Counties from the Bay Area to the Central Valley are reporting fewer people living on the streets or in shelters compared with last year, based on preliminary tallies from January’s count. Some of the declines were dramatic. San Joaquin County, for instance, saw its overall homeless population fall by nearly a third since 2024, with unsheltered homelessness cut nearly in half. Other regions saw smaller improvements — San Francisco’s count dipped about 4 percent.

Of the 28 California counties and regional homeless service areas that have released 2026 figures so far, more than half showed a decrease. Eight did not conduct a count this year, and seven have yet to make their results public.

Local officials crediting the drop point to new shelter beds and affordable housing units funded by a wave of state homelessness spending in recent years. But not everyone is convinced the numbers tell the full story. Homeless advocates note that cities have intensified encampment sweeps and citations for illegal camping, which can scatter unhoused residents and make them harder to locate — and count — even if they haven’t actually found housing.

And even where officials are touting real progress, there’s growing worry about whether those gains can hold up. Federal cuts to Medi-Cal and other social services threaten to undo recent momentum, several county leaders said.

“We’ve made progress,” said Jonathan Russell, director of Alameda County Health Housing and Homelessness Services, which reported a 13 percent decline compared with 2024. “And there are real threats, real peril.”

Point-in-time counts are federally mandated tallies that most counties conduct every one to two years, typically on a single night in January, when volunteers and outreach workers fan out to count every person sleeping outside, in shelters or in vehicles. The method is widely acknowledged to undercount the true homeless population — people hidden in cars, tucked behind buildings or otherwise out of sight are easy to miss — but it remains the primary tool used nationwide to track trends over time.

Last year’s statewide count found 181,934 homeless Californians, a nearly 3 percent decline from 2024. The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, which compiles the official statewide and national figures, won’t release final 2026 numbers for months, but many counties have already published their own preliminary data.

Not every region saw improvement. Los Angeles County, after two consecutive years of decline, reported a 1 percent increase in homelessness this year. Sacramento County’s overall count rose 13 percent from 2024, even as the number within Sacramento city limits fell. Contra Costa County, which had posted a significant drop between 2024 and 2025, saw a 7 percent increase this year.

The count’s limitations were also on display. A Los Angeles Times investigation found that an accounting error had inflated the city’s homeless total by more than 600 people. And in Fresno and Madera counties, which reported what appeared to be the state’s steepest decline — 34 percent — officials acknowledged the drop may be misleading. This year, volunteers counted only people who confirmed they were homeless and agreed to be surveyed, a change from the broader method used in 2025 that counted anyone visibly living on the street. Officials told the Fresno Bee that the shift makes year-over-year comparisons unreliable.

Some counties are highlighting a different kind of progress: moving people from the streets into shelters, even if they remain technically homeless. In Alameda County, the share of unhoused residents living in shelters rose from 21 percent in 2019 to 37 percent this year. The county also reached a milestone last year — for the first time since it began tracking the data in 2021, slightly more people exited homelessness into housing than fell into it.

Russell attributes much of that shift to a surge of state funding that arrived roughly four years ago, including money from the Homekey program, which helps local governments convert hotels into homeless housing, and the state’s Homeless Housing, Assistance and Prevention fund. Additional state dollars targeted at homeless residents with mental illness or substance use disorders followed in 2023 and 2024.

San Joaquin County, meanwhile, added 304 shelter beds and 1,078 permanent housing units between 2024 and 2026, boosting the number of people in permanent housing by 86 percent.

“There just wasn’t money available 10 years ago like there is now,” said Dawn McLeish, deputy director of the county’s human services department. “It just took a couple years for those investments to get all the way off the ground.”

Not everyone is buying the good news. Niki Jones, executive director of the Sacramento Regional Coalition to End Homelessness, is skeptical of the downward trend.

“They can call it progress if they want to,” Jones said. “I call baloney.”

Since the U.S. Supreme Court’s 2024 ruling giving cities broader authority to clear homeless encampments, many municipalities have adopted new camping bans, increased citations and stepped up encampment clearings. Advocates say that has pushed unhoused residents into hiding, making them harder to find during the count.

“It’s a lot harder to find one person with a blanket somewhere than it is to see a camp,” Jones said.

A recent RAND Corporation study of Los Angeles’ Skid Row, Hollywood and Venice neighborhoods found that overall unsheltered homelessness stayed roughly flat between December 2024 and January 2026 — but the composition changed. The number of people living in tents fell 23 percent, while the number sleeping without any shelter at all rose 20 percent. That shift could complicate efforts to house people, since Mayor Karen Bass’ signature Inside Safe program focuses on clearing tent encampments and moving residents into hotels. People sleeping rough, the study noted, often struggle to keep hold of identification and phones, making the path into housing more difficult.

In Monterey County, homeless services director Roxanne Wilson said it’s hard to know exactly how much enforcement is skewing count results, but she has seen tangible movement of people into housing. The county reported a 15 percent drop in overall homelessness compared with 2024, with unsheltered homelessness down nearly a quarter. Wilson credits three state Encampment Resolution Grants that helped relocate more than 150 people from encampments along the Pajaro River levee and in Soledad and King City. The funding paid for a new shelter in Santa Cruz County for former Pajaro River residents, tiny homes in Soledad and hotel rooms in King City — stepping stones toward permanent housing.

Wilson called it “a huge accomplishment,” but cautioned that state homelessness funding typically arrives as one-time grants, leaving counties uncertain from year to year about what support they’ll receive. That unpredictability makes long-term planning difficult.

“The reality is that it’s going to be hard to hold this line,” Wilson said, “if we don’t start having more stable funding sources.”

Original source: CalMatters

The post California Counties Report Decline in Homeless Populations This Year appeared first on The Hemet & San Jacinto Chronicle.

Every eight years, the California Department of Housing and Community Development hands local governments a homework assignment few of them relish: draft a plan showing how they’ll accommodate a state-assigned share of new housing across four income categories, from housing for the wealthiest buyers down to units affordable to the poorest residents. Those targets are meant to reflect how much housing each region needs to keep pace with population growth and chip away at a shortage of affordable homes that has plagued California for decades.

This summer marked the halfway point in the current eight-year cycle, giving officials, developers and housing advocates their first real chance to check the state’s progress against a report card. The results were not encouraging.

Fewer than a third of California’s cities and counties are on pace to permit enough “above moderate” housing — generally market-rate homes — to hit their targets by the end of the cycle, according to data local governments reported to the state. The numbers get worse from there. Only about 10% are keeping pace on moderate-income housing. About 13% are on track for low-income units. And a mere 6% of jurisdictions statewide — just 32 out of more than 500 — are on pace to meet their targets for housing affordable to very low-income households, generally defined as those earning less than half the local median income.

Only five jurisdictions in the entire state are permitting housing fast enough to stay on track across all four income categories. Four are sparsely populated, unincorporated areas of rural counties — Plumas, Napa, Yolo and Mono. The fifth is Placerville, a Sierra foothill town of roughly 11,000 residents east of Sacramento.

Southern California, unsurprisingly, is not faring any better. Of the 212 cities and counties in the region that had passed the halfway mark in their planning cycle this year, all but four had missed at least one of their housing benchmarks — and are now subject to a state law meant to punish underperforming jurisdictions by fast-tracking development approvals.

Take Irvine, in Orange County, as a case study in how uneven the progress can be. State regulators told the city to plan for 8,671 market-rate homes by 2030. Halfway through that timeline, Irvine has already issued permits for more than 6,000 units — putting it on pace to hit that particular goal, a rare accomplishment among California cities.

But when it comes to housing that ordinary residents can actually afford, Irvine looks a lot like the rest of the state: badly behind. The city has permitted only about 9% of the very low-income units it needs to reach its 2030 target, and just 3% of the housing aimed at households earning up to 80% of the area’s median income.

**Why isn’t more housing getting built?**

For anyone who has tracked California’s homebuilding trends over the past half-century, the gap between what’s planned and what’s actually built is nothing new. The state’s current housing target totals nearly 2.5 million units over eight years — itself a scaled-back version of the 3.5-million-unit goal Gov. Gavin Newsom campaigned on in 2017. Hitting 2.5 million would require building roughly 312,500 homes a year, a pace California has never sustained, not even during its biggest housing booms in the early 1960s and mid-1980s.

Despite a wave of state legislative and policy changes meant to jumpstart construction, California’s annual homebuilding total this decade has hovered only slightly above 100,000 units — nowhere close to what’s needed.

Critics of the state’s planning process argue the targets themselves are unrealistic, and that local governments have limited power to force anything to actually get built.

“Cities can’t compel developers to build, and cities themselves don’t build housing,” said Jason Rhine, a lobbyist with the League of California Cities. Local officials, he noted, can rezone land and clear regulatory hurdles, but they can’t make a developer break ground.

Housing advocates counter that the sluggish production numbers are proof cities aren’t doing enough to make development attractive in the first place.

“Cities may say they don’t control production directly, but they do control fees, zoning and permitting,” said Laura Foote, executive director of YIMBY Action. The entire state housing-allocation process, she said, “only works if there’s the political will to hold cities accountable.”

Foote also faulted state housing regulators for not pushing harder to force cities to adopt more development-friendly policies.

In a written statement, HCD spokesperson Jennifer Hanson said the department is “actively monitoring and enforcing” the commitments jurisdictions made in their state-approved housing plans. She pointed to two recent state laws — one exempting many urban infill housing projects from environmental lawsuits, and another requiring cities to allow taller buildings near major transit stops — that have already helped “advance approved projects representing thousands of proposed homes.”

Hanson also noted that plenty of factors driving whether a project gets built are entirely out of local or state control. “Whether a project moves forward depends on interest rates, construction and land costs, access to capital, insurance, and expected rents or sale prices,” she said.

**A limited safety valve**

Affordable housing faces an added hurdle: a lack of public money. With few exceptions, building homes affordable to below-median-income Californians requires public subsidies, philanthropic capital or lenders and investors willing to accept lower returns. State support for that kind of financing has dried up since funds from a 2018 voter-approved housing bond ran out, which helps explain why affordable housing production numbers remain so low.

Affordable housing developers and advocates are hoping voters will approve an $11.25 billion state bond measure this November to refill that funding pipeline.

Middle-income housing faces its own unique financial squeeze — often ineligible for subsidy programs that prioritize the lowest-income households, yet not lucrative enough to attract developers looking to turn a profit without public help.

The state does have one tool to punish jurisdictions that fall behind. A 2017 law requires cities and counties that miss the halfway mark on their above-moderate, moderate or very-low-income housing targets (affordable “moderate” income housing is excluded) to fast-track approval for most apartment and condo projects. In exchange, developers must set aside a share of affordable units and pay higher wages to construction workers.

But history suggests that alone won’t be enough to spark a building boom. Developers have long argued that the law’s affordability and wage requirements make many projects financially unworkable outside of the state’s highest-rent neighborhoods. Since 2018, the law has been used to approve roughly 28,000 homes statewide, according to state housing officials — a meaningful number, but nowhere near enough to close the gap between what California is building and what it actually needs.

Original source: CalMatters

The post State Report: Nearly No Community in California Is Building Enough Housing — Here’s Why appeared first on The Hemet & San Jacinto Chronicle.

State regulators require every California city and county to plan for housing across four income categories, from market-rate development down to units affordable for the lowest earners. Newsom’s overall goal calls for 2.5 million new homes statewide over eight years, or roughly 312,500 units annually. With this summer marking the halfway point of that timeline, the results paint a discouraging picture.

Of more than 530 jurisdictions statewide, fewer than a third are permitting enough “above moderate” housing — generally market-rate homes — to stay on pace. The numbers are even more troubling for the state’s poorest residents: just 32 jurisdictions, less than 6%, are on track to meet targets for “very low” income housing, meant for those earning less than half of their area’s typical income.

There are a few bright spots. Five California localities are currently permitting enough housing to hit all four of their state-mandated income targets. But taken as a whole, the data shows that nearly every corner of the state is falling behind on the housing production needed to keep pace with demand.

Local government officials have pushed back on the criticism, arguing that state-imposed targets don’t account for real-world constraints. Jason Rhine, a lobbyist for the League of California Cities, noted that cities themselves don’t build housing and have limited power to compel private developers to break ground on new projects.

But housing advocates counter that local governments still hold significant sway over whether construction happens at all. Laura Foote, executive director of the pro-housing group YIMBY Action, said cities may not control developers directly, but they do control the fees, zoning rules and permitting processes that can make or break a project’s feasibility.

For Southern California communities already grappling with high housing costs and long permitting timelines, the figures underscore a broader statewide challenge: turning ambitious housing goals into homes that actually get built.

In other news from Sacramento, the California Supreme Court handed down two rulings this week with implications for courtrooms and taxpayers statewide.

In one decision, the court ruled that judges must be allowed to make exceptions to a state law barring electronic recordings during most hearings — a setback for labor unions that had fought to preserve jobs for professional court reporters. The shortage of certified court reporters has left millions of hearings without any official written record, complicating efforts by everyday litigants to appeal their cases. Recordings offer an alternative, allowing parties to later have proceedings transcribed by certified professionals when a full-time reporter isn’t available.

Court reporter unions maintain that trained professionals produce more reliable transcripts than recordings. But critics say requiring court reporters — who can cost thousands of dollars to hire privately — has created an unequal system where wealthier litigants have far greater access to accurate case records. Chief Justice Patricia Guerrero wrote that the ongoing failure to provide low-income litigants with a way to obtain an official transcript denies them meaningful access to the judicial system.

In a separate ruling, the state’s high court sided with Marathon Petroleum in a tax dispute with the city of Carson, a decision that could reshape how local governments across California handle business tax refund claims. The dispute stemmed from a 2022 assessment in which Carson determined that a Marathon subsidiary owed additional money under the city’s oil-industry business license tax. The company paid the disputed amount but sought a refund under state law, while Carson insisted the refiner follow the city’s own internal refund procedure instead.

The Supreme Court ruled in Marathon’s favor, finding that local governments cannot force taxpayers to first exhaust a city-specific process before filing a claim under the state’s Government Claims Act. Guerrero wrote that local agencies cannot lawfully require compliance with such internal procedures as a precondition for submitting a tax refund claim — a ruling likely to influence how cities and counties throughout the region, including here in the Inland Empire, handle similar tax disputes going forward.

Original source: CalMatters

The post Newsom’s Housing Targets Are Going Unmet in Most California Cities appeared first on The Hemet & San Jacinto Chronicle.

Every eight years, the state hands local governments a housing to-do list. Under Gov. Gavin Newsom’s administration, cities and counties are assigned targets for how many new homes they should plan for across four income tiers, from housing for the wealthiest buyers down to units affordable to the poorest residents. The goal is to keep pace with population growth while making a dent in California’s long-running affordability crisis.

This summer, a large swath of the state — including all of Southern California — hit the midpoint of its current eight-year planning cycle. The results, based on state housing data, are underwhelming at best.

Fewer than a third of California’s cities and counties are building enough market-rate housing to stay on pace with their targets. The numbers get worse from there. Only about 10% are keeping up with their goals for “moderate” income housing, roughly 13% for “low” income units, and a mere 6% — just 32 jurisdictions statewide — are on track for housing affordable to residents earning less than half the local median income.

Only five places in California are hitting all four of their targets, and most are far from the region: the unincorporated areas of Plumas, Napa, Yolo and Mono counties, plus the small Sierra foothill town of Placerville. Not a single Southern California city makes that list.

Take Irvine, one of the rare local success stories on market-rate housing. The Orange County city was told to plan for 8,671 above-moderate units by 2030 and has already permitted more than 6,000 — putting it ahead of most cities in that category. But when it comes to housing for lower-income residents, Irvine mirrors the broader statewide struggle: just 9% of its very-low-income target and 3% of its low-income target have been permitted so far.

Why the gap between paper plans and actual construction? For one thing, the numbers themselves are enormous. California’s current cycle calls for nearly 2.5 million new homes over eight years — more than 312,000 per year. Even during the state’s strongest building booms, in the early 1960s and mid-1980s, annual construction never approached that level. Despite a wave of new state laws designed to speed up housing approvals, California is still adding only a bit more than 100,000 homes a year.

Local government advocates argue that cities are being blamed for something outside their control. “Cities cannot require developers to develop and cities don’t build housing,” said Jason Rhine, a lobbyist for the League of California Cities. Local officials can rezone land and streamline permits, he said, but they can’t force builders to break ground.

Pro-housing advocates see it differently, arguing cities still aren’t doing enough to encourage development. “Cities can argue that they don’t directly control production, but they do control fees, zoning and permitting,” said Laura Foote, executive director of YIMBY Action. She said the state’s housing allocation system “is only as good as we have the political will to actually hold cities accountable,” and faulted state regulators, too, for not pushing harder on cities to adopt more development-friendly rules.

A spokesperson for the state’s Department of Housing and Community Development, Jennifer Hanson, said the agency is actively monitoring cities’ progress and enforcing commitments made in their housing plans. She pointed to recent state laws that exempt many urban infill projects from environmental lawsuits and require cities to allow taller buildings near transit stops, saying both have already helped move forward projects representing thousands of proposed homes.

Hanson also noted that plenty of factors driving whether homes get built are simply beyond any government’s control. “Whether a project moves forward depends on interest rates, construction and land costs, access to capital, insurance and expected rents or sale prices,” she said.

Affordable housing faces its own distinct obstacle: money. With rare exceptions, building homes priced for lower-income households in California requires public subsidies or investors willing to accept slim returns. State funding has been scarce since a 2018 voter-approved bond that fueled California’s main affordable housing subsidy program ran dry. Housing advocates are now hoping voters will approve an $11.25 billion state bond measure this November to refill that funding pipeline.

Housing for middle-income earners has its own bind. Moderate-income projects typically don’t qualify for the subsidies aimed at lower-income housing, yet the rents they can charge are often too low to attract developers seeking a profit without public support.

State lawmakers tried to create a workaround in 2017 with a law that fast-tracks approval for apartment and condo developments in cities that fall behind on their above-moderate, low- and very-low-income targets. In exchange for streamlined permitting, developers must include a share of affordable units and pay higher wages to construction workers.

Of the 212 Southern California cities and counties that reached the midpoint of their planning cycle this year, all but four missed their targets and are now subject to that streamlining law.

Even so, don’t expect a construction boom overnight. Developers have long argued that the law’s affordability and wage requirements make many projects financially unworkable outside of the most expensive rental markets. Since 2018, the law has helped approve nearly 28,000 units statewide — a meaningful number, but nowhere near enough to close California’s housing gap.

Original source: CalMatters

The post California Housing Falls Short of State Targets Almost Everywhere — Here’s Why appeared first on The Hemet & San Jacinto Chronicle.

The bill is set to become law automatically just after midnight Saturday, thanks to a quirk of the Constitution rather than a presidential signature. President Trump had pledged not to sign the housing measure until Congress first passed a national voter identification proposal — legislation that has stalled in the Senate. With that impasse continuing and Trump reiterating his refusal to sign as recently as last week, the housing bill will take effect without his approval, simply by running out the ten-day clock the Constitution allows for presidential action.

Despite the anticlimactic path to passage, housing advocates say the substance of the bill is anything but minor. Rather than one bold stroke, the legislation bundles together 56 separate provisions — regulatory tweaks, pilot programs, low-cost loans and grants — aimed at chipping away at the nation’s housing affordability crisis from multiple angles. No single piece is likely to transform the market on its own. Supporters are betting that, together, they might.

“We don’t often get together to celebrate federal housing legislation,” Stephen Russell, president of the Housing Federation of San Diego, said at a press conference last week. “I think the last time Congress passed something of this magnitude, a lot of you weren’t even born yet… this is close to a once-in-a-lifetime event.”

The bill’s momentum reflects a growing bloc of lawmakers aligned with the “Yes In My Backyard” movement, many of them from California, a state that knows a thing or two about sky-high housing costs. But the push to link affordability to housing supply has become a bipartisan cause nationally. Tellingly, the legislation was born out of a partnership between Republican Sen. Tim Scott of South Carolina and Democratic Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts, one of the Senate’s most progressive members.

Though none of the bill’s provisions target California specifically, several stand out for the mark they could leave on the state.

BUILD NOW, OR ELSE

For expensive cities that have chronically underbuilt — a description that fits much of urban California — the bill pairs incentives with real consequences.

The legislation reworks the Community Development Block Grant program, one of the federal government’s primary funding streams for affordable housing and local economic development. Cities with high housing costs, measured through price and vacancy data, that have a history of sluggish construction and continue to build below-average levels of housing will see their block grant funding cut by 10 percent. Those savings will be redirected to cities building at a faster clip.

That could carry “real implications for cities like Los Angeles and San Francisco, which have traditionally lagged” in expanding housing supply, said David Garcia, deputy director of policy at UC Berkeley’s Terner Center for Housing Innovation.

According to U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development data, the city of Los Angeles received $48.4 million in its most recent block grant allocation in 2024. San Francisco received $18.9 million. Those figures alone wouldn’t make or break either city’s budget.

“I think this will be a small nudge,” said Laura Foote, executive director of YIMBY Action, in an email. “Which, applied nationally, could have a big impact! Small nudges add up.”

Beyond the dollar amounts, the precedent may matter more. Even in California, where the state has aggressively pushed cities to plan for more housing and penalized those that don’t, lawmakers have never before punished municipalities for failing to actually build — an outcome not always within a city’s control.

Garcia called the idea “inconceivable in past Congresses.” Even so, the provision hasn’t drawn much public pushback from local government groups. In an online summary, National League of Cities lobbyist Michael Wallace praised the broader housing bill as an example of the federal government “choosing collaboration with local governments over the imposition of laws,” highlighting other provisions that give cities more flexibility in spending block grant funds and new incentive programs to boost supply.

LOSING THE CHASSIS

Manufactured homes are often casually called “mobile homes,” but in practice, they rarely move. Built on assembly lines and trucked to their final destination, these naturally affordable homes — the type policymakers across California and the country say the market desperately needs more of — are typically installed on permanent foundations. Fewer than 10 percent are ever relocated again.

Yet the federal building code governing manufactured homes still requires a costly holdover from their mobile origins: a permanent steel chassis.

That chassis — a massive steel undercarriage complete with removable axles and wheels — is technically there to make transport easier. In practice, it functions as a bulky, 10-to-12-inch-thick floor that can’t be removed once the home is delivered. It adds thousands of dollars to the cost of each unit and makes it far more difficult to stack manufactured homes into two-story buildings or multifamily apartment complexes, according to Jess Maxcy, president of the California Manufactured Housing Institute.

The new federal law eliminates the permanent chassis requirement — a change manufacturers and housing policy experts have pushed for since the mid-1980s.

“That relatively small change will expand access to one of the most affordable paths to homeownership,” said Rep. Scott Peters, D-San Diego, at last week’s press conference.

Maxcy said she doesn’t expect the rule change to spark an overnight boom in manufactured housing. But especially in California, where high land costs make it more likely that new single-family homes will be built stacked on small lots, the change “gives us more opportunities and helps us bring the price down.”

DISASTER RECOVERY, MADE PERMANENT

In the months after a natural disaster, long after emergency federal funds run dry, Congress has historically stepped in with long-term rebuilding grants through the Community Development Block Grant-Disaster Recovery program. Over the past three decades, the program has funneled more than $100 billion into long-term recovery work — building housing, repairing infrastructure, and helping with rental and relocation assistance. The money is typically reserved for low-income residents and communities “that won’t be able to recover without these funds,” said Marion McFadden, who ran the program under the Biden administration and now works at IEM, a disaster preparedness and recovery consulting firm.

Unfortunately for California, the program has never had a permanent, guaranteed existence. Since the mid-1990s, it’s been authorized and funded on an ad hoc basis, tucked into individual spending bills. That makes it difficult for communities trying to plan long-term recovery, and it means the rules governing the money — who gets it, when, under what conditions and for what purposes — get rewritten with every new administration, often slowing the process considerably. According to the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, Los Angeles has yet to receive any disaster recovery block grant funding following the 2025 wildfires. Congress has not yet appropriated any.

The new housing bill would permanently authorize the program in law for at least three years.

“This allows HUD to have funds ready before a disaster and make a decision within 15 days on whether it will provide funding,” McFadden said.

What the bill doesn’t do: provide additional funding. Disaster-prone communities will still have to wait for Congress to address that separately.

CLEARING A BOTTLENECK

For the past two decades, public housing authorities in Los Angeles and the Bay Area have relied on the federal Rental Assistance Demonstration program to repair and modernize their aging public housing stock. The program works by diversifying funding sources, giving local agencies more flexibility to secure loans and attract private investment.

Until just after midnight on July 11, the federal government was only authorized to approve 455,000 of these conversions nationwide. The new bill raises that cap by another 100,000 units.

“This has been a bottleneck in California for years, and that bottleneck has just been removed,” Russell said.

Not every affordable housing advocate is celebrating. The National Low Income Housing Coalition has consistently opposed expanding the program, arguing that shifting funding sources could weaken existing tenant protections. It’s unclear how much truth there is to that concern — a study last year found no evidence that conversions under the program lead to increased evictions.

KEEPING WALL STREET OUT OF THE SUBURBS

If there’s one thing most people have heard about this bill, it’s that it bars “large institutional investors” from buying up more single-family homes.

The final version includes some significant caveats. The bill defines “large” as any corporate entity controlling more than 350 single-family homes. It’s not retroactive, so investors who already hold large portfolios don’t have to sell them off. There are exemptions for new construction, renovations and senior housing. In California specifically, where corporations and other large investors don’t play an outsized role in the housing market, the impact is likely to be modest.

The provision “takes an issue that resonates deeply with people across the country and applies a fairly modest fix,” said Chad Maisel, a fellow at the left-leaning Center for American Progress and a former housing policy adviser to President Biden.

Still, the measure enjoys broad bipartisan support. Earlier this year, Trump called for even tougher restrictions on so-called corporate landlords. Gov. Gavin Newsom made a similar call that same week.

The anti-investor language in the final bill was softened considerably from an earlier version that threatened to undercut “build-to-rent” developments — well-financed subdivisions of single-family homes built specifically for renters. That earlier draft sparked backlash from developers and YIMBY advocates who otherwise strongly supported the bill, arguing that such communities are among the fastest-growing sources of new housing in the country and offer renters rare access to suburban-style, single-family living.

After that provision was stripped from the federal bill, state Sen. Aisha Wahab, D-Fremont, now a congressional candidate, introduced state legislation reviving the idea. Her bill, SB 880, would have barred the bulk sale of multiple single-family homes, striking directly at the build-to-rent business model. That measure was rejected by the Assembly Judiciary Committee in late June.

Original source: CalMatters

The post What California’s “Once-in-a-Lifetime” Federal Housing Bill Would Mean for the State appeared first on The Hemet & San Jacinto Chronicle.

The bill didn’t arrive with the fanfare typically reserved for major legislation. It became law just after midnight without a signing ceremony, after President Trump declined to formally sign or veto it. The White House had actually scrapped a planned bill-signing last month amid a dispute over an unrelated voter ID measure stalled in the Senate. But under constitutional rules, a bill that sits unsigned for 10 days automatically becomes law — and that’s exactly what happened.

Despite the anticlimactic rollout, supporters describe the measure as historic: a rare bipartisan effort, born from a partnership between Republican Sen. Tim Scott of South Carolina and Democratic Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts, aimed at chipping away at the nation’s housing shortage through dozens of smaller policy changes rather than one sweeping fix.

“We don’t often gather to celebrate federal housing legislation,” said Stephen Russell, president of the San Diego Housing Federation, at a press conference last week. “The last time Congress passed anything of this magnitude, many of you weren’t even alive. It’s almost a once-in-a-lifetime event.”

The law contains 56 separate provisions — regulatory adjustments, pilot programs, new loan products and grant incentives. None of them, on their own, is expected to solve California’s housing affordability crisis. But taken together, backers argue they could meaningfully shift the trajectory for cities that have struggled for years to build enough homes.

A carrot-and-stick approach for slow-growth cities

One of the more consequential changes targets the Community Development Block Grant program, a major federal funding stream for affordable housing and local development projects. Under the new law, expensive cities that consistently underbuild housing — based on measures like median home prices and vacancy rates — could see their grant funding cut by 10 percent. Those dollars would then be redirected to nearby cities that are building housing at a faster pace.

Housing policy experts say the change could have real consequences for cities such as Los Angeles and San Francisco, both of which have long lagged behind housing production goals. Los Angeles received roughly $48.4 million through the block grant program in 2024; San Francisco received about $18.9 million.

“I think this will be a small nudge,” said Laura Foote, executive director of YIMBY Action. “Which, taken across the country, could still have a good impact. Little nudges add up.”

More significant than the dollar amounts, experts say, is the precedent being set. Even California, which has aggressively pushed cities to plan for new housing, has never directly penalized municipalities for failing to actually build it — an outcome that isn’t always within a city’s control. David Garcia, deputy director of policy at UC Berkeley’s Terner Center for Housing Innovation, called the idea “inconceivable in previous congresses.”

Still, local government advocates haven’t pushed back hard against the change. The National League of Cities praised the broader law, noting it also includes new flexibility for how block grant dollars can be spent and new support for local planning efforts.

Easing rules for manufactured housing

The law also eliminates a long-standing federal building requirement that manufactured homes — often called mobile homes, even though most never move after being installed — be built on a permanent steel chassis.

Originally intended to make the homes easier to transport, the chassis in practice adds a bulky, expensive layer beneath the floor that serves little purpose once a home is placed on a permanent foundation. Removing the requirement, something industry advocates have sought since the 1980s, is expected to lower costs and make it easier to build multi-story manufactured homes or stack units into apartment-style buildings.

“That relatively minor change will expand access to one of the most affordable forms of home ownership available,” said Rep. Scott Peters, a San Diego Democrat.

Jess Maxcy, president of the California Manufactured Housing Institute, said the shift won’t spark an immediate building boom, but in a state where land costs push builders toward denser development, it “provides more opportunities and helps us reduce the price.”

More certainty for disaster recovery funding

For communities recovering from wildfires and other disasters, the law formally establishes — for at least three years — the Community Development Block Grant-Disaster Recovery program, which has funneled more than $100 billion nationally into long-term rebuilding efforts like housing construction and infrastructure repair.

Until now, the program operated on an ad hoc basis, requiring separate congressional funding after each disaster — a process that has left communities like Los Angeles, still recovering from the 2025 firestorms, without any allocated funds so far. The new law won’t immediately send fresh dollars to fire-affected areas, but it does create a framework allowing the Department of Housing and Urban Development to have funding ready in advance and make decisions within 15 days of a disaster.

“It creates the ability for HUD to have money on hand before a disaster and then make a decision within 15 days about whether they’re going to provide funding,” said Marion McFadden, a former HUD official who ran the program under President Biden.

Removing a cap on public housing conversions

The law also lifts a longstanding cap on the Rental Assistance Demonstration program, which allows public housing authorities — including those in Los Angeles and the Bay Area — to tap private financing to renovate aging public housing stock. The previous 455,000-unit cap will rise by another 100,000 units.

“This has been a bottleneck in California for years, and that bottleneck just got removed,” Russell said.

Not everyone is celebrating the expansion. The National Low Income Housing Coalition has raised concerns that shifting funding sources could weaken tenant protections, though a recent study found no clear evidence that such conversions lead to increased evictions.

A modest curb on corporate homebuying

Perhaps the most talked-about provision bars “large institutional investors” — defined as entities controlling more than 350 single-family homes — from purchasing additional houses. The rule doesn’t apply retroactively, exempts new construction, renovations and senior housing, and is unlikely to have much impact in California, where large investors play a relatively small role in the housing market compared with other states.

Chad Maisel, a fellow at the Center for American Progress and former housing adviser to President Biden, described the provision as “a pretty modest intervention” to a politically popular issue. Still, it drew support from across the spectrum — Trump called for even tougher restrictions on corporate landlords earlier this year, and Gov. Gavin Newsom voiced similar concerns days later.

An earlier, tougher version of the provision had threatened to disrupt “build-to-rent” developments — planned communities of single-family rental homes — prompting pushback from developers and pro-housing advocates who argued such projects help address a shortage of family-sized rental housing. That language was ultimately removed from the federal bill.

In California, state Sen. Aisha Wahab of Fremont, now a congressional candidate, introduced a related bill, SB 880, that would have banned bulk sales of single-family homes to investors — striking directly at the build-to-rent business model. That legislation died in the Assembly Judiciary Committee in late June.

Original source: CalMatters

The post What California’s “Once-in-a-Lifetime” Federal Housing Bill Would Mean for Residents appeared first on The Hemet & San Jacinto Chronicle.

California saw a slight improvement in homelessness last year, but the crisis remains vast: an estimated 182,000 residents across the state still lack stable housing. In Sacramento, lawmakers are considering a mix of policy changes that reflect ongoing debates over housing, addiction treatment, local authority and accountability for public spending.

One closely watched proposal comes from Assemblymember Matt Haney, a San Francisco Democrat, who is again trying to clarify whether state homelessness dollars may be used for sober housing.

Gov. Gavin Newsom vetoed Haney’s similar bill last year, surprising advocates who had supported the measure. That proposal, Assembly Bill 255, would have allowed cities and counties to spend up to 10% of certain state homelessness funding on “recovery housing,” where residents are required to remain sober.

The idea challenged California’s longstanding “housing first” approach, which generally emphasizes placing people into housing without requiring sobriety, treatment participation or other preconditions.

In his veto message last year, Newsom said state funding already could be used for sober housing. His administration pointed to guidance posted shortly after the veto as evidence that such funding was permissible.

Haney argues the guidance has not been clear enough. He said providers still believe they cannot use state money for sober housing, and he is not aware of any providers who have done so since the veto.

His new measure, Assembly Bill 1556, would spell out requirements for sober housing providers seeking state funds. Providers would need a relapse policy intended to help residents return to sobriety. The policy could also allow eviction if a resident continues using drugs or alcohol and does not comply with program rules.

That provision has drawn concern from critics who warn it could push vulnerable people back into homelessness. Sharon Rapport, director of California state policy for the Corporation for Supportive Housing, said the bill could redirect money away from low-barrier housing for people who are not ready or able to stop using substances.

Unlike Haney’s previous bill, AB 1556 does not cap how much state funding could be used for sober housing. It also does not provide additional money, meaning funding decisions would come from existing homelessness resources.

Rapport said the concern is heightened by the Trump administration’s support for prioritizing sober housing with federal dollars.

Haney said this year’s discussions with the governor’s office have been more productive and that he expects a different response if the bill reaches Newsom’s desk.

Another major proposal would require the state to calculate what it would actually take to end homelessness.

Assembly Bill 1165, by Assemblymember Mike Gipson, a Gardena Democrat, would direct the California Department of Housing and Community Development to produce a financial plan by January 2028. The plan would have to identify the cost of meeting the housing needs of people currently experiencing homelessness, as well as those expected to fall into homelessness in the future. It also would include performance measures to track progress.

California has already estimated that it must plan for 2.5 million homes over the next eight years to meet housing demand and reduce the affordable housing shortage. Gipson’s bill would require the state to go further by identifying the resources needed and creating a road map to reach those goals.

The Corporation for Supportive Housing has estimated that ending homelessness in California would cost $8.1 billion annually for 12 years. By comparison, the budget plan recently proposed by the Legislature includes $900 million for Homeless Housing, Assistance and Prevention grants, the state’s primary homelessness funding program.

Supporters say AB 1165 could improve accountability, particularly after a 2024 audit found California had not adequately tracked homelessness spending or measured outcomes. However, the bill does not itself provide new funding, which could make implementing any resulting plan difficult in a tight budget year.

A separate proposal, Assembly Bill 1924, would require the California Interagency Council on Homelessness to create a statewide homelessness prevention strategy by July 2027.

Prevention programs have gained attention because keeping people housed is typically less costly and less disruptive than helping them after they have become homeless. Some organizations have found that targeted financial assistance of several thousand dollars can be enough to help at-risk residents avoid losing housing.

Like AB 1165, the prevention bill does not include new funding.

Lawmakers are also debating how much homelessness data cities should be required to report to the state.

Senate Bill 866, by Sen. Catherine Blakespear, a Democrat from Encinitas, would require more cities to submit data about homelessness, services and outcomes, even if they do not receive state homelessness funding.

Currently, counties, regional homeless services agencies known as continuums of care, and the state’s 14 largest cities are eligible for funding through the Homeless Housing, Assistance and Prevention program. In exchange, they must report information about their homeless populations, available services and progress in moving people off the streets.

Blakespear argues that homelessness does not stop at city or county lines and that statewide data is needed to understand and address the crisis.

The proposal has faced significant opposition from local governments. The League of California Cities and dozens of cities oppose the bill, saying it would create new reporting responsibilities without providing the staff or funding needed to carry them out.

In response, Blakespear agreed to exempt cities with populations of 50,000 or fewer, which would remove about half of California’s cities from the requirement. Still, some lawmakers remain opposed.

Sen. Marie Alvarado-Gil, a Modesto Republican, criticized the bill as an unfunded mandate and questioned why it was moving forward despite broad opposition from cities.

Another bill could affect people cited for minor offenses, including many unhoused residents who receive tickets while living outdoors.

Assembly Bill 2122, by Assemblymembers Ash Kalra and Josh Lowenthal, does not specifically mention homelessness. But advocates say it could have major consequences for people who are cited for infractions and then miss court dates.

As cities across California increase enforcement of laws related to camping and public spaces, unhoused people can be cited for unauthorized camping, loitering, trespassing, public urination, park rule violations and other offenses. Police typically issue a paper citation with a court date.

For people living outside, getting to court can be difficult. They may lack transportation, have no safe place to leave belongings or pets, or lose track of court dates while facing the instability of street homelessness. Missing a court date can lead to a bench warrant, meaning the person could be jailed during a later police encounter.

AB 2122 would prohibit someone from being jailed for missing court after being cited for an infraction. It also would prevent courts from issuing arrest warrants for failure to pay traffic tickets.

The bill applies only to infractions, and cities classify offenses differently. Conduct treated as an infraction in one jurisdiction could be a misdemeanor elsewhere.

The California State Sheriffs’ Association opposes the bill, arguing it would weaken accountability for people who fail to appear in court.

Lawmakers are also revisiting the issue of RVs and other vehicles used as shelter, a concern visible in many California communities as more people live in cars, vans, trailers and motor homes parked along streets.

Assemblymember Mark Gonzalez, a Los Angeles Democrat, carried legislation last year intended to make it easier for local governments to dispose of inoperable RVs left on public streets. He said the goal was to address vehicles that create neighborhood blight and public safety concerns.

The bill was narrowed to apply only to Los Angeles and Alameda counties. But the final language created an unintended problem: the counties themselves could use the law, but cities within those counties could not. The issue became clear when the Los Angeles City Council approved an RV disposal program and a court later blocked it.

Assembly Bill 647 is intended to correct that mistake. It would allow cities in Los Angeles and Alameda counties to destroy RVs valued at $4,000 or less.

Opponents warn the measure could encourage cities to seize more RVs that people are living in, leaving them with no shelter other than the street.

Together, the bills illustrate the competing pressures facing California as homelessness remains one of the state’s most visible and difficult problems. Lawmakers are weighing calls for accountability, treatment-focused housing and local enforcement tools against concerns that some proposals could deepen instability for people already living without permanent homes.

Original source: CalMatters

The post California Lawmakers Take Up New Homelessness Bills as Key Measures Advance appeared first on The Hemet & San Jacinto Chronicle.

Assembly Bill 1751 would speed approval for new townhouse projects in California. Developers using the streamlined process would have been required to pay construction workers at least $28 an hour.

That wage requirement was removed during a hearing before the Senate Housing Committee after Assemblymember Buffy Wicks, an Oakland Democrat and co-author of the bill, said the change was necessary because of firm opposition from the State Building and Construction Trades Council.

Sen. Jesse Arreguín, a Berkeley Democrat who chairs the committee, made removal of the wage provision a condition for moving the bill forward. He said lawmakers would continue working on a separate approach to establish a minimum pay standard that could gain support from all sides, including the Building Trades.

The State Building and Construction Trades Council represents unionized electricians, plumbers, sheet metal workers and other skilled trades. The coalition had opposed the measure since its introduction in April, arguing that the proposed wage floor could weaken federally determined prevailing wage standards, which set higher pay requirements on publicly funded construction projects.

California’s unionized carpenters, who often clash with the Building Trades over housing policy, disagreed. They argued that residential construction workers are rarely employed on projects governed by federal public works wage rules. AB 1751 is sponsored by the New California Coalition, a centrist advocacy organization made up largely of business groups.

After lawmakers agreed to remove the wage requirement, the Building Trades shifted to a neutral position on the bill. Many of its members attended the hearing in opposition before the change was made.

The bill advanced out of the Senate Housing Committee, though several Democratic lawmakers voiced disappointment that the pay provision had been stripped.

Sen. Lena Gonzalez, a Long Beach Democrat, said some workers need wages above the state minimum.

Wicks also expressed frustration, saying raising the floor from $16 to $28 should have been a straightforward step for Democratic lawmakers.

AB 1751 still faces uncertainty. Sen. Maria Elena Durazo, a Democrat who serves on the Housing Committee, said the latest amendments did not resolve her concerns that the bill would bypass local control over land-use decisions. Durazo chairs the Senate Local Government Committee, where the measure is scheduled to be heard next.

Original source: CalMatters

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Senate Bill 1007 would reduce the current cap on annual HOA fee increases from 20% to 8% unless homeowners in the association vote to approve a larger hike. The measure, authored by Democratic Sen. Caroline Menjivar of Van Nuys, is one of several HOA-related bills moving through the Legislature this session as lawmakers look for ways to address housing affordability.

For many homeowners, HOA dues have become a growing financial burden. In San Diego County, Robert Henricks, a board member for his Rancho Bernardo homeowners association, said he reluctantly supported increasing monthly dues by $100, bringing them to $550.

“With the cost of living, the cost of projects, we’ve put off raising the monthly assessment two years out of three,” Henricks said.

Still, he acknowledged that homeowners across California are feeling squeezed as HOA fees rise alongside other major household costs.

Homeowners associations have become common in California’s housing market, especially in newer developments. Nationally, 67% of new single-family homes built in 2024 were part of HOAs, up from 46% in 2009, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. More than one-third of California residents live in HOA communities, including about 65% of homeowners.

California HOA fees are also among the highest in the country. The median monthly fee in the state is nearly $300, according to Census Bureau data. In some high-cost markets, including parts of the Bay Area and Los Angeles, dues can reach several thousand dollars a month.

HOAs collect assessments from residents to pay for shared expenses, including landscaping, pools, clubhouses, maintenance, repairs, insurance and reserves for major projects such as roofs or elevators. They are governed by boards elected by residents and also enforce community rules on issues such as exterior paint colors, landscaping and property use.

Menjivar has said her bill is intended to give homeowners more predictability about their monthly housing costs.

“This bill is about providing information to a homeowner to understand how much they’re gonna be paying,” Menjivar said during a March hearing.

Supporters, including consumer advocates and real estate groups, argue that the proposal could help low- and middle-income homeowners stay in their homes at a time when housing costs are consuming larger shares of household budgets. They point to cases such as a Walnut Creek condominium owner whose $1,500 monthly HOA dues, combined with insurance and property taxes, now exceed his mortgage payment.

Marjorie Murray, president of the Center for California Homeowner Association Law, told lawmakers that steep annual increases can quickly become unmanageable, especially for retirees and residents on fixed incomes.

“This is unsustainable. Even regular assessments raised by 20% will double in four years and triple in five,” Murray said. “Nobody’s salary or Social Security or retirement income goes up by those kinds of percentages.”

The debate comes as the Legislature has taken a broader interest in HOA oversight. A recently approved state law caps most HOA fines at $100 per violation. Another proposal, described as an “HOA transparency act,” would require more open meetings and records access, making associations operate more like local governments in some respects. A separate bill would require associations to set aside money in reserve accounts to help avoid large one-time assessments for major repairs, a concern particularly common in aging condominium complexes.

The California Association of Realtors supports Menjivar’s bill. Sanjay Wagle, a lobbyist for the group, said homeowners would still be able to approve increases above 8% when necessary, such as for serious repairs that protect property values.

“The realtors trust the homeowners. They’ll protect their investment,” Wagle said.

But the proposal has drawn concern from building groups and some lawmakers who say a lower cap could make it harder for HOAs to properly maintain properties. They warn that if associations cannot keep sufficient reserves, lenders may become more hesitant to finance homes in those communities, particularly condominiums.

The split was evident during a recent Senate vote, when six Democrats joined most Republicans in opposing the bill. The measure still advanced on a 24-13 vote, but the opposition was notable in a Legislature where members of the majority party often avoid casting direct votes against a colleague’s proposal.

Democratic Sen. Catherine Blakespear of Encinitas, who voted against the bill, said HOA boards are often responding to real cost pressures, including rising insurance and energy expenses.

“I don’t think the HOA board members are personally profiting or charging more than what they’re trying to do,” Blakespear said.

Henricks said he shares that concern. He lives with his wife and cat in an 88-unit condominium complex built in the 1970s, where major repairs are a looming issue. One of the largest anticipated expenses is modernizing all five elevators in the two-story building.

“That is the basic number one expense that we’re building our reserves to cover,” he said.

A lower cap, he said, could simply delay necessary work and force associations to pursue smaller, more frequent increases rather than larger adjustments spaced out over time.

For homeowners across Southern California and the Inland Empire, where HOA communities are common in newer subdivisions and condominium developments, the outcome of the bill could affect monthly budgets as well as the long-term maintenance of shared housing communities. The measure now continues through the legislative process as lawmakers weigh affordability concerns against the financial realities of maintaining HOA properties.

Original source: CalMatters

The post California Bill to Cap Rising HOA Fees Faces Split Among Democrats appeared first on The Hemet & San Jacinto Chronicle.

The analysis comes as Los Angeles officials debate how to respond to Senate Bill 79, a state law intended to allow taller apartment buildings near transit hubs. Last month, the Los Angeles City Planning Commission considered a proposal that would delay implementation of SB 79 until 2030 and instead advance a local “Low-Rise Ordinance.”

Supporters of more aggressive housing reforms say that approach misses a larger opportunity: allowing so-called starter homes in single-family neighborhoods. Under the AEI proposal, aging single-family houses could be replaced with townhomes, fourplexes or projects with as many as eight homes on one lot.

The institute estimates that such a policy could add about 13,600 homes per year in Los Angeles, nearly doubling the city’s current pace of new housing construction. Over a decade, that would amount to roughly 136,000 additional homes, while generating an estimated $9 billion in property tax revenue.

The research argues that Los Angeles already sees older single-family homes replaced in many neighborhoods, but often with large luxury houses that do not increase the number of units. A typical example cited by AEI involves a $1.1 million single-family home being demolished and replaced by a $3.1 million mansion.

By contrast, the institute says, replacing that same property with four smaller homes could produce units valued at about $1.2 million each. While the individual homes would cost less than a new mansion, the total property value would rise, increasing tax revenue for the city and other public services.

AEI estimates the revenue from such conversions could reach $182 million in the first year, $9 billion over 10 years and $36 billion over 20 years as more lots are redeveloped. Those funds would support the city’s general fund, schools and essential services.

The report points to several reasons Los Angeles is especially well suited for this type of housing reform. Much of the city’s single-family housing stock is old, with the typical home built before 1960. Land values are also high, with the median home valued at roughly $1.1 million, much of that tied to the land rather than the structure itself.

In all, nearly 400,000 single-family homes sit on valuable land across Los Angeles, according to the analysis.

The debate over SB 79 has focused largely on housing near rail stations and major transit corridors. The state law is designed to make it easier to build mid-rise and high-rise housing in those areas. One estimate cited by AEI suggests a streamlined version of transit-oriented development could produce about 4,200 homes per year.

But the institute argues that starter homes represent a broader opportunity because they could be built throughout existing single-family neighborhoods, not only near transit. It also says Los Angeles’ local low-rise proposal could fall short in both directions: allowing more density than needed in some areas while not permitting enough housing near transit to make a significant difference.

Los Angeles has a long history with this type of housing. Between 1921 and 1930, the city permitted about 220,000 homes, roughly half of them duplexes, triplexes, fourplexes or bungalow courts. About two-thirds of those structures still stand today. The report says those housing types became far less common after federal policy, state law and local zoning changes beginning in the 1930s restricted or prohibited them.

Housing advocates have pointed to California’s accessory dwelling unit reforms as a possible model. Since the state streamlined approvals, reduced fees and required cities to allow many ADUs by right, backyard cottages and garage conversions have become a significant source of new housing in Los Angeles. Nearly one-quarter of new homes built in the city in recent years have been ADUs, according to the article.

Los Angeles faces an estimated shortage of nearly 500,000 homes. While city officials continue to push back against state mandates for more housing near transit, the AEI analysis argues that legalizing small multi-unit projects on single-family lots could provide one of the largest housing opportunities available to the city.

Original source: CalMatters

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