Gov. Gavin Newsom was in San Francisco to sign a package of bills designed to address the state’s seemingly intractable dual crisis of housing and homelessness.
Newsom signed seven bills during Thursday news conference at a Mission District affordable housing development. The bills are among 32 he intends to approve that deal with housing production and local land use regulations, among other things.
“This Legislature, in the last four or five or six years, has done more, arguably, than the last four or five legislatures have done in the last 30, 40 or 50 years to address this crisis,” he said.
Some of the laws will require cities and counties to plan for housing extremely low-income residents, including homeless people, impose stricter timelines for local governments to report on the progress they’ve made getting housing built and provide incentives for senior housing, student housing and accessory dwelling units.
Also, the new rules will grant more enforcement power to the state by imposing financial penalties on local jurisdictions that fail to adopt housing element revisions or approve housing projects.
Newsom said the bevy of legislation, particularly when it comes to the enforcement of state housing mandates, is necessary because too many cities and counties are still finding excuses to deny new home construction projects.
“We continue to struggle with accountability, we continue to struggle with transparency,” he said. “I give you Exhibit A — Huntington Beach, Calif. That is a city that’s performative in terms of their approach to addressing the crisis of affordability.”
He also called out Elk Grove and Norwalk for allegedly dragging their feet on housing projects.
One of the bills Newsom signed was sponsored by the Bay Area Council, a public advocacy business organization, which applauded his signature Thursday.
“The legislation (SB 1395) by state Sen. Josh Becker will help vastly accelerate the construction of interim housing to bring more people indoors, save lives, and restore access to public spaces,” Bay Area Council officials said in a news release. “The new law removes significant and costly barriers local governments have faced in scaling interim housing solutions for homeless residents.”
Spending rules
Also on Thursday, Newsom announced spending guidelines for up to $2.2 billion in funding for a program he called “HomeKey+” that will develop permanent supportive housing — low-income rental housing with onsite services — via Proposition 1, a $6.4 billion bond to build more mental health treatment facilities and housing that voters narrowly approved in March.
That money will help build 4,000 new housing units for people with mental health or homelessness struggles, half of which are earmarked for military veterans, according to the governor’s office.
“So moving all these things forward, trying to move our state, trying to address the issue that, again, I think the vast majority of Californians would raise as the top issue in this state,” Newsom said.
The bill signings come on the heels of an executive order he issued directing state agencies to clear homeless encampments on state land.
When reporters pointed out that state and local encampment sweeps seem to largely just move unhoused people from one area to another while only getting a relatively small number of people into treatment for addiction or into housing, he largely laid the problem at the feet of local leaders throughout the state.
“We’ve never provided more support at the local level but local government needs to do their job,” he said. “They need to provide that support in housing and they need to get people off the streets and sidewalks.”
“There’s no compassion in allowing people to suffer the indignity of living in encampments for years and years,” he said.
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