
In “The Mobility-Productivity Paradox,” Todd Alexander Litman of the Victoria Transport Policy Institute analyzed the relationship between motor vehicle travel and economic productivity, using comprehensive federal transportation and economic data from multiple countries and time periods.
Key Takeaways:
- More driving correlates with lower state income: Vehicle miles traveled per capita shows a negative correlation with state GDP per capita.
- Vehicle ownership peaks and then declines with national wealth. International data show that car ownership rises until countries reach a GDP per capita of $50,000, after which it declines despite continued income growth.
- Metro areas with transit tend to outperform those that are more car-dependent. Urban regions with higher transit ridership, fewer highway lanes per capita, and population density tend to generate higher per-capita GDP.
Houser Headlines
- We invested in mass transit. We should let Californians live near it
- Two housing bills could save California’s chance for climate action
- California just showed that a better Democratic Party is possible
- Can weaker environmental rules help fight climate change? California just bet yes.
- California YIMBYs just won a major battle, but the war over CEQA isn’t close to finished
- Why it’s taking LA so long to rebuild
- From green icon to housing villain: The fall of California’s landmark environmental law
- California loosens environmental law. Will it speed up Sacramento housing growth?
- SF housing advocates cheer CEQA reform, but will new development follow?
- New building reforms change pace of San Jose development
- In California, Pro-Housing ‘Abundance’ Fans Rewrite an Environmental Landmark
- Editorial: CEQA reforms clear a path for housing
- Gavin Newsom Finally Gets Serious About the California Housing Crisis
- California creating new agency to focus solely on housing and homelessness
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