Gov. Gavin Newsom signed a housing bill Monday that will change how the state finances and delivers new affordable housing units.
The signing took place at the Clara E. Chan Lee Residences currently under construction in Oakland’s Chinatown.
Newsom was joined by state assemblymembers, state senators and Oakland Mayor Barbara Lee to celebrate the housing bill.
Assembly Bill 179 is a housing budget trailer bill, aimed at modernizing California’s affordable housing finance system and strengthening the state’s impact of housing investments. The bill will reduce the cost of building affordable housing by an estimated $60,000 to $70,000 per unit through one-stop-shop financing reforms and impact fee changes.
The legislative changes are designed to take out extra administrative steps and fees in the process for building affordable housing units across the state.
Before signing the bill, Newsom spoke about how historically the state has not supported affordable housing.
“We designed a system, a machine, over the course of the last half century to make it more difficult to build. It was intentionally designed, it wasn’t by chance, it wasn’t by happenstance. It was designed not to build. And that requires not just to think differently and argue for different results, but to rebuild the mission,” Newsom said.
The legislation will also create a new disaster rebuilding fund that will direct $100 million in funding to reduce the cost of rebuilding homes that may have been destroyed in a disaster.
The bill will also extend the Homeless Housing, Assistance and Prevention program with $900 million in state funding for the 2026–2027 fiscal year.
The bill signing on Monday took place just outside the Lake Merritt BART station and under the roof of 97 new affordable housing units, scheduled to open this fall. The building is named after Clara E. Chan Lee, the first Chinese American woman registered to vote in the U.S.
“This building is truly a result of years of community planning. The community rallied around this idea of reconnecting the site back into our neighborhood,” said Janelle Chan, CEO of East Bay Asian Local Development Corporation.
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