User:Mavx1230/California housing shortage

2017 Legislative session
In the 2017 legislative session, a package of 15 housing bills was passed. One bill legalizes microapartments as small as 150 sq. ft. and prohibits cities from limiting their numbers near universities or public transit; another (SB 2) adds a $75 real-estate document recording fee (for everything other than property sales), which is projected to generate $250 million per year for affordable housing construction. The total 2017 housing package is expected to have only a minimal impact on the shortage, because even the most optimistic predictions suggest that the measures will increase yearly housing production by about 14,000 units per year, still well short (14%) of the additional 100,000 new units needed yearly (in addition to the 80,000 being produced yearly) just to keep pace with population growth and prevent prices from rising. The Homeless and Children Act of 2017 helps create better communities and help the people in need like homeless children, youth, and families. Homeless children have the same right to everyone else in free public education.

Senate Bill 35
Main article: California Senate Bill 35 (2017)

Another bill was Senate Bill 35 (SB 35), authored by state Senator Scott Wiener which shortens the approval process by eliminating environmental and planning reviews for new infill housing in cities which have failed to meet their state housing production goals. The state sets goals for production of different types of housing: market-rate, low-income, etc., (to keep up with expected population growth) and this law applies only to development types for which the city is not meeting its production goal. To make use of the streamlined approval process, the developer must pay prevailing wage and abide by union-standard hiring rules. Wiener said, "Local control is about how a community achieves its housing goals, not whether it achieves those goals.... SB 35 sets clear and reasonable standards to ensure that all communities are part of the solution by creating housing for our growing population." SB 35 has been used, for example, to redevelop the derelict Vallco Shopping Mall in Cupertino into a mixed-use development containing 2,402 apartments, half of them affordable, with no government subsidies, which will quintuple Cupertino's affordable housing stock.

Senate Bills 827 and 50[edit]
Main article: California Senate Bill 50 (2019)

In 2018, Senator Wiener introduced SB 827, which would have required localities to allow buildings of at least 4 or 8 stories within a half-mile of a high-frequency transit stop, or within a quarter-mile of a bus or transit corridor, as well as waiving minimum parking requirements in those areas. The bill was controversial, being opposed both by local governments concerned about the loss of local control of zoning, and by anti-gentrification activists concerned about displacement. The bill was supported by a group of scholars who stated that it would help reduce decades of racial and economic residential segregation, as well as pro-housing groups nationally, and by over 100 San Francisco Bay area technology industry executives who voiced their support of the bill in a joint letter.

Regarding the issue of local control, Wiener said: "In education and healthcare, the state sets basic standards, and local control exists within those standards. Only in housing has the state abdicated its role. But housing is a statewide issue, and the approach of pure local control has driven us into the ditch." Anti-displacement provisions were inserted in response to gentrification concerns. It was subsequently defeated in its first committee hearing.

In December 2018, Senator Wiener introduced a similar bill for the following legislative session, SB 50, which was defeated in a senate floor vote in 2020.

Marshall Plan
''Governor Gavin Newsom started the Marshall Plan to create 3.5 million new housing units in California by 2025. Mckinsey & Co. report on California housing came out and it showed that the Marshal Plan would have 3.5 million housing units in California by 2025.In 2014, California had 358 housing units for every 1,000 compared to 14 which was the national average.''