A California bill that supporters believed could revive the state’s stalled condominium market and open new doors to affordable homeownership collapsed at the eleventh hour this week, a casualty not of political opposition but of the Legislature’s unforgiving clock.
Assembly Bill 1903, authored by Oakland Assemblymember Buffy Wicks, aimed to reshape how disputes over alleged construction defects are resolved between builders and homeowners. Wicks and other supporters argued the measure would reduce costly litigation that has made developers wary of building condos in California for decades.
The bill had wide backing from real estate groups, pro-housing “Yes In My Backyard” advocates and several city governments. It cleared the Senate without a single no vote late Monday night, after 11:15 p.m. But it never made it back to the Assembly floor for the final procedural vote — known as concurrence — needed to send it to the governor’s desk. When the legislative session officially ended at midnight, the bill died without ever facing formal opposition.
Wicks did not hide her frustration. In a statement issued Tuesday, she said she was “incredibly disappointed and frustrated” that the bill “was ultimately held by the Senate,” after what she described as months of negotiation and coalition-building.
“I had a bill Friday morning that I truly believe would have unlocked condo construction to serve our working-class families desperate for homeownership opportunities,” Wicks said.
A spokesperson for Senate President Pro Tem Monique Limón, a Santa Barbara Democrat, did not respond to requests for comment on why the bill stalled.
For much of the year, the measure faced resistance from the Consumer Attorneys of California, a powerful lobbying group representing trial lawyers, as well as several homeowners associations. They argued the bill would make it too difficult for homeowners to pursue legal action against builders responsible for legitimate construction flaws.
That opposition eased over the weekend after Wicks agreed to soften the bill’s language. The revised version dropped provisions that would have limited which defects could be litigated and how they could be identified. Instead, it simply required homeowners to document defects clearly, give builders a chance to make repairs, and release builders from further liability once repairs were completed.
Despite the compromise, the bill ran out of time. Wicks said she remains hopeful that a similar, potentially stronger proposal could return in a future legislative session.
A representative from the Consumer Attorneys of California did not respond to a request for comment before publication.
Sacramento’s final hours of a legislative session are notoriously chaotic. State law requires most bills to be finalized by the end of August in even-numbered years, and legislation must sit in print for 72 hours before a vote can occur. According to longtime Capitol lobbyist Chris Micheli, a handful of bills almost always fail to cross the finish line simply due to time constraints.
This isn’t the first high-profile housing bill to meet such a fate. In 2020, Wicks made headlines when she stood on the Assembly floor, wearing a mask and holding her newborn daughter, to plead unsuccessfully for the passage of Senate Bill 1120, a proposal to allow duplex construction in single-family zoned neighborhoods. That policy eventually passed the following year in a different form.
Another bill this session, Senate Bill 1013 by Riverside Democratic Sen. Sabrina Cervantes, which sought new restrictions on automated license plate readers, met a similar end when it was held in the Assembly without a final vote — reportedly the result of political tension between the two chambers, according to Politico.
Whether AB 1903’s demise was the result of simple scheduling problems or deliberate maneuvering remains unclear. Dan Dunmoyer, president of the California Building Industry Association, which supported the bill, suspects it may have been a bit of both.
“It appears this bill was slow-walked — or not walked at all,” Dunmoyer said. “But I can’t tell if this is truly hostage-taking or things just got jammed up.”
The final negotiations over the bill’s language took place between Wicks and Sen. Tom Umberg, a Santa Ana Democrat who chairs the Senate Judiciary Committee. Umberg, who shared concerns raised by trial attorneys and homeowners associations, reportedly continued negotiating until just hours before the 72-hour print deadline expired Friday evening.
“The chair was moving the goal posts and running out the clock,” said Michael Lane, a lobbyist with the Bay Area-based think tank SPUR. “There’s probably lots of blame to go around, but I think he was being very sly.”
Umberg’s office did not respond to requests for comment.
At the heart of the debate is a long-standing concern among builders and housing advocates: that California’s legal environment discourages condominium construction. Because condos share structural elements, builders say they are especially vulnerable to defect litigation involving multiple homeowners banding together, often through homeowners associations.
In a state where new housing production tends to split between expensive single-family homes and rental apartments, condos have long been viewed as a potential middle ground — offering more attainable ownership opportunities. Yet developers have shied away from building them in large numbers over the past two decades, a trend the bill’s supporters attribute largely to litigation risk.
While comprehensive statewide data on construction defect lawsuits is limited, developers say the threat is significant. “One hundred percent of our condos are sued for defect,” Dunmoyer said in an earlier interview. “If the trial lawyers convince the legislature that it’s okay to file a defect claim when there’s no defect, then we just don’t build condos. It’s not complicated.”
A recent study by Economic & Planning Systems estimated that litigation risk adds roughly 1.9 to 4.4 percent to the cost of condo construction. While that may seem modest, advocates argue it’s enough to push many multifamily developers toward building rental units instead — a dynamic that, for now, remains unchanged as California lawmakers look toward next session to try again.
Original source: CalMatters
