Assembly Standing Committee on Housing and Community Development

You. There we go. Okay. Hi, everyone. I was in this hearing room last night till 930. So I feel like I just never left. Just going to move in. Welcome to the Assembly Housing and Community Development Committee hearing. We are starting as a Subcommitee because we don't have quorum. We have 27 bills on our agenda today. We have six. We have seven items on consent. Each Bill can have two main witnesses in support and opposition. Each main witness gets two minutes each.

There's no phone testimony option for this hearing. All witness testimony will be in person. Please feel free to submit written testimony through the position portal on the Committee's website. This will become part of the official record of the Bill. The hearing room will be open for attendance of this hearing. All are encouraged to watch the hearing from the live stream on the Somme's website. Thank you for your patience and understanding as we get this morning going. First we will hear from. Is it signed in order?

One of the illustrious Members here. Wait 1 second and I will tell you. Is it Mr. Grayson's? First? We will hear from Mr. Grayson.

Good morning, Madam Chair and Member and Members coming. I would like to begin by accepting the Committee's proposed amendments that are described in the analysis. AB 821 is a simple Bill that would help prevent delays in housing production and help facilitate the much needed housing that this state needs. This Bill seeks to address instances where local jurisdiction's General plan may be inconsistent with the local jurisdiction's zoning ordinances.

Under this Bill, if there is a situation where an application is submitted where the General plan and zoning are inconsistent, the local jurisdiction would have two options. They would either have to process the application for development and allow it to move forward, or amend their zoning ordinances for that development to make them consistent with the General plan within 180 days. Local jurisdictions are required by statute to have their General plans and zoning ordinances consistent with each other. But this is not always the case.

Inconsistencies between the General plan and zoning may happen for several reasons, including General plan amendments or updates. Currently, if there is an inconsistency, local jurisdictions must amend their zoning ordinances to become consistent with their General plan within a reasonable time. While this is the requirement, there is no defined timeline for what a reasonable time is, leading to delays of months and even years. AB 821 will help bring a clearer timeline to what is considered reasonable and will help prevent further delays in housing development.

With me to testify is Michael Lane, state policy Director for Spur through the.

Chair, Madam Chair and Members Michael Lane with Spur Glad to be here on this Bill. As Mr. Grayson mentioned has been required in statute for over 50, for nearly 50 years now.

The Legislature actually addressed this issue for residential projects that come under the HAA in 2019, we're basically extending that regime to other mixed use developments and other types of developments as well, with a time frame for notice and only if there's a live project that would come forward to be able notify the jurisdiction of the need for a reason or to continue forward using the General plan designation and density indicated there. Respectfully. Request an aye vote.

Thank you. Any other folks in the room want to express support?

Brian SAP, on behalf of Habitat for Humanity California, in support. Also on behalf of sandal properties in support and Buckeye properties in support. Thank you. Thank you. Madam Chair. Bob Naylor for field studded and company. That's Howard Amundsen Jr. An Orange County philanthropist who promotes housing bills like this out of social equity considerations. Thank you.

Madam Chair. And Members Robert Gonzalez with cruise strategies on behalf of the California Building Industry Association, in full support. Thank you. And any witnesses? In opposition. Great. zero, and any folks want to meet you in opposition. Good morning. Kiara Ross. On behalf of the City of San Marcos, we are technically in opposition. We are super appreciative of all the amendments that have been taken. We think there's one last little amendment, and I think that will remove our opposition entirely. So hopefully we can get there.

Thank you. So good morning, Madam Chair. Members. Lauren. Dave Valencia, representing the American Planning Association. Not in opposition. We are now neutral on the Bill. Really appreciate the author, the sponsors, and the work of the Committee on the Amendments. Thank you. Thank you. We will bring it back to the Committee for any questions. No questions. We don't have a quorum yet, so when we do, we'll do a motion and hopefully get this Bill out of Committee. Happy to support it. Do you want to close?

Respectfully ask when aye vote.

Thank you, Madam Chair.

Thank you. Let's streamline and get moving here. Yes. Great. With that, we'll listen. We'll hear from Ms. Reevis.

Good morning, Madam Chair, and Members. I would like to start by thanking my fellow co authors on AB 799, a crucially important piece of legislation. I have Assembly Members Wilson and Friedman and Sharon Quirk-Silva as joint authors, as well as other Committee Members. Ward Careo, assemblymember Gabriel and Kalra. Thank you. I'd also like to thank Lisa from this Committee for her thorough evaluation of this legislation.

In order to combat homelessness, the state must reform its current approach to issuing funds by enacting meaningful accountability measures, promoting the use of state homelessness funds and setting state goals to anchor local progress. AB 799 requires the state to take a more direct leadership role while setting statewide goals based on data available state funding and to streamline administrative burdens on local systems.

Counties, big cities, and continuums of care would work together every five years to plan specific actions they will take collaboratively to reduce homelessness, replacing the action plans that they do individually every year under HAPP. Furthermore, the Bill ensures that more detailed information is made public to improve transparency and oversight. Lastly, AB 799 requires investments in balanced homeless response systems that promote equitable housing outcomes while maintaining eligible uses. According to the Federal Housing and Urban Development Department, over 171,000 Californians experience homelessness on any given night.

Our state accounts for 30% of the nation's homeless population. With the mantle of the nation's highest homeless population, the state must respond with funding local governments at the scale needed to meet the scope of this crisis. California's homelessness problem is rooted in high housing prices, a lack of available housing, the state's inconsistent funding commitments, and shifting homelessness accountability benchmarks.

This lack of accountability, coupled with inconsistent funding has caused a public policy feedback loop, resulting in homelessness response systems unable to fully meet the challenges of rising housing costs and insufficient supply. Currently, the HAPP program grant funding, administered by the California Inter Agency Council on Homelessness, issues funds on an annual basis. Because the state has only invested in HAPP through one time allocations, the state is unable to hold local recipients accountable under the tool of reallocating future funding when recipients fail to meet expectations.

As a result of our lackluster progress in reducing homelessness, Governor Newsom took the extraordinary step of temporarily withholding HAPP funds these year by year. One time investments hamper local governments from investing in long term programs that will reduce homelessness. According to the PPIC, homelessness is the top issue that Californians want to see addressed. Nevertheless, posturing and finger pointing has fed into the frustration that has caused this issue to reach the boiling point that we are at today.

AB 799 is consistent with both the comprehensive response that the Governor has articulated that he wants to see and the regional planning process outlined by the California State Association of Counties CSAC, their at home plan. It's time that we finally address our homelessness crisis at the scale that the public expects from both the state and the local level. Today, I have with me Simone Turek, Director of housing and health of the John Burton, advocates for youth, and ZelLA Knight with the Residents United Network.

Thank you, Assemblymember Rivas and Good Morning, chair and Members of the Committee. My name is Simone Turek Lee. I'm with John Burton, advocates for youth, Member of the Bring California Home Coalition, and sponsor of AB 799. Assemblymember Rivas touched on AB 7909's intent to foster more accountability and streamline administrative burdens.

AB 799 would replace the current annual HAPP planning process as referenced with the collaborative process that would instead occur every five years, where counties, big cities and continuums of care would develop a joint action plan that identifies each entity's role and responsibilities and sets goals. If locals don't meet these goals, they could face consequences like less flexibility in how they use state funding or potentially lose state funding in the next grant cycle.

This will both simplify HAPP Administration and foster accountability, not just for HAPP, but for reducing homelessness, period, which has been at the forefront of state level discussions for some time. As you all know. Obviously, this also promotes regional collaboration, another big point of discussion, another important component of the Bill is responding to a statewide desire for real outcomes by leading with what we know works without losing local flexibility. Since 2020, HAPP has reduced youth homelessness by 21% in our state. Yes, 21%. And why is that?

Because for the first time we got prescriptive about how much funding locals had to invest in youth homelessness. The Legislature recognized that spending on youth homelessness doesn't generally occur on the natural and made a policy decision to require that a minimum amount of funding be invested in youth. With that direction came results. If we want specific results like reducing unsheltered homelessness, we need the correct input to get that output.

Research shows that balanced investments across emergency, interim and permanent housing are key, and AB 799 gets at these balanced investments without changing haps eligible uses. And lastly, AB 799 would create a pathway for ongoing investment. The Bill charges the state, through existing work groups led by Cal ICH, with working toward a unified funding application and developing a financing plan for what it would take to end homelessness in California as part of its existing action plan.

It would also call on the state to set goals based on what funding is made available and then work with regions to align their goals accordingly. The intent here is to get state and local action in sync and to match what we aim to achieve with the resources needed to achieve these goals. Thank you for your time this morning, and now I'm happy to turn it over to my colleague ZelLA Knight, who will touch on some additional provisions and background for us. Thank you. Good morning.

Zella Knight, resident, United Network Los Angeles. Our current system to prevent and end homelessness has a lot of gaps. I know this because I am among the hundreds of thousands of Californians who have been left to fall through the cracks. Back in 2005, a serious and sudden illness put me in the hospital, then led me to lose my job, and soon after that, my housing. Then, for the first time, my 13 year old daughter and myself found ourselves homeless.

While I tried to get us back on our feet, I had a North star that kept me going. I would not disrupt my daughter's education. Every week, I took her to her extracurricular activities, like her Japanese classes, and LaUSD's homeless liaison helped me to keep her on track. Like many Californians, we cycled between sleeping in the car, couch surfing, then eventually, shelters. We were lucky to access a section eight voucher, but even that wasn't a goldened ticket.

So few available units, lots of competition, and, of course, the endeavor of overcoming discrimination and stigmas to get housed. My story. So many stories show that we are all closer to homelessness than we think. No one is immune, one job, one major loss, one health crisis. You're in the street, a car, anywhere to survive.

So when it comes to this conversation of accountability, we must ensure state and local governments are accountable to the people like me, black, indigenous, disabled, Latinx who desperately need state and local government to build stronger, more effective, consistent, equitable homeless response systems. AB 799 is the only Bill on accountability that was developed and informed by a coalition, people with lived experience, service providers, reps from city and counties, and national experts on homeless best practices.

AB 799 puts racial equity front and center in the planning and goal setting process to ensure outcomes and achieve equitably. I followed my North Star to watch my daughter graduate from Vassar College in 2014. Today, I get to see her smile when she walks into my home to visit many more black girls like my daughter. How many more families like mine or yours could find their way home if we, as a state, truly choose to like their past? Thank you. Thank you.

Thank you for your testimony with that. Are there other folks in the room that would like to express support? Please name, organization and position. Good morning, Sharon. Report. On behalf of corporation for supportive Housing and the Bring California Home Coalition, co sponsors of this Bill in strong support. Thank you. Mari Castaldi. On behalf of Housing California in support and a co sponsor of the Bill as well.

Madam Chair Members Rand Martin. On behalf of the AIDS Healthcare foundation and his housing as a human rights division, in very strong support of this Bill. Thank you, Tara.

Gamboa Eastman with the Steinberg Institute in support. Mark Stivers with the California Housing Partnership in support.

Nicole Morales on behalf of Children Now in support. Cody Van Felden, I am a former foster youth college student and a mother. On behalf of all of our youth and foster youth, I am in support. I experience homelessness as a minor and again at 18. Thank you. Good morning, Madam Chair and Members. Andres Ramirez, on behalf of all home and the nonprofit Housing Association of Northern California in support.

Good morning. Alex Vasotsky, on behalf of National alliance and Homelessness, we're a co sponsor of the Bill and strong support. Nico Molina on behalf of the Silicon Valley Leadership Group and support. Thank you. Christopher Bowen with LA family housing strongly support and so proud of my friend Zelenite.

Kristen Astor with the people concern in strong support. Zeke Sandoval with Path, one of the largest nonprofit homeless service providers and affordable developers in the state, in strong support. Thank you. Justin Garrett with the California State Association of Counties. We don't yet have a position on the Bill, but want to thank the author for her leadership on accountability and ongoing homelessness funding and look forward to the continued positive collaboration with the author and sponsors. Thank you.

Great. And do we have any primary witnesses in opposition? Any additional folks in the room wish to express opposition? Okay, we will bring it back to the Committee. zero, sorry. Thank you, chair Members. Caroline Cerncioni, on behalf of the leak of California cities, we just have a concerns position. We really look forward to working with the author and sponsor through some of our questions and really appreciate the recognition of the need for ongoing funding. Thank you. Okay. Ms. Quirk-silva? Yes.

I want to thank the author, and I'm proud to be a joint author on this Bill as we discuss housing in this Committee for quite a long time now. We believe that we've had this issue for decades, and yet we know the homeless crisis is really in its infancy and our reaction to it and our policies have been very short term.

And so as we look at particularly the HAPP funding, one of the biggest things that I've heard from our local municipalities have been one time funding is helpful, but it certainly makes it very difficult after that one time funding to sustain the services. So this Bill not only does that, but what I really appreciate about this Bill is that it does hold those receiving the funds accountable.

And we hear this all the time about we've spent billions of dollars on housing or homelessness and what do we have to show for it? And the accountability piece really, I think is going to be the essence of some changes at the local level. Too often we see housing plans that are not compliant at all, but even ones that have moved through that we know some of the solutions are never going to happen.

Sadly, I won't point out a city, but sadly, there are some cities that put things in their plans that they know are not achievable. Building on Caltrans land, that's a 10 year process if possible. So in order to receive these state funds, the plans and the solutions need to be legitimate and need to be able to happen. And that's what I appreciate about this Bill.

I also appreciate your testimony, because we know that when we can provide not only the services but the support, as you mentioned, the homeless liaison in your testimony, those are the types of support services that do change lives. So thank you to the author. Not only do I support, but I'm proud to be a joint author. Thank you, Mr. Kalra.

Thank you, Madam Chair. And thank you to the author. I'm happy to be a co author. I think most of the Committee is in that status. So there's not a risk of this Bill not making it through Committee. But I think that the most important thing is the substance of the Bill. And I know our colleague, Senator Quirk-Silva, always talking about accountability. And so I think this Bill is really important not just for accountability, but for interagency cooperation and really regional partnership.

I think that far too often municipalities are not working together or even resistant of their sense of responsibility and obligation to be part of the solution.

And so I think that this is long overdue and I look forward to the fruits of this Bill, which is really the most important part that's going to help inform us, see what we need to do more and what local agencies and municipalities and counties need to do because we are in a crisis, as you correctly stated, and we need to act like it. So thank you.

Yeah, we just want to establish quorum real quick. Wakes here. Wakes here. Patterson here. Corillo Gabriel. Kalra here. Kalra. Kalra here. Quirk-Silva. Quirk-Silva. Here. Sanchez Ward. Okay. We have Carmen with that, Mr. Patterson.

Great, thanks. Well, long night last night for a couple of people on the Committee here. So good to see everybody think, you know, first of all, congratulations. Props to, you know, doing what you had to do for best for your daughter. And I think that's really amazing. So it's tough out there for parents in your situation and what you're going through and just to be able to do that, and that's amazing. So good job.

You won't hear this from me very often, but I commend the Governor for stopping funding. We've spent a lot of money in this state and the results have not been very good. And I think this legislation to provide some accountability to that is really important. And I don't think we can spend another dime from the state without mandating that the people that get that money are held accountable. It doesn't mean that it's going to guarantee success.

I think this is, it's different for everybody, and everybody has a different situation, but without the accountability, we definitely will not have success. And we haven't had success. So I'm pleased to support this measure, and I like the optimism to end homelessness by 2035. I think putting on a goal, but just demanding that we have some accountability from the local governments that are getting this money is critical. And thank you for bringing the Bill and I look forward to supporting it.

Thank you. Great. Anyone else want care to have questions?

Mr. Gabriel, I'll just jump in briefly and really proud to be a co author. Just want to say thank you for your leadership on this. I think this is an absolutely critical issue. We're not going to be able to solve our homelessness crisis and our housing crisis in the state without this kind of accountability, without a clear understanding of where money is being directed, what's effective, what's not.

I know that a lot of our friends in local government don't like the accountability, but I think anyone who's getting public funds, we need to demand that accountability. And I'm just very grateful for you for authoring this Bill and would be pleased to make a motion.

Thank you. Great. We have a motion and a second. Okay. With that. Would you like to close? I want to thank the Committee for this Discussion and support. Like Assemblymember Gabriel said, you know, this is much needed. I want to thank Assembly Member Patterson for joining in. This is a bipartisan effort that we all need to work on. I'd also like to thank the chair for your tireless work to help move the state forward on housing and homelessness. Thank you for your leadership.

AB 799 is just a common, it's common sense and pragmatic, like we've heard from through this discussion. We cannot continue the status quo with the attempt at reducing homelessness. AB 799 has a holistic approach that is desperately needed. I respectfully ask for an aye vote. Thank you. Thank you. Assembly Member Reevis, just a couple of closing thoughts. Ms. Knight, I want to thank you for your testimony. What an achievement as a mother.

So I'm a mom of two, and so just the fact that you're able to get your kids kid up and out through college is an achievement in and of itself. But particularly given your circumstance, I think it just shows your dedication as a parent and your commitment to your daughter. So thank you for that. And thank you for your testimony. And thank you, Ms. Reevis, for centering her testimony here today and her experience within your policy making.

And I think the more that we center people's experiences in our policy making, the better policymaking we have. And I want to thank you for your ongoing commitment to this. I know that you've carried big funding bills in the past. I know it's something you care deeply about. I am to a broken record on the need for ongoing funding. The state has not invested what we need to to combat this problem, and we need to invest ongoing monies at significant levels to combat the problem.

And I agree with. I'm glad Mr. Patterson discussed the sort of laudable goals of having a date by which we can end homelessness. I totally agree. We can do this. We can do this as a state. It just means making some budget decisions and some tough policy calls. But I think we can do it, and it's imperative we do. And I think the 174,000 people that are experiencing homelessness on our streets every single day deserve it. So with that, I'm happy to move the Bill.

The motion is do passed to the Assembly Committee on appropriations. And with that, please feel free to take the roll. Weeks aye. Weeks aye. Patterson Aye Carillo Gabriel Gabriel Aye Kalra. Kalra Aye Quirk-Silva Quirk-Silva Aye Sanchez Ward that Bill is out, but we'll let folks add on. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Lee. You got lucky. And you even have one of my favorite City Council Members here to testify on your behalf. It's.

A little bit like five minutes and...all right. Good morning. Good morning, Chair and Members. I want to thank the staff for their hard work on this bill. And I know this is one that we worked on since last year, so we're working on it quite a bit. So, I want to thank the Committee for their hard work on this and accept the Committee amendments. But today, I want to talk about and share a story -

- time of a housing crisis, but not one that is so close to home. In fact, I'm going to talk about one that was 100 years ago, almost exactly in the City of Vienna: the City of Vienna in Austria, when they were also in a deep, deep housing and homelessness crisis. At the time, 100 years ago, Vienna had a population of 2 million people, roughly equal to my home county of Santa Clara County and roughly the same geographic size as my home city of San Jose.

And at the end of World War I, where Austria was defeated and their monarchy collapsed and a new republic, a democratic republic, was born. At that time, over 400,000 people were estimated to be homeless or housing insecure in a city of 2 million people; that is an astonishing 25% of the population was housing insecure or homeless, much worse than we have today.

Of course, sometimes it feels that way, and I know you can't really see it, but these are some pictures of how terrible it was back then. It was so bad that people often rented beds in shifts because they had such a lack of supply of housing and affordable housing. It was easily overcrowded, unsanitary, and often six people would live cramped in one unit. So what did they do 100 years ago to meet this crisis?

In the 1920s, Vienna had the wisdom to become a public developer so that they could become developer of affordable social housing across the city. And that would become the inspiration to so many European and Asian cities and countries across the world. And what are the results 100 years later? They built half a million units in a city of 2 million people. The entire country, of course, now embraces social housing concept. And today, Vienna is the number one livable city in the world.

And you can check that claim on The Economists, on Forbes; number one livable city in the world. And that is no small part because 62% of all residents live in social housing, where they pay only an average of $500 to $1,000 per flat. And their average salary is very comparable to that of California as well. In fact, most people, 75% of them qualify for social housing based on income. And why? Because housing is understood to be a universal right.

And this is the model we want to bring to California. I show you these books I brought back from Austria. They're very heavy. I brought them back from Austria to show you that public construction isn't scary. In fact, they can be so beautiful, clean, and vibrant, and inspiring while housing everyone. This model of social housing is successful in many parts of the world, including Austria, of course, Singapore, Taiwan, Hong Kong, France, Germany, Ireland, and many other developed peers that we look to all the time qnd even here in the U.S.

You know, there are actually many other states that are starting to beat U.S. to the punch. In February, just two months ago, the city of Seattle passed by ballot to create a city social housing developer, much inspired by the previous version of this bill. And they passed it on the ballot. And that was the first time in U.S. history that was advanced by referendum. Hawaii and Maryland also are moving forward. And in fact, Maryland already has apartments up and running.

And in fact, this one I'm showing you is not in Austria, not in Asia. This is in Montgomery County in Maryland, where they also have their program going. So this is quite a race to see who can do social housing first. AB 309 gives us the tools of building affordable housing across California. We need every tool in the toolbox right now to solve our housing crisis. And we are missing the vital tool of social housing development that almost every other Asian and European peers have.

I also show you some of these pictures, too, because this is also a book, and I'll let you flip through it, too, is social housing constructs in lower Austria, which is also right outside of it. And it's equivalent to in our country, New York, where in social housing also leads to competition in the market, where there's a vibrant supply of affordable housing units that also helps keep prices and rents low. AB 309 will enable us to build beautiful mixed-income communities across California.

And with that, I respectfully ask your aye vote and want to introduce my witness. My start witness today, Rigel Robinson, Council Member of the City of Berkeley.

Thank you.

Thank you. Assembly Member Lee, Chair Wicks, my Assembly Member, and honorable members of the committee. My name is Robinson. I have the honor of serving on the Berkeley City Council. Like so many cities in California, we are experiencing an acute housing and homelessness crisis. Our residents, myself very much included, are suffering from high housing costs.

And many who study or work in Berkeley and would like to live in Berkeley are forced to commute long distances to get to class, or their job priced out by skyrocketing rents. Berkeley is a job center and a center of learning, but it has become unaffordable for too many. In order to address this housing crisis felt in Berkeley and throughout California, we need more housing supply at all income levels, and we need to be innovative.

This crisis impacts service workers near minimum wage but also the middle class, including our librarians, teachers, and administrative professionals who don't qualify for low-income housing programs. To address these diverse needs, we need both rental housing with security of tenure and affordable home ownership. The California Housing Authority, I believe, as envisioned by Assembly Member Alex Lee's AB 309, can help deliver these homes.

While thanks to your leadership, movement has been made on addressing some barriers, such as exclusionary land use practices, discretionary approvals, and regional housing finance, we have not seen the investment we need in public capacity to move social housing developments forward. Public capacity is especially instrumental during economic downturns, when the private market may fail to build housing when it is most badly needed. Local governments often lack the productive capacity to steward the housing we need.

From concept to certificate of occupancy, AB 309 can help build up that productive capacity, as the California Housing Authority can be a partner to communities in meeting their low and moderate regional housing needs assessment goals. Doubtless, you have heard many times that we need an all-of-the-above approach to addressing California's housing crisis. The mixed-income public developer, as proposed by AB 309, would fill a critical need for Low and moderate-income Californians, and I urge your support. Thank you.

Thank you. Any other folks in the room wish to express support? Name, organization, and position, please.

Madam Chair, Members; Rand Martin, on behalf of the AIDS Healthcare Foundation and its Healthy Housing Foundation, I'm in very strong support of this very innovative and potentially very productive bill. Thank you.

Jim Beall, member of the board of Valley Water District in support of the bill.

Former Senator.

Jessica Hay with the California School Employees Association in support.

Peggy Bernardy, on behalf of California State Strong, a group of 80 plus indivisible groups as well as indivisible Yolo, thank you.

D'Artagnan Byrd: American Federation for State, County and Municipal Employees in support.

Madam Chair and Members: Gregory Cramer on behalf of Disability Rights California in support.

Okay, thank you. Now we'll listen from primary witnesses in opposition. Any primary witnesses in opposition. Okay. Any folks would like to add on in opposition in the room. Name, organization and position, please.

Good morning, Members. John Scribner, on behalf of the California Association of Realtors. We have an opposed unless amended. We find that the legislature has already committed tremendous resources to trying to press for home ownership. For example, you just adopted the California Dream For All last year and put money behind your actions. We find that unless this bill is amended, this is running to counter purposes from what you've committed last year.

When it doesn't exclude the one to four units, it directly creates this housing authority as a competitor for potential homeowners in California. And therefore, that's why we're opposed unless amended. And do ask for that amendment. Thank you very much.

Thank you. We'll bring it back to committee members. We have Mr. - oh, I'm sorry.

Bob Naylor for Fieldstead and Company. That's Howard Ahmanson, Jr., an Orange County philanthropist. We're also opposed unless amended to preclude the use of eminent domain. This is a chapter from the Reparations Commission on the use of eminent domain by government agencies. This sets up a potentially vast state agency to go in and take property to build housing. And why that is a noble purpose. Freeways have been built, and great injustices on minority communities wrought.

We would like to see it made explicit that eminent domain would not be used for this purpose. Thank you.

Thank you. Mr. Ward.

Thank you, Madam Chair. Very glad that you're bringing this bill back in the form that it is. I know you put a lot of effort into it last year and have really been studying the potential that we're seeing worldwide for a new development model that will help preserve new opportunities for working-class Californians. Very proud to be a co-author and excited to move the bill. I want to thank you for. This is a multi-year in nature, right?

But I think it is definitely something that we need to build into our repertoire of models that can produce the kind of housing output that we're looking at. Because I think it's going to add value to communities that want that housing guaranteed but are keeping also our people integrated in our existing communities and closer to the jobs and the transit and the urban fabric that make these great communities. Thank you for being here as well. Happy to move the bill.

Great. We have a motion and a second, Mr. Kalra. We'll do, Mr. Patterson. Oh, sorry. Thank you, everyone.

Yeah. Thank you, Madam Chair. I want to thank the author for continuing to fight for social housing. I think, as he correctly stated, this is not a new concept. This is something that's being implemented very successfully internationally and even in some parts of this country. It's an all kind of options on the table approach that we have to take with housing, as we say many times during the course of this committee, certainly.

And I think this particular opportunity that we have, we are investing a lot of money into housing. We're investing billions of dollars and I think appropriately so. But if we're going to be doing that, I think we have to look at the opportunity for us to actually build quality housing because otherwise, we're relying on the private market, private developers to step into the fray when the pencil is out for them. At the end of the day, our community can't wait for that. But we must act.

We must act with urgency. And I think this is an incredible opportunity to put this as part of our package of solutions that we need. I'm honored to be a joint author and really am hopeful that we can move this forward through the legislature this year. Thank you.

We'll go to Mr. Patterson, then to Ms. Quirk-Silva.

Thanks. First of all, hard me to say with your obvious optimism on this Bill. I've been following this for a couple of now. I have two concerns with this, and one is sort of philosophical. It sort of crosses my red line on government involvement in what the private sector could do very easily if we would just get the hell out of the way. I think giving the government this responsibility is something that we're doing because we haven't yet empowered the private market to do it.

And I know that we've discussed a lot of things in this committee, and I've supported some, and I know you're working on some too to do just that. And I think those solutions are great. But secondly, and it goes off, the first point is I feel like sometimes when various cities and agencies and counties are building essentially government-funded projects, it's almost like the high-speed rails in charge of it.

Because even in my district, which is relatively cheaper than a lot of other districts, 650, $7000 a unit, and to put the taxpayers on the hook for that at some point is just not sustainable. So I do think these are great buildings. I like what Vienna has put up there and I think it's a great, beautiful city. I'm a little less optimistic that we can do that here in California. So with that, unfortunately, I have to pose this measure.

Yes, I have some questions and then I have some comments. So let me give you the list of questions: first to one of the speakers talking about eminent domain, if you can answer if there's any of that, that would be happening. Second, is this all new construction, or would it be existing buildings? And then, third, are you going to be taking any amendments at all? Because I know in the analysis, there is a suggested amendment. So those three, and then I have comments.

Ms. Quirk-Silva

Can I do them backward?

Sure, whichever way you want.

Sure. I'm accepting the committee amendments that the committee has worked really hard with and worked with the chair on these ones. So we are taking amendments, and as we cross hopefully over to senate, I'm sure there'll be feedback over there, too, as we did last year; there was a lot of different opinions and ideas of changing things and changing the scope of it, whether it be new construction or existing buildings.

The envision of this bill is there's multiple chapters about production of new housing, but also acquisition. The idea is acquisition. This kind of ties into the first question about eminent domain: we want CHA, the California Housing Authority, to have the ability to also save residents. Those who perhaps their affordability covenant could expire, and their units could go back onto the market, and they could lose their housing. We want to reserve that ability to do so.

So eminent domain is one of those things we're considering, we're thinking about all the time. And I acknowledge, of course, the storied past in this country with eminent domain as well. But we are envisioning new construction for bulk part of it. Much of the bill is about new construction, but also about saving and rehabilitating existing housing, too.

So a few of the comments, we obviously saw this last year, and your graphics and so forth are very intriguing. Many of us get the opportunity as legislators to go visit other areas to see what they've done. I, in fact, was able to go to Columbia over spring recess, and we saw incredible transformation in the community related to their transportation, very, very dense housing. But I do go back to what do we do in California and what can we really do?

And this is where we've been stuck not just on housing, but on major infrastructure projects related to transportation. We have regulated ourselves to the extent that we're in a stall and delay period. Even when we do get a green light, many times projects are tabled, many times there's delay. Even to build an addition in a single family home can take that individual homeowner months to get the permits: months to get the green light.

So, as much as there is excitement about this, we also have to look at the reality in California: are we moving forward and getting things accomplished? So I have mixed feelings about it. I did last year as well. But I do appreciate your energy in bringing it back.

Thank you. Any other comments from Members? Okay, do we have a motion? Okay, we have a motion by Mr. Ward and a second by Ms. Carrillo. Would you like to close?

Yes, I would just like to thank the committee for the discussion about this very important topic. In fact, I also want to acknowledge similar to Patterson's comments to this is that, of course, the examples here are very beautiful.

Of course, their political traditions are rooted in the left in Europe, but in Singapore, which I didn't talk about as much, where 80 plus percent of the population of 5 million people live in social housing, they're very, I dare say, more conservative than even this country, and they're very hyper-capitalist, and yet they still manage to make it work. And, of course, it's not the picture of scary public projects there. It's the land of crazy rich Asians, frankly, where you have very, very rich entrepreneurs there.

But people are very happy to also live in their public constructed apartments. And I bring that up because it's that across the world and cross political spectrum, they arrive at this same policy solution. They come at it at different angles and perspectives of why they do this. But public development is an important tool or public development or public construction is something we employ, too. We build schools, we build roads, we build all the water infrastructure, things that we rely on.

Other countries have just said we should also do housing. So I really implore us to support this bill. Look at other models, and hopefully, one day, you'll also be able to accompany me, go on some of these trips across the world as well, and look at all the great examples there, too. But respectfully asking for aye vote.

Well, thank you, Mr. Lee, for bringing forth this bill. Again, I'm a supporter of the concept, I believe, especially right now, given the crisis we're in; we want to put all ideas on the table and appreciate your commitment to continuing to put forth these bold initiatives and ideas. Also want to thank Council Member Robertson for coming up here. Just for those that don't know, one of the best local leaders in the State of California on housing and many other things.

[Roll Call] That is five votes. It is out.

So excited that you're also a constituent. So, thank you for your leadership in housing at the local level. And with that, we will take your roll.

Thank you.

And I want to go back and entertain the consent agenda. Do we have a motion? Motion by Mr. Kalra, second by Ms. Carrillo.

Consent calendar. Item number 23, AB 1528. New pass. Item number 2371. Item number four, AB 5116. Item number five, AB 519. Item number 24, AB 1587. Item number 26, AB 1738, and item number 27, AB 1764, are due, passed to the Assembly Committee and Appropriations. [Roll Call]

The consent agenda is out. And with that, I believe we have Ms. Rayes next.

In a motion and a second.

Madam Chair, Members, since I've got a motion and a second, AB 653, basically is a program that will be created to provide housing search assistance, landlord incentives, and deposit resources to help tenants with vouchers find and secure rental units. We're finding that many of our tenants who qualify for these vouchers, these federal vouchers, wait years, and you'll hear from our witness, who will tell you about that.

And after they've finally received this voucher, they're given a short period of time to find a home, find a landlord who will accept that voucher, and on occasion, they will be given an extension to use the voucher. But if they don't find a home, that voucher goes back to the Federal Government. We've got to find a way to keep those vouchers here, keep that money here. And with that, I'd like to introduce my two.

Also, I am pleased to accept the Committee's amendments, and I want to thank the Committee for their work on this. So I'd like to introduce my two witnesses, Margot Velez, senior leader with the Residents United Network, and Deborah Thrope, Deputy Director of the National Housing Law Project.

Great. Thank you. We'll have two minutes each, but if you wouldn't mind pulling the mics close to you when you speak. Be good. They're the worst in the capital, I think.

Hi. Good morning, everyone. My name is Margot Velez, and I was a recipient of a voucher. I was very ecstatic when I received it, but sadly, I was unable to use my voucher. The time allotted to find a place. And with my extension, my voucher expired because it was very hard to get a landlord or find someone to rent to me. This voucher program is very very viable.

It'll bring money and it'll bring stability for people, for housing, for people to stay and maintain housing over their heads. I almost was housed out due to the fact that I could not find anyone to do it. I'm paying 80% of my income, and this voucher is a lifesaver. It will help. This Assemblywoman Reyes has the right idea. It's viable, it'll work. We just need to sign it into law and have the Governor sign it and have support. It'll work.

And I'm witness to it that I received my voucher and I was not able to use it because it was so hard to find something. So I thank you for your time, and we don't need to wait. I know that you guys are talking about tightening up during these tough economic times, but this is doable. We don't need to sacrifice. It's viable. Thank you.

Good morning, Madam Chair and Committee Members. Thank you for the opportunity to testify on this important bill. My name is Deborah Thrope, and I'm the Deputy Director of the National Housing Law Project. We're a proud sponsor of 653. AB 653 aims to maximize housing choice voucher utilization statewide. The Housing Choice Voucher Program, commonly referred to as Section Eight, is the largest federally assisted housing program in California that helps over 710,000 people in 304,000 households live in safe and decent homes. Vouchers are critical tool to reduce racial segregation because they open up neighborhoods otherwise unavailable to low-income families.

Vouchers deconcentrate poverty and help jurisdictions meet their fair housing goals. Only one in five families, though, who qualifies will ever receive a federal voucher or other housing subsidy. And even then, once a family receives a voucher, they have to find a landlord willing to accept it within the search time allowed by the local housing authority. And this is no small task. As you just heard, factors like low vacancy rates and high rents can make it literally impossible for some families to use their voucher.

And unfortunately, Ms. Velaza's experience is not uncommon. This happens to an estimated four out of 10 families who receive a voucher in California. These families often return to substandard housing conditions or homelessness. AB 653 is part of a comprehensive solution to increase voucher lease-up rates, maximize federal dollars, and reduce homelessness. In fact, statewide, California leaves millions of dollars on the table annually that could help house 16,000 or more families.

This Bill would create a competitive grant program to provide funding to eliminate the barriers to using a voucher. Housing authorities could use the fund to pay for security deposits, for example, local navigation and mobility counselors, and other services that provide housing search assistance. It would also apply evidence-based programs like small area fair market rents to local voucher programs to better serve participants and communities. AB 653 will help California maximize every penny available to address the severe shortage of affordable housing across the state.

I look forward to any questions you all have about the Bill. Thank you.

Thank you. Other witnesses in support?

Nicole Wordelman on behalf of The Children's Partnership, in support.

Niccolo De Luca on behalf of All Home, in support.

Mark Stivers with the California Housing Partnership, in support.

Brian Augusta with the California Rural Legal Assistance Foundation, one of the co-sponsors. And also note, our colleagues at Western Center on Law and Poverty are proud co-sponsors. Urge an Aye vote.

Chris Martin on behalf of Housing California, co-sponsor in support.

Kristen Aster on behalf of The People Concern, in support.

Monica Lee with Western Center on Law and Poverty, co-sponsor in strong support.

Alex Visotzky on behalf of the National Alliance and Homelessness, the Corporation for Supportive Housing, and the Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority. All in support.

Hi, I'm Lachelle Dozier, the Executive Director at Sacramento Housing Redevelopment Agency, but also the Legislative Chair for CAHA, the California Association of Housing Authorities. We are in support, and we thank Member Reyes for this wonderful piece of legislation to help housing authorities. I represent over 100 housing authorities throughout California, so we are in support, but we do feel that there are a few amendments that need to be made to the Bill. We've had an opportunity to have some discussions, and we want to continue those discussions. Thank you.

Thank you.

A little bit high. My name is Marco Lizarraga. I'm the Executive Director of La Cooperativa Campesina, serving farm workers throughout the State of California for over 50 years. We are in strong support of this bill.

Thank you. Is there any primary opposition? Is there any opposition at all? All right. Seeing none, bring it back to the Committee. All right. Nobody has anything to say, and I'm happy to support this Bill. And would you like to give a closing?

Just want to say that over 16,000 vouchers remain unused in California annually, and this is something that will help us keep those vouchers here in California. And with that, I respectfully ask for your Aye vote.

Thank you. We do need a motion. Yes. All right.

You already had a motion.

Okay, great. Perfect. We got a bunch of them. Please take a roll. Thank you.

Motion do pass, as amended, to the Assembly Committee on Appropriations. [Roll call].

The Bill is out, but we'll keep it open for people to add on. Thank you very much.

Thank you so much. Thank you.

Thanks.

Great. Thank you. I have three bills I was hoping to start with AB 1413, if that's okay.

Yes, of course.

Great. Let me just thank the Committee for their help with this Bill. You just heard a lengthy discussion about our HHAP program that I was one of the creators of in the state budget process. Prior to that, the state had not been giving money to either cities, counties, continuums of care to really stop the stem of homelessness. It's obviously the biggest crisis we have all over our state. It's in every single community. This Bill does a couple of things around the HHAP program.

One, it focuses the measures on the two measures that matter the most, which is one, how many people are we getting off our streets and into shelter, and two, how many people are exiting into permanent housing. That's what our constituents want. That's what the people of California want. And I think we have to stay very focused on these measurements. We apply those measurements on our three programs, not just on HHAP, but also on the encampment resolutions programs, as well as the family challenge grants.

We also shift the oversight of the programs from the Interagency Council on Homelessness to the Housing Community Development Agency. We feel like the Interagency hasn't done the best job in terms of really focusing on accountability. We think that accountability would be better served if it was under HCD. And the last piece is there was a bonus pot in the previous HHAP rounds. What we found is that everybody lowballed the production estimates to qualify for the bonus pots.

And so that's also why the Governor was so upset, because when he looked at what the cities and counties were promising, they promised very little so they could actually get access to the bonus pots. The issue isn't incentivizing cities and city counties and Continuums of Care to get folks off their streets. I think there's plenty of incentive all around the state. The issue is really making sure that they have the resources. In particular, we also need to make sure HCD gets those resources out faster.

Just for example, I think it was HHAP 3.0. Took 20 months to get the money out the door after we appropriated, which is absolutely way too long for a program that's done only by formula. So with that, I do have Genevieve Morelos on our budget team, just here to answer any technical questions, but respectfully ask for aye vote.

Thank you. Anybody in support of this Bill? Any witnesses in support? All right, seeing none. Any opposition to this Bill? All right, seeing none. Any questions or comments? Assemblymember Ward?

Thank you for bringing this Bill forward. I know you put a lot of thoughtful thought into perfecting how government runs, and certainly like forward thinking about the next iterations of HHAP that will come out the door. I'm nervous about getting a little bit ahead of that and stripping away the oversight and the influence of ICH. As you well know, we have been trying to reform them and assist them in becoming a more consolidated and effective branch.

And you know, one year later, since some of those reforms that we had signed into law, we want to move that responsibility and that oversight now over to HCD. I'm happy to move this forward here today. I want to sort of watch and sort of hear a little bit more back from the Administration about the timing of that and not, agreeing with you that it has not gone well in recent years.

But now that they've just been reconstituted to actually have all the partners at the table to do that function, are we taking that away maybe a year prematurely? Open question.

I'm just going to ask Ms. Morelos just to give a little more detail as to the thinking behind that.

I think one of the challenges that we found is that when we first created the HHAP program, it was at a time when HCD was building up a lot of its staff. So had we not, had HCD been at a higher capacity, we probably would have put HHAP over there.

And what we found is that now that it's over at Cal ICH, there's enough room for it to move back to HCD, for them to administer a program that's well, and then for us to free up Cal ICH to do the work that we've, all the bills that we've passed through the Legislature, for allow them to do that coordination, because a lot of the HHAP program is an Administration of grants, and that should go over to HCD to do it and do the work that they want to do.

And I think when we move it over, it will allow Cal ICH to do what we've intended to do, to do the coordinating, to bring everybody to the table.

Yes. And then I also hope that they will be very well aware of that feedback cycle. Right. That informs them about future decisions. And that's why I think that they also need to be very much front-and-center in parts of those conversations and questioning, because they'll be the ones also deciding a lot of the next round and a lot of the next coordination of subsequent rounds of funding as well. So just kind of open question. I'm going to sort of say as it goes forward, but happy to support it today and happy to move the Bill.

Okay, thank you.

Assemblymember Quirk-Silva.

I think one of the things that we're going to have a continued theme on, again, being in the infancy of doling out these funds in the last handful of years is kind of who's in charge and how do we streamline? We've had several streamlining bills for agencies, and yet, as was mentioned, it still seems like these awards are trickling out. 20 months is a long time to get an award out. So I do support this. My concern is moving one jurisdiction to another.

Is HCD going to have the body to really be able to move this in a faster timeline? But that is the hope. That's why I'll support it. But at some point I feel like we need this huge kind of visual board to find out who does what. And I know we keep trying to do this, but I don't even think I could map it out myself for all the agencies that have some type of role in housing.

But we have to get to getting these awards out so, basically, local municipalities can start addressing the problem. Thank you.

I think, Assemblymember, you articulated the problem. Our budget has grown significantly over the last two years and it takes time to hire people. We've actually had a difficult ability, just like everywhere else, to hire folks, get everything up and running. And so that's been one of the major challenges that the state faces with all our money. We just at times, oftentimes can't get it out fast enough.

So I think the idea is to focus the state role on accountabilities, make sure the cities, counties, Continuums of Care are doing their role, which is really executing those grants and making sure those developments are happening at the local level and making sure that we all kind of stay in our lane.

Thanks. Any other comments from my colleagues? All right, well, I know you have connections with the Budget Committee, so I'm sure we can iron out where the pots of money go. Assemblymember Jones-Sawyer has a Bill to sort of create a, he didn't call it a czar, he called it something else, but it came through this Committee. So I think this kind of along those lines, I don't think these can be separate, you know, you can have both of these pieces of legislation passed and work together.

So I'm supportive of it. And I don't know if there's a motion on this Bill. We need a second? Okay. All right. Would you like to close?

Just ask for a vote.

All right. It shall be.

Motion is do pass to the Assembly Committee on Appropriations. Wicks? Patterson? Patterson aye. Carrillo? Carrillo aye. Gabriel? Kalra? Kalra aye. Quirk-Silva? Quirk-Silva aye. Sanchez? Sanchez aye. Ward? Ward aye.

Thank you. So that Bill's out. Okay. And we'll keep the books open to add on people to add on. And now the person in charge is back, so I'll pass this on.

I'm sure you crushed it, Mr. Patterson.

I passed every Bill.

Great. We're done. Meeting adjourned. No. Okay. Where are we now?

I was hoping to present AB 480, if that's oaky.

You should do that. Perfect. I love it.

Thank you. AB 480 is my Surplus Lands Act. It builds upon two bills that already have been passed and signed into law and builds, and it's a reintroduction of a Bill, AB 2357 that I did last year. What it does is it further strengthens the Surplus Lands Act to ensure that affordable housing developers get the first right of refusal.

Ever since I did the previous two bills, we've seen a significant change in how government agencies and public agencies are really handling their surplus land and offering more and more of it available to housing, which has just been a great change. What we do add in this Bill is we have a ministerial process for local governments to dispose of certain types of exempt surplus land. So, land that is exempt to have to offer to affordable housing developers first.

That type of land that's easily verified by looking at the parcel map, a project where at least 80% of the parcel is used for housing, or land where residential use is prohibited by the Federal Aviation Administration. So you think about airports. Lastly, to increase public access and information on available land for development, the Bill standardizes public notices of availability and requires all links being made available to local governments original listings. With that, I have two witnesses to speak on the Bill.

Hi. Thank you, Committee Members. My name is J.T. Harechmack with the Nonprofit Housing Association of Northern California. I am pleased to testify in support of Assembly Bill 480. NPH represents about 700 affordable housing builders and advocates in the Bay Area, and our Members have built tens of thousands of affordable homes serving our region's most vulnerable members in the last few years. As you know, land prices are historically high across the state, and especially in the Bay Area and other communities, coastal communities.

In this environment, jurisdictions with property assets have a critical role to play in the use of these resources for housing solutions. Affordable housing builders and community groups across the state have long championed the use of public land for the public good, and the Surplus Land Act is our key tool to advance that mission. We greatly appreciate the good work of our author and his staff to improve this act.

The Bill provides new, streamlined opportunities for compliance with the SLA, thus ensuring affordable housing builders and our local agency partners have clarity on the process. It also ensures that the spirit of the SLA is protected with improved enforcement protocols and standardizing the process of notifying affordable housing builders of land availability. This Bill is an important step towards helping low-income Californians find stable housing opportunities. Thank you for your consideration, and we urge your support.

Good morning, Chair and Members. Brian Augusta, on behalf of the California, excuse me, on behalf of the Public Interest Law project, one of the co-sponsors of the Bill. I'll just note quickly that since the changes that were enacted as a result of Mr. Ting's prior legislation, we have seen this tool really work in the way that it was originally intended. And we've seen thousands of additional affordable units built as a result of the changes to the law, really realizing the original intent of the Surplus Lands Act.

And now we've had some additional experience in trying to identify what is prohibiting that from reaching its full potential. Mr. Ting's Bill before you today closes some of that, while also adding some additional tools to make the administrative burden less so that when we're disposing of land that we know is not going to be used and can't be used for that purpose, that we make that process easier and we have more transparency.

And so for all of those reasons, we would urge an Aye vote.

Thank you. Do we have additional folks who wish to express support?

Yes. Mark Stivers with the California Housing Partnership, in support.

Brian staff on behalf of United Way Greater LA, in support.

Lauren Wesche on behalf of the California Airports Council and the Association of California Airports, in support.

My name is Dante Golden on behalf of the San Diego Housing Federation, a strong co-sponsor of this Bill. Thank you.

Thank you. Do we have primary witnesses in opposition?

Thank you, Madam Chair and Members, my name is Aaron Avery. I'm with the California Special Districts Association. We respectfully have an opposed, unless amended, position on this Bill arising from the concerns outlined in our letter that I'll briefly summarize today. But first, I want to thank the Committee and the Committee's staff for working with our coalition. I want to thank the author and the author's staff, Linda Rios, and the sponsor, for making time to meet with our coalition as well.

The SLA is an important tool in easing the state's housing crisis, and it's particularly important to special districts because of our narrow, focused local government service provider role. I group our concerns today into two general categories. Number one, concerns around clarity and impacts on existing special districts agency use prerogatives. Agency use land is a special category of land used for or to support agency worker operations. Agency use land is neither surplus land nor exempt surplus land.

We are seeking amendments to the bill's proposed changes to sections 54221 B, 54221 C, and proposed Section 54221.5 C to ensure clarity, ensure agency use land is not infringed, and ensure consistency with a legislative compromise reached in connection with AB 1486. We're also concerned about costs. The requirement to send exempt Surplus Land Act notifications to HCD is a new and potentially costly statutory mandate for local governments, to say nothing of HCD's ability to review such notices.

We're also concerned about the requirement to have third parties verify land use restrictions in writing for an applicable exemption. Special districts have no control over third parties, such as cities or counties, who have placed these restrictions on land. Getting verifications, the verifications required by this Bill could lead to significant and costly delays. However, documenting the restrictions is not a basis of our opposition.

Finally, this Bill increases penalties for violations with no requirement that the violations be substantial, and I note that the penalties are already currently 30% to 50% of the sale price. We appreciate the discussions we've had with the author's office, but today respectfully ask for your No vote. Thank you.

Thank you. Any additional folks in the room would like to express opposition. Please name, organization, and position.

Nicole Wardlman on behalf of the City of Ontario, in opposition.

Max Perry with the City of West Sacramento, also in opposition. Thank you.

Kirk Blackburn, on behalf of the City of Inglewood, in opposition.

Thank you. We will bring it back to the Committee. Questions for the author? Mr. Patterson.

Just a comment. You know, we've seen legislation come through, well, mostly through some other committees to give exemptions to the SLA.

And I think my concern with the SLA in general and kind of going on this legislation perpetuates that is there are a lot of circumstances where the cities want to do things with public property, maybe, for example, a lease, for example, to support surrounding infrastructure or whatever, and the SLA at least has been interpreted by HCD that, you know, that can't happen and it's caused an economic development issue for some jurisdictions.

I think if they actually wanted to get rid of it and sell it, okay, SLA is good, or makes more sense there, but I think setting up another mechanism for enforcement is a little concerning to me simply because of how it's being interpreted right now at HCD and something we can work on in the future together. So a lot of legislators obviously have various exemption legislation coming through this place. But thank you for listening.

Yeah, I appreciate the comments. I think that the challenge is the length of the lease. If a lease is over 25 years, then it is considered a sale. So if it was a short-term lease, I'm not sure why HCD would interpret it as ownership. But again, happy to work with you on that. I don't believe that's what existing law or this Bill would help codify.

I think our goal, again, is to ensure that the standing law, which is the Surplus Lands Act, which is decades-long old, just gives affordable housing developers the first right of refusal. That's all it does. Doesn't force cities to go down that route if they don't want to, just means that they have to fully explore that option first.

Thank you, Ms. Quirk-Silva. Then Mr. Ward.

Yeah. Addressing some of the opposition. You just did a little bit. But if you can just expand on, because I know that a few of the cities that I represent have put in letters when some of those concerns.

So not your city, but the most famous city that ran afoul of Surplus Lands Act was Anaheim with the very famous owner of the Angels. And obviously, while there was a significant amount of corruption in that situation, the one piece of law holding the city accountable was really around surplus lands. I don't know if you have the City of Tustin in your district, but they have a golf course. The golf course has been, they want to dispose of the golf course.

They haven't wanted to build affordable housing, even though, again, this doesn't force them to, but this forces them to at least explore and to talk to affordable housing developers. But that, again, the law just says that you have to give the first right of refusal to affordable housing developers. Just in terms of notifications, I know that the concern from the special districts was that notification to HCD was somehow onerous. Again, we don't believe sending an email, sending a letter is very onerous.

Also, if HCD doesn't dispute the disposal after 30 days, then everything is fine. So again, it's to me, one of the only ways for HCD to know that this is happening. That's what we saw in the Anaheim situation, because there was no notification, there was no notice. HCD couldn't act until it was, unfortunately, much too late. So again, we've been working with jurisdictions we know Senator Caballero has, she's Chair of Local Gov and Finance, has a number of concerns around economic development.

So we're also trying to make sure we're taking her concerns into account as well.

Thank you, Mr Ward.

I just want to thank you for bringing this Bill forward. I know you've been leading on surplus lands acts since its inception. And so as we've had conversations and they've applied to my jurisdiction, making sure that they're functional, we've had some missteps as well. We've worked through those and around those and certainly appreciate your counsel on that.

And I know that by providing some of your expertise in that, through this Bill for these updates, and I respect some of the opposition points as well, some of which I feel like might be solvable should this Bill move forward, that these are just internal inconsistencies or technical issues that can work for our districts. I think that that would be something the author absolutely is going to try to get right so we don't have to do another Bill again next year. Thank you for this.

Happy to support the Bill.

Yeah, in fact, absolutely. Just in terms of opposition concerns, we are extremely optimistic and we think that these are very fixable in terms of your jurisdiction. Obviously had a number of discussions around the surplus land around your old stadium as well as one of the reasons we put the exemption in here for airports was in in direct conversation around your airport. So really appreciate that feedback. It's helped make the Bill better.

Great. Any other additional comments?

Does that exemption apply to municipal airports? There's not very many of them, but.

Yeah. So just to clarify, I don't think we make a distinction. It depends on whether the airport, whether there's a prohibition from the FAA. So assuming the FAA's jurisdiction, then that may or may not apply.

Any other questions? Do we have a motion? Motion. A motion by Mr. Kalra. A second by Ms. Carrillo. With that, would you like to close, Mr. Ting?

Just ask for an aye vote.

That Bill has five votes. It's out, but we'll let folks add on. And with that, Mr. Ting, I believe we have the last of three bills from you today. AB 901.

Great. Just happy to give it to you. Happy to support the Bill out of Committee today, and thanks for your leadership. And the motion is do pass the Assembly Committee on appropriations.

Wicks. Wicks, aye. Patterson, not voting. Carrillo. Carrillo, aye. Gabriel. Kalra. Kalra, aye. Quirk-Silva, aye. Sanchez. Ward. Ward, aye.

Great. Happy to present AB 901. First, let me just thank you, your committee consultants on the amendments. Happy to accept the amendments. This is our effort to create affordable housing financing districts. As we all know, ever since we lost redevelopment, we've had a challenge funding affordable housing, especially at the local level. So this would create a partnership between local agencies in the State of California. Local jurisdictions could determine and create affordable housing financing districts.

I think the big difference is, rather than ask every local city or local county to form their own financing districts to go out to Wall Street to raise those bonds, it forms a coalition of districts at the state level, and then the state would actually use our bonding authority, our financing ability. We think this would be cheaper, more efficient, easier, especially for cities like mine.

It's not a big deal to go do bonds, but for many smaller cities, many smaller counties, it would be much, much harder. We think this is a way to help local cities take control and create some more affordable housing financing money. So once the state issued those bonds, the money would then go back to the local jurisdiction so that they could fund affordable housing. With that, I respectfully ask for your aye vote on AB 901.

Thank you.

Madam Chair and members, Michael. We concur with everything the member said and respectfully request an aye vote.

Great testimony. Any other additional witnesses wish to express support? And support?

Mary Ellen Shay, California Association of Local Housing finance agencies. We welcome everybody we can get.

Great. Any primary witnesses in opposition? Any additional folks in the room wish to express opposition? We'll bring it back to the committee. Any questions from my colleagues? Okay, do we have a motion? A motion by Mr. Kalra, a second by Ms. Carrillo. Would you like to close, Mr. Ting?

Just ask for aye vote. Thank you.

Thank you very much. Happy to support the bill today. Thanks again for all your. You're doing quite a bit of housing bills this year, Mr. Ting. We appreciate it.

Thank you.

With that, the motion is do pass as amended to the Assembly Appropriations Committee.

Wicks. Aye. Wicks, aye. Harrison. Harrison, no. Carrillo. Carrillo, aye. Gabriel. Kalra. Kalra, aye. Quirk-Silva. Quirk-Silva, aye. Sanchez. Ward.

That's on call. Thank you. Thank you. With that, we have Mr. Alvarez up next, who I believe we have three bills. Four. You're going to be here for a while. Okay, let's go.

Let's go. Thank you.

Do you want to do them in order?

I will let you know what order.

Okay. Choose your own adventure, Mr. Alvarez.

Thank you. I appreciate that. Because we have some local folks from my district here, including the mayor. I'd like to take up item, let's see, I think it's eight. So sorry. AB 1472, please, will be the first bill. Thank you very much. Colleagues, this is a bill that was inspired as a result of a real catastrophe in our local community, a beach community that I have the honor of representing, actually, the southernmost beach community of our entire state in the City of Imperial Beach.

It became because of families being impacted by what we believe is an unfair business practice known as the RV shuffle. RV as in recreational vehicle. The RV shuffle involves evicting and then relocating tenants in their RVs from an authorized park, usually for a couple of days, for about 48 hours every six months to avoid that those tenants gain certain tenancy status and that they would gain access to be provided with substantive tenant protections.

The practice is impacting constituents, as I stated in my district, but probably in other parts of California as well. Many of these who are vulnerable, elderly, on fixed income, monolingual, many times, in my case, Spanish speakers ,who have resorted to living in RVs, in part due to the crisis of affordable housing that you've all been discussing in this committee today and prior to today.

The RV shuffle forces the residents to pay for hotel accommodations and relocate their RV during the 48-hour eviction so that they can just continue to reside in their RV in the authorized RV park. The process is repeated again and again every six months. And in 2004, actually, the Legislature enacted AB 2867 to discourage the same practice from occurring in residential hotels. AB 1472 ensures that residents are living without the fear of intimidation and intimidation of being forced to relocate.

This bill is really important since most people seek shelter in an RV, again as a potential last resort. And an alternative would be increased potential homelessness and people on the streets. At a time when our state is in dire need of housing of all housing options and affordable housing particularly, we should not be evicting residents who have found suitable shelter and are able to abide by all rules, including paying their monthly rent on time. With that being said, I'd like to have the opportunity for Rachel Orozco, who is a tenant at the RV and mobile home park in Imperial Beach, to tell her story. And then Mayor Paloma Aguirre from City of Imperial Beach will then testify. Go ahead.

Good morning, everybody. My name is Rachel Orozco and I'm part of the tenant Association at the Miramar Mobile Home Park, formerly called Siesta RV. I've lived there for the past two and a half years. I am a single mom, have a wonderful 10-year-old. Soon after moving in, I've learned that I have to be moving out every six months. If I didn't move, there will be harassment and eviction process will start very immediately after that.

This movement every six months brings stress to all the families that live in the park. I brought in some examples. I'm putting myself as an example. The cost for me to move my family every six months, it's very expensive. That's an average of $450, me putting in the low part of it, plus the next month rent. That's me putting myself in a very cheap hotel, leaving my RV on the street with everything that I own and having to buy food outside, throw away everything that I currently have in my home, and not having the uncertainty if I'm going to be even allowed back. I brought a few examples. If I was renting in a Silver Strand campground, that's $85 a day, which comes out to $400 because it is two days that you have to be out.

But the day that you get out and the day they come in doesn't count. So that means it's four days. That's an average of $450 with amount per car, per dump station, everything else. And that's just me talking about me and one other member of the family. We have families in the park. They have six to eight people in the family. That adds up if you're getting a hotel. That adds up if you're getting anywhere else.

There's people that can't afford to go to a hotel or have family around, and they actually have to stay on the street during those days, which is not safe. There's people that have little kids. To be honest, being on the street sucks. And sorry for the word, but knowing that you have to tell your kid, I have to tell my son when we have left it on the street that our home is going to be there for the past two days. The stress that he has.

My son is on the spectrum, and a lot of the things, it's hard for him. He gets anxiety. It affects him in school. And again, this is just talking about my own son. There's about 35 kids in the park. There's kids that have not come back. There's kids where their family members have died due to the stress of this, elderly people. I brought a few examples of my neighbors. I have Oscar with a family of six. They have to do this every six months.

His expenses are around $2,000 plus the month of rent that he has to be given. Deanna is a single mom with three kids. Kimberly, also a single mom. Chloe, a military veteran. Mary and her husband, both with health problems that actually had aggravated even more with the stress of doing this. Running Wolf, a purple-heart veteran. He needs to live by the beach is not by necessity. He actually has to stay there due to help.

Thank you so much for sharing your very personal story. We appreciate it. Madam Mayor?

Thank you very much, distinguished members of this committee. Assemblymember Ward, my former Assemblymember. Very nice to see you. My name is Paloma Aguirre. I'm the mayor of the City of Imperial Beach, and I'm here in strong support of Assembly Bill 1472. The City of Imperial Beach is the most southwestern city in the continental US. We are a minority-majority community with over 52% Hispanic residents and close to 70% renters. We are one of the last working-class communities by the sea in California.

My residents are struggling as much of the rest of California to stay housed. Back in 2019-2020, residents from the Miramar Mobile Home and RV Park reached out with serious concerns regarding a number of issues related to the park's management. Residents shared concerns about increasing rents, increasing utility costs, harassment, and other issues. The city engaged with the park's then-owners, and some of these issues will resolve, at least temporarily. But then, in 2022, residents reached out again.

The mobile park tenants, now under new ownership, were experiencing evictions and rent increases. Residents came to council chambers to describe the dire circumstances many of them were experiencing. We had multiple testimonies, as you've heard today, of people spending upwards of $2,000 every six months. For example, Carlos Lopez, who has to spend close to $2,500 to get his entire family in and out of the park, have to pay for hotel costs and food. He also has to account for gas and many other expenses.

He basically shared with us that he has to start saving money the moment he moves back into the park. Oscar is one of the lucky ones because he's able to work. Other residents are elderly and or disabled and on fixed income and are unable to afford these added expenses. In September 2022, the County of San Diego declared a public health crisis for homelessness.

According to data from the County of San Diego, people experiencing homelessness are disproportionately people of color over the age of 55 and people with physical disabilities. For these reasons, the City of Imperial Beach took action, and in October 2022, we declared a moratorium and rent increases and evictions for mobile parks in the City of IB. However, the city's moratorium is only temporary and will expire next month. These mobile parks and RV issues are not unique to Imperial Beach.

As you know, this is a statewide issue that requires state action. Mobile parks are some of the last naturally occurring affordable housing. Our state, as you know, is in a housing and homelessness crisis. So please, I urge you to support this bill. We have tried everything we can at the city. The over 130 families that reside at the park have the risk of becoming homeless. So please support this bill. Thank you very much.

Thank you. Great. We will now go to any additional folks in the room who wish to express support.

Good morning. I'm Alysson Snow. I represent one in four of the people who reside there at this mobile home park. Each one of these people, in my capacity at the University of San Diego's law school, running the housing rights project, are at some stage of eviction. And homelessness begins at the courthouse steps. So it's really imperative that we're able to stop this bad business practice from continuing to happen.

We saw it happen in the residential hotel industry. They talked about it a little bit back in 2004. We were able to stop that unfair business practice by making it an unlawful business practice. And that's what we're asking you here today to support. Is this unfair business practice of making people move every six months is not unique to Imperial Beach. We've seen it spread out across California. Thank you.

Thank you. Any additional witnesses? Primary witnesses in opposition? Any folks in the room wish to express opposition? We'll bring it back to the committee. Mr. Kalra.

Thank you, Madam Chair. And I want to thank the author for bringing this forward. I think, as we all know, not just mobile homes, but RV parks now are part of our housing stock, and families are living in these communities with children and uprooting them, even if it's just for a matter of a few days is not only nonsensical, but I think it's just unjust. And I really appreciate the mayor for being here. You don't always see mayors show up for the most impoverished and most needy in our community. And I really appreciate you taking the time to be here on their behalf and being their voice. I'd love to be added as a co-author for this bill, and I'll be happy to move the bill.

Great. We have a motion and a second by Mr. Ward and some comments by Mr. Ward.

Yes, please. Thank you. Also wanted to acknowledge and thank Mayor Aguirre for coming up. And for those who don't know, also one of our coastal commissioners who works really hard to make sure that low-cost accommodations are available in our coastal communities as well. This is something that we've been following regionally and have certainly understood the plight that we're seeing for property owners that are trying to do the things that they're doing.

And you have been doing all that you can do and everything, and we've seen you fighting for that and everything. And so we're grateful that now we can actually have some better parameters through this bill that are going to be able to help to give you the tools that you need to be successful and fight for our residents as well. So very happy to support the bill today.

Great. Any other comments? Okay, we have a motion by Mr. Kalra, a second by Mr. Ward. Would you like to close, Mr. Alvarez?

I want to say thank you on behalf of the vulnerable residents, and I urge your aye vote. Thank you.

Mr. Alvarez. I appreciate your willingness to work with my staff and create a bill that addresses, I think, the re-registration issue that we're seeing, but that doesn't conflict with the current lawsuit. And for your advocacy on this space, I think RV park residents should not be shuffled in and out of their place of living in order to deny them eviction protections. So happy to support the bill today. And with that, the motion is do pass.

Wicks. Aye. Wicks, aye. Patterson. Carrillo. Carillo, aye. Gabriel. Gabriel, aye. Kalra. Kalra, aye. Quirk-Silva. Sanchez. Sanchez, aye. Ward. Ward, aye.

That has six. It is out. We will let folks add on. And which bill would you like to hear next?

Another local related bill, the AB 837, regarding surplus land.

Great.

I have another one of my great cities represented today, city manager of Chula Vista, providing some testimony. Thank you very much, Madam Chair, for the opportunity to present AB 837. First of all, want to make it clear that we are accepting the Committee's amendments and thank you again to your staff for your diligence on working with us on this Bill.

A little bit of history the City of Chula Vista, which you'll hear from in a second, began the process of envisioning and bringing higher educational opportunities through a university campus in the region through its General development plan over many, many years ago. Since then, over the course of decades, they've procured, the city has procured over 300 acres, almost 400 acres, actually, of land, and codified these efforts through its sectional planning area plan.

So the plans that are done for every community. Developing a university campus in Chula Vista will go a long way in combating the lack of access to education in this region of the state. Chula Vista is the only city in California with a population of almost 300,000 residents that does not have a nonprofit or state university within its city limits.

The South Bay communities of San Diego County are home to over half a million residents whose educational attainment is necessary to sustain our growth and meet our future workforce needs. There are some concerns about how this will impact the Surplus Lands Act itself and its essential role in ensuring that land is prioritized for housing development. And we understand that. Again, that's why we've taken the amendments.

As a strong advocate of housing myself, and increasing particular affordable housing, housing supply of all levels, I'm sympathetic to the views. That is why the Bill has been crafted the way it has and accepted the amendments to ensure that only this piece of land for this specific purpose will be exempted and the impact will be circumscribed. Likewise, I am accepting the Committee amendments today and would like to require that significant housing development, including affordable housing, is part of this specific project.

HCD will have oversight and penalties for non compliance. We believe that these amendments more adequately address the opposition's concern that we've heard in prior Committee. We will continue to work on that. But with that said, again, the work that's been done by the community and the people of Chula Vista and the city over multiple decades, this Bill recognizes that work, acknowledges it, and again, the city is working with us to make sure that housing is provided on this site in addition to the educational opportunities.

So I'm going to ask Maria Kachadoorian, who is the city manager of Chula Vista, to please provide testimony.

Thank you. Good morning Chair Wicks and Members. My name is Maria Kachadorian. I am the City Manager with City of Chula Vista. Actually grew up in Imperial Beach and you just heard from my former mayor. I am here today to urge support for Assembly Bill 837, which will allow the city to continue implementing its 30-year vision of developing a binational, multi-institutional University Innovation District.

In 2015, the city completed the assemblage of 383 acres of land, which is all greenfield development, through a combination of land offer agreements, land exchanges and developer agreements. This is not surplus land. We have been intentional in our acquisition and planning for this property since 1993. Furthermore, the city acceptance of the land came with deep restrictions that are legal commitments to use the land for university and purposes.

The SLA process creates barriers in our ability to develop the horizontal infrastructure, which is roads, water, sewer, parks, et cetera, that would allow the city to prepare the pads for development of the University Innovation District and the housing that's proposed as part of this project. It is important to point out that the University Innovation District is planned to include up to 3.6 million square feet of housing, of which the city is committed to providing 25% affordable housing.

With the legislative amendments included, we commit to moving forward with housing development on par with the development of the University Innovation District. For more than 40 years, and that's since 1981, I was in high school, the city has implemented its Balanced Communities Policy, including inclusionary housing requirements. The city has been a leader in developing housing across all income levels throughout our city. Our efforts continue. We currently have over 500 affordable units under construction, with more in the pipeline.

We value the partnerships we have with our affordable housing developers. Just last month, we celebrated the opening of Casanita, a 96 unit affordable housing project that includes supportive services for those exiting homelessness. Chula Vista stands out with a steadfast commitment to provide affordable housing. Our commitment has been so great that it has led to housing jobs in balance. About 90,000 of our 115,000 employable individuals leave our community every day to work in downtown or North County. That's gridlock in our community.

The effects and consequences of this has led to increase in greenhouse gas emissions as well as economic distress for our small businesses that lose the daytime population needed to sustain their operations. This has also become an equity issue for the city as we pursue economic development opportunities within the University Innovation District that will bring jobs and education opportunities to our city, the South Bay, and the county.

The city has worked for over 32 years to get to this point with the land fully entitled and ready to start seeking university partnerships. For these reasons, I urge you to vote Yes on Assembly Bill 837. Thank you.

Thank you. Any additional witnesses want to express support in the room? Any primary witnesses in opposition?

Hello Chair and Committee Members, I'll try to keep my comments brief because my voice is unfortunately gone. Name is Dante Golden, Senior Director of Policy at the San Diego Housing Federation. Our position is opposed unless amended. I'd first like to thank the city, the author, and the Committee staff for the Committee amendments. They do take a step in the right direction. They have a higher level of affordability, housing requirement. They have metering. They have penalties for non-compliance.

Our biggest remaining concern we feel like is technical in nature. It's that creating a one-off exemption to the SLA for the City of Chula Vista without adding language that could be used broadly and repeatedly to the SLA for future exemptions would prompt future carve-outs to the SLA and again, future negotiations on these larger sites. Our coalition is working on a solution to address these issues and is looking forward to working directly with the author's office on this. Thank you very much.

Thank you. Any additional folks want to express opposition? Okay, we'll bring it back to Committee Members. Mr. Ward then Mr. Kalra.

Great. Thank you for focusing on this issue. I know it's been three decades trying to be able to get a great development there and now we are intersected with our vision about what we're going to do with surplus lands. And a couple of things that I was coming into this.

One, I'm nervous about taking approach district by district, site by site, that we're going to start to have this onslaught of legislation that does very specific exemptions for Surplus Lands Acts and we have to justify it every time. I like to fix the Surplus Lands Act, which is what we did in part through Mr. Ting's Bill earlier today, and it will continue to need improvements as well.

And I guess for starters, I'm wondering, we face this question with the sports arena site, with the City of San Diego. And actually, I'd gone to city staff and asked them like, hey, that really stinks. We had this voter-approved measure and we wanted to be able to move it forward and now it's getting successfully sued in court. Should we look at an exemption?

And they just said, you know what, we're just going to go back to the drawing board and we're going to make it work. And they did. And so now we've got a project that has been approved and is moving forward there. And I'm wondering, so what makes this so unworkable that you can't try to just conform to our new processes?

I think the city and allow or ask Maria to chime in, but there is uncertainty at the moment with the process and some of the agreements that were made over the course of, as you've noted, 30 years now and counting, of developer agreements and land acquisition with requirements or understandings with some of those developers that are adjacent to the site on what would happen on the site.

And if a University innovation district is not what happens on the site, does that put the city at a risk? But then we've got SLA, which came into effect after the city made all those agreements, because SLA is only a few years old, whereas this process has been going on for 30 years.

So I think those are some of the concerns, is we need real clarity and not this sort of gray area where the city, at this point, can't go forward and try to attract some tenants, primarily university tenants, because of the uncertainty of whether or not SLA would actually trump, as in the case of sports arena, and then start all over again.

That's essentially correct. So this is greenfield development. So there's about $400 million in infrastructure needs that need to go in to be able to support these projects. So we really need to be able to negotiate with the developer and utilize the land to be able to finance those infrastructure needs, because we don't anticipate that we're going to be able to come before the state ask for funding for our university efforts.

So we need to be able to have the flexibility to finance against the land to be able to move forward with those infrastructure needs that exist.

Right. And then in furthering that, also, it's been 30 years, and there's been a lot of legislators that have worked on this issue as well, and we've been faithful that we are going to get to. But I'm nervous that at what point do we realize that maybe this vision is not going to be able to come together? I want it. I still very much support that, and I know the intent there and we need it. Right?

And even now, Senator Alvarez, had secured 25 million last year to be able to support SDSU's expansion down there. And then was it the City of Chula Vista that rejected that project recently?

No. So the cost of the projects are higher, and that's the issue with that specific project, which is not on this site. It's about half a mile away.

Half. Okay, so it's not part of this district?

No. No, no.

I really appreciate you took the amendments because I was certainly very nervous about our Housing Federation's points and trying to be as consistent as possible for the production of affordable housing under the Surplus Land Act guidelines.

This gets us there. I might recommend, as well as you're thinking about this moving forward and especially tying it into the hopeful development that it could be, that you're looking at teacher housing or student housing or other provisions that we've also, that might be something to also kind of help to stay consistent with where we want to go for affordable housing purposes, but also marry that and bolster that with a university purpose as well that I think could kind of link the two.

I'm going to support it today. Thank you for accepting the amendments. I was kind of prepared to kind of watch to see how this goes, but I'm hopeful that this will be helpful to actually get things going there because it's been 30 years.

What I would say, and thank you for always supporting this in the past, is the city was sort of on the cusp of beginning those negotiations for the site. But Surplus Lands Act sort of came to be,

And we've all had to adapt to that. Right. And some have adapted to that. And so again, I'm making kind of an exception here, but I was kind of also coming into this recognizing that I just did not want to open a floodgates of 20 bills next year that are going to look at SLA exemptions and to try to figure out how we can actually make SLA work.

And to your point, first of all, it's really clear in the language that it would only be for this purpose, no other purpose, and it actually has a sunset of 10 years. If, to your point, this doesn't move forward, then the sunsets and SLA.

And we're back to the beginning of the process and everything. Thank you.

Just one more thing. It is a 30-year vision, but we really didn't have the ability to move forward until 2015 when we actually obtained all the land.

Yes.

It really hasn't been that long.

Full 380. Yes. But there has been, like 300 or more acres for a little while now. We've tried. Right. UC, that took a lot of years of negotiation, failed. CSU and you've looked at binational opportunities. I mean, you're creative, and I want it success. But at some point, we have to fish or cut bait.

We're not ready to give up.

Thank you.

Mr. Kalra.

Thank you, Madam Chair. I just want to share similar concerns, especially in terms of the Surplus Lands Act. Again, I understand that this is a specific exemption, but the worry about creating a precedent going forward in the years ahead. But I also want to share my appreciation to the author for accepting the Committee amendments, which I do think strike an appropriate balance of ensuring that our priority to have appropriate amount of density to have obviously the appropriate affordable housing measures as well as HCD oversight.

And so I'll be supporting this Bill with the author accepting those amendments and the work of the Committee as well. But I'll just put that general caution out there and I know that I'm sure the Chair shares it going forward, that we want to be cognizant of our kind of commitment to the surplus Lions Act, but we'll be happy to support the Bill today.

Any other questions? Mr.. Oh, wait, do we have a motion? We don't. Motion by Mr. Gabriel, a second by Ms. Sanchez. Would you like to close?

No, thank you very much. Ask for your Aye vote.

Great. Ok. Appreciate Mr. Alvarez, I'll support the legislation today and I appreciate the author's willingness to continue to work with my staff and us and also your commitment to affordable housing production. Would like you to continue to work with the opposition. Happy to support the Bill today.

Thank you.

And with that, it's do passed as amended.

[Roll call]. Seven.

That has seven votes. It is out. We will let folks add on. And with that, Mr. Alvarez, what's next?

It's housing day.

It's housing day for Mr. Alvarez.

AB 1449, if that's okay.

Great. File Item 18.

Thank you very much. Again, want to start off by acknowledging the Committee's work and accepting the Committee's amendments and thanking the staff for the work on this. AB 1449 is, I believe, a common sense Bill that provides CEQA exemptions for 100% affordable housing projects that meet labor standards and specified environmental requirements. As you all know, just a couple of stats.

California ranks 49th in the nation in housing units per capita, 2.5 million units short of the demand, expected to jump to 3.5 million in a couple of years. That McKinsey report also argues that our housing shortage causes an annual economic loss of $140,000,000,000. That's the economics. And despite the good intentions we have seen and witnessed in this year alone, but certainly over the last few years, how CEQA has played a contributing role in inhibiting the ability to build more housing.

The California Business Roundtable had a report in 2020 that found that 50% of all housing production that year was challenged under CEQA. The lengthy and expensive CEQA process and the ease in which someone can abuse it needlessly increases the cost and the length of building housing, often resulting in projects becoming either cost prohibitive and not built or delayed. Recognizing the housing crisis, we are in and its real life or death consequences, AB 1449 seeks to remove those barriers of building affordable housing while requiring robust environmental and labor standards. What I always say is if we can agree that billionaires can have exemptions to build stadiums, then we should make it easier for affordable housing to be built. And that's exactly what this Bill does. I appreciate your time and look forward to your questions, but now I turn it over to two witnesses that we have, Chris Martin from Housing California and Mark Stivers from the California Housing Partnership.

Good morning, Madam Chair and Members. I'm Chris Martin, Policy Director with Housing California, a proud co-sponsor of AB 1449. As I'm sure you're well aware, California has a gap of 1.2 million homes affordable to low-income households and on any given night, roughly 160,000 people experiencing homelessness. Despite the well-established need, affordable and supportive housing projects face vocal opposition across the state, making these projects more difficult to cite, more time consuming to approve, and more costly to build.

Current law provides numerous protections for proposed affordable and supportive housing developments seeking local approval, including many by-right approvals and CEQA exemptions for certain affordable housing projects. Unfortunately, the existing tools have many limitations and prevent access to CEQA streamlining for many 100% affordable housing developments, particularly those in rural and high resource communities.

Additionally, for those developments that may be exempt from CEQA as a use by-right or have a CEQA exemption, actions such as the funding and planning decisions taken by the local agency to fund these projects are still being challenged under CEQA and cause undue delays to the projects. AB 1449 would exempt several actions taken by local agencies in furtherance of 100% affordable housing from CEQA, while ensuring new developments are on climate friendly, infill sites and meet certain environmental protections.

Unlike other streamlining tools, AB 1449 does not override local zoning decisions or development approvals. The local government still retains any relevant land use decision making. By its nature and as a result of state and local funding priorities, 100% affordable housing is higher density and built on location efficient sites close to services and amenities its residents need. The funding programs will also prioritize in high resource communities, which have been shown by research to support positive economic, educational and health outcomes to low-income families.

AB 1449 balances the need of California's most pressing issues in housing and homelessness with the environmental concerns to ensure location-efficient affordable homes are built quickly for those most in need. Thank you for your time. Happy to answer any questions and respectfully ask for your aye vote.

Good morning. Mark Stivers with the California Housing Partnership. I just want to reiterate the point that affordable housing is environmentally friendly. Through the competitive processes at the tax credit allocation Committee, affordable housing developments need to be near site amenities. They basically cannot win the competition without being close to schools, transit, parks, groceries, et cetera. They are built higher-density than the average in the community, so they're an efficient use of land.

And in many cases, they are going way above and beyond the Title 24 building codes in terms of sustainability. There are various programs that help support any additional costs with that, the programs sort of incentivize that. And so we have developments that are inherently environmentally friendly, yet sometimes they are still subject to CEQA litigation for reasons other than environmental issues. And we think this Bill helps us solve that problem.

It helps us get to building affordable housing more cheaply, more quickly, and in ways that are still environmentally friendly. Thank you.

Thank you. And with that, other folks in the room wish to express support for this Bill? Name, organization and position, please.

Mary Ellen Shay, California Association of Local Housing Finance Agencies. Strong support.

Michael Anwis Burns, in strong support.

Sharon Rapport from Corporation for Supportive Housing, in support.

Hello. Jennifer Armenta with the California Housing Consortium, co-sponsor of the Bill, in support.

Great. Primary witnesses in opposition. Any additional? Oh, it's a long walk up here.

Yeah, I thought John was going to go first, so I thought I had a minute. Not because you're a slow walker. I just thought. Jeremy Smith here on behalf of the State Building Construction Trades Council, in respectful opposition. Just to make a couple of notes at the top, the exemptions for billionaire stadium or sport team owners. I don't quite remember exactly what the author described that as. Those weren't exemptions. Those were 270-day judicial streamlining for CEQA lawsuits. So there was still CEQA going on in those examples.

Secondly, there was a Bill last year, SB 1118, by Senator Borgeas, that was analyzed by the Senate Judiciary Committee, and that analysis found that of all the litigation in the State of California year to year, between 3% and 5% are CEQA cases. So we just fundamentally disagree that there's a problem with CEQA litigation in this state, generally on these projects. But for today's Bill, our main concern remains the health care expenditure requirements that the legislation relies on that was still first put into statute by Madam Chair's Bill, AB 2011 last year. There are a number of cases that we believe are setting the precedent for that health care requirement in AB 2011, in the government code now, to be proven to be preempted by federal ERISA law. So I won't go into the details of how that works. I'm not a lawyer.

Plus, it's probably not germane for my two minutes of testimony today, but what we're anticipating is when that Bill goes into effect, those healthcare requirements are going to get preempted by federal law, and you're going to have streamlining provided with no requirement to provide healthcare coverage to the workers building the projects, let alone making sure that the land that the projects are being built on is environmentally friendly, not only for the workers who are going to be working on it, but for the folks who might be living in the housing that's built.

So we are in respectful opposition. We look forward to our conversation with Assemblymember Alvarez as the Bill moves forward. But today we urge a no vote. Thank you.

Thank you.

Good morning. John Scribner, on behalf of the California Realtors. Wanted to point out we very much appreciate the amendments that have been taken in Committee, and we look forward to continuing to work with the author. And much to the chagrin of my friend from Labor, we hope you would consider to add single family housing into those CEQA exemptions. Thank you.

Thank you. Any additional folks in the audience wish to express opposition? We will bring it back to Committee. Mr. Patterson?

Look, I think affordable housing like this, just generally isn't really built in the middle of nowhere, that's going to have some kind of crazy environmental hazards. Most by design, affordable housing is built where people already are, and largely infill projects and policies developed by this state put them close to transit. There are all sorts of things that have made these projects go in areas where there has already been some kind of environmental review of some kind of development in that area.

For example, in my own city, when I was on the City Council, we did a project in an area that originally was going to be actually a community college property, and it was 100% affordable. But the environmental document, it was years, took them years to do this. It was going to be a community college.

I mean, the environmental hazard of putting in 200 units versus putting in maybe thousands of cars a day and a community college, the fact that they had to go through this process was a little crazy based on where it was. So, I don't think we should have, you know, I think, CEQA, for something like this, we shouldn't have to do an environmental document. And then, well, there is one that will exist in most of these places, like I said, because it's already approved for some kind of development in most cases.

But I do agree with the realtors. We should go further. But that said, it's not a reason for me to oppose this Bill, and I'm looking forward to supporting it.

Thank you, Mr. Patterson. Anyone else? Mr. Ward?

Thank you, I talked to Lincoln about this in Natural Resources. Happy to again move the Bill or second it and support it today.

Great. Anyone else wish to express questions, concerns, praise? Any of the above? Okay with that, do we have a motion? Sorry, we don't have a motion. Mr. Patterson will make the motion. Mr. Ward will second it. Mr. Alvarez, would you like to close?

Yeah. First of all, acknowledge the correction that was made if I said exemption. My point about making it easier to build stadiums for folks is about making it easier to build housing. So I want to correct myself if I made that misstatement, but I know that this Committee has been working hard to try to push as far as we can. AB 2011 obviously was monumental. Some language in this Bill is modeled after that.

And I appreciate, again, the work from the Committee with our staff and accepting the amendments today and ask for your Aye vote.

Thank you. The conversation on stadium is a little triggering for me right now, given the news of the A's, but it's going to be okay. Mr. Alvarez, I want to thank you for your leadership in this, and also just excited about your leadership in housing. As a newer Member of this body, I love this Bill, a big supporter of it. I'd love to be a co-author at the highest level that you would take me. Would love to help get it across the finish line.

I think it's important. It makes obvious sense, and it's a reform I strongly believe that we need to do so. With that, I'm happy to support the Bill today. It's do pass as amended to the Assembly Committee and Appropriations.

[Roll call]. Six.

That had six votes. It is out and we will let folks add on. And with that, I believe we have one more Bill from you. Is that right? Okay.

Thank you very much. It's the grand finale. Thank you. This is now AB 1476 that I'm presenting to you. So I am a former Council Member, former colleague, Mr. Ward on San Diego City Council, and I had the honor of serving from 2010 to 2018. And if you all recall redevelopment and the redevelopment law, in 2012, the Legislature dissolved redevelopment or did away with it. And 2013, the dissolution process began for a lot of us in our cities prior to that happening.

For the couple of years that I had the opportunity to serve with this as an option. We built a lot of affordable housing using redevelopment dollars as there was a requirement for set aside and redevelopment tax increment dollars. And it was a really good time. And then afterwards, it was a really hard time when it came to trying to find sources of funding for affordable housing.

It's become very challenging in a district that I represent that is very much middle-class and a lower-income residents and families. It's become really challenging to find solutions to help fund affordable housing, and that is why today I bring back the concept of redevelopment to the Legislature. I know that this work has been done in the past.

I acknowledge the challenges that it brings, but I think that it's something that we should continue to raise in hopes that this at some point we return to locals the authority and the tool that was so successfully used in many instances, acknowledging that in some instances the tool was not used appropriately. And this Bill takes into consideration a lot of those things that were found to be not as transparent and not as good government policies as they should be.

This Bill acknowledges that AB 1476 recognizes the importance of RDAs and the shortfalls by re-establishing them with stronger oversight provisions. For the controller that includes penalties for noncompliance, opportunities for public input, pass-through payments for taxing entities to make sure that they remain whole, and a requirement that 30% of funds be dedicated to building Low and moderate income housing.

Importantly, some of the oversight provisions include the state's approval of establishing you cannot become an agency without the state actually approving you becoming a redevelopment agency with the controller's annual review. And also the controller will be able to cap the number of agencies that are created to make sure that we are meeting Proposition 98 obligations to Fund our schools. Following the dissolution of RDAs, the Legislature did create new tools.

I actually had the honor of maybe helping create one of the first enhanced infrastructure finance districts, which was an attempt to try and give local governments an opportunity to utilize tax increment financing for infrastructure and development in communities that exist today in Otay Mesa, in my former council district, and my current Assembly District in south San Diego by the border. However, that wasn't really sufficient enough to really make an impact.

As the analysis points out, those tools, like the one I just mentioned, EIFDs, have failed to make a dent in our housing and infrastructure deficit and we've been trying different things. And you just heard a Bill earlier from Mr. Ting trying to create an entity to help with the hole that redevelopment left for our local cities and counties.

The view is supported by the governor's OPR report from 2021, which found that our current tax increment financing tools are not working because, among other things, they do not require participation from the taxing entities. I do acknowledge the opposition that we heard at Prior Committee regarding eminent domain. I want to make sure we acknowledge that and the potential abuse that can occur as a result of that, especially to vulnerable individuals and families.

That's why the Bill has specific language against antidisplacement protections, such as reporting requirements for displacement that occurs. Requirement that agencies must build or refurbish an equal number of dwelling units to those that are being removed as a result of potential eminent domain, and they must be replaced within one half mile if they were inhabited by very Low and moderate income individuals who occupied those units at any time within five years of when the redevelopment agency or the agency was established, and it also requires relocation assistance.

In addition to these, I am exploring ways to strengthen the provisions to mitigate abuse and make sure that we are not employing or deploying eminent domain in an equitable way, and we're working with the opposition to do so. So with that, I look forward to your questions, and we do not have any individuals who are here to testify, but happy to take any questions. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Alvarez. Any additional folks in the room wish to express support?

Mary Ellen Shay California Association of Local Housing Finance Agencies. Many of our members are former redevelopment agency. Thank you. Support.

Any witnesses in opposition.

Madam Chair, Bob Naylor, again representing Fieldstead. We testified in the local government Committee at some length about the eminent domain problem, and I testified on another Bill, so I won't repeat that. The chapter from the Commission on Reparations, et cetera. And we appreciate the fact we're meeting with the author's staff later this week to talk about some kind of compromise in eminent domain. There are a couple of basic problems with the way eminent domain functions in the redevelopment agency context. One is economic conditions change.

Property is taken because bonds are floated in anticipation of tax increment, and then the developers can't develop the property. So this housing that has to be replaced, this displacement, which is a good provision, sometimes doesn't get built. There was housing anticipated in San Francisco in the district known as the Fillmore district or the Harlem of the west. That was a raising of thousands of homes and businesses by San Francisco, and it was anticipated they would build housing. People were assured they would have housing.

And 15 years later, that property was still vacant. When I arrived, fresh from the army to practice law in San Francisco, that property was still vacant. So it's very hard to build in protections for that. We think that a better solution is the amendment taken by Senator Kamlager in her SB 679, which established a housing agency for Los Angeles County, and she simply accepted an amendment prohibiting the use of M. O domain by that agency. And we hope the author will consider that, but we look forward to meeting with them and working on it.

Thank you. Any additional opposition in the room, we will bring it back to our Committee. Any questions? Mr. Ward

Thank you for getting here to help us work on redevelopment 2.0. There have been certainly a lot of things in motion. We have Mr. Ting's Bill earlier today, and so somehow this is going to have to be gelled and how that is going to provide sort of distinct and effective support beyond the existing affordable housing districts that are out there.

The community resilience, climate resilience districts that are also empowered now. And I wanted to just for, on the record, to underscore there will still remain a carve out for education funding. Is that correct?

Yeah. The Bill is clear that the funding for education is maintained.

Right.

Which is usually about half of the dollar of how we got here. Exactly. That's why we're staying away from it some time.

If we can get these new models up and running for that increment to actually be something that is going to be substantial enough to start to bond against, produce that housing, but we've got to get this machine up and running again. So happy to support the Bill today. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Ward. Any other questions, Mr. Patterson?

Yeah, I think, you know, it's interesting. When I was upstairs, I was thinking about how we needed to bring back some kind of redevelopment to get housing done. But my concern right now with this Bill does have to do with the eminent domain situation. I'm not going to be supportive of it today, but hopefully those conversations keep going. I know you probably won't get everybody on the same page with that particular item, but that doesn't mean I won't support it in the future.

I just would appreciate if you'd work on that. And you already said you will, so I appreciate it. But for now, unfortunately, I'm not going to support it. So thank you.

Thank you. With that, would you like to. zero, would you have a motion, a motion by Mr. Kalra, a second by Mr. Gabriel. Would you like to close?

Yeah. Just thank you for opportunity to bring this back. I know that there's been challenges with redevelopment attempts in the past. We got to keep working at it. Those of us who come from local government and saw what good it could do and how much housing it could provide, we got to find a tool that we return to local government to do this. And I look forward to working with everyone who's interested in this to move this forward. Thank you very much, Ms. Madam Chair.

And thank you. I'm happy to support the Bill today and always want to put more creative ideas back on the table for how we fund affordable housing. And with that, the motion is do pass Assembly Committee on appropriations.

Wicks aye. Patterson no. Carrillo. Gabriel aye. Kalra aye. Quirk-Silva aye. Sanchez no. Ward aye.

Five to two. That is out and we'll let folks add on. Ms. Bonta and Mr. Haney have graciously allowed Mr. Kalra to cut in line, but he promised to be quick, so thank you, colleagues. Mr. Kalra, thank you.

Thank you, Madam Chair and Members and I want to show my appreciation for Assembly Members Haney and Bonta for their consideration of my witnesses. AB 1469 amends the Santa Clara Valley Water District act to expand its statutory purposes and allow certain resources to be used for outreach, counseling, transitional housing, or other services for unsheltered people living on public lands and along waterways within Santa Clara County. Valley Water owns and manages 294 miles of streams and habitat.

With them, a mission to protect more than 800 miles of streams throughout Santa Clara County. In 2022, 77% of the unhoused population in the county were unsheltered, with an estimated 2300 taking refuge on Valley Water's property or land easements. Such circumstances have led to encampments along the waterways, both a human and environmental tragedy. For example, the watersheds in Santa Clara County are prone to flash flooding, surprising unsheltered people, and resulting in drownings or serious injury. This is not just a hypothetical.

This has actually happened during times of flooding along these waterways. Furthermore, these conditions have increased community risk from fires and flooding due to blocked drainages, excavation of banks and levees, and the degradation of water quality from litter. Amid an unprecedented need for transitional and long term housing in Santa Clara County, cities in the county often do not have shelter space to offer.

Valley Water has very limited authority to expend its revenue outside of purposes listed in the district act, leaving some human health and safety risks on their lands unaddressed. AB 1469 will provide Valley Water with the flexibility needed to direct resources to assist unsheltered people on their lands and humanely address a crisis that can no longer be ignored. With me to provide testimony are Bart Broome, Assistant Officer for State Government Relations for the district.

And first, I'd like to start with Senator Jim Bell, who serves on the Valley Water's Board of Directors. And many of you may recall when he was the Legislature was oftentimes referred to as the conscience of the Legislature for having great compassion and concern for the least among us.

Thank you. You can just refer to me as Board of Director Bell now. I'm no longer a Senator, so. Madam Chair and Members, thank you for your welcome and thank you for the consideration of the other Members. We estimate that in Valley Water District, 2000 unsheltered people are living in the Valley Water property easements. People naturally take refuge along creeks and streams in Santa Clara County. And the Valley Water is the owner of hundreds of miles of creek side streams and public lands.

And we have the responsibility to do more than just to assist the people living, sometimes dying, on our public lands. Our creeks are flashy, and that means that rushing floodwaters arrive quickly. They go up fast. And sometimes, unfortunately, we lost some people due to that situation. In advance of the storms in January, for example, we work with the City of San Jose to evacuate unsheltered people. But this is not enough. It's just not the answer.

Our agency must do more than our current enabling law, the district act that we have, that governs us. The bill that we have here simply states that our responsibilities beyond water supply, flood protection, environmental stewardship, must include being able to humanely address the unsheltered crisis happening on the public lands that we manage.

This bill will provide Valley Water with more flexibility, enable us to use some of our resources for common sense solutions, like paying for outreach services, partnering with cities, the county to develop emergency transitional housing, even on our Valley Water, surplus or not surplus, but just our land that we have. It's no surprise that the county has some of the highest housing costs in the state, anywhere in the nation. And we have a growing crisis of large numbers of unsheltered people.

The solution is that owners of public lands like Valley Water must step up to partner with other local governments and the State and Federal Government. This bill simply allows us to do that. And I urge an aye vote on this measure.

Thank you.

Madam Chair, Members. Bart Broome, also with Valley Water. AB 1469 will enable us to fulfill our ethical responsibility to do more. I ask for your aye vote.

Thank you very much. Any additional witnesses in support? Name, organization and position, please.

Hi, Jenny Tracy, on behalf of the Santa Clara County Board of Supervisors in support.

Thank you.

Thank you, Chair and Members. My name is Noah Whitley, and on behalf of the Midpeninsula Regional Open Space District, we are in support.

Julia Hall, with the Association of California Water Agencies, in support.

Heidi Hannaman, on behalf of the California Special Districts Association, in support.

Thank you. Any primary witnesses in opposition. Any additional witnesses in opposition? Bringing back to Committee, Mr. Ward.

Just a question. So certainly. Thank you. And if you're willing to take this on a second thank you as well. Would you be using ratepayer funds, then, for some of these programs, or would you just be an administrator of maybe state funds that are passed through or leave you as an eligible entity to work on these projects?

Actually, we wouldn't use ratepayer funds. The funds that we would have available are through our 1% Ad Valorem property tax. And that tax is for the purposes of the District Act. And so by amending the purposes of the District Act, it enables us to use some of those funds for that purpose.

But land is what Valley Water has that is most valuable is the use of that land for purposes like development of transitional housing or other facilities that may be needed in cooperation with a city or the county. That's really the greatest benefit, but, yes, it does enable us to spend some property tax.

Great. Good to know. I'll be looking for maybe others that can follow your lead. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Ward. Anyone else? Okay, we have a motion in a second. With that, would you like to close Mr. Kalra?

Appreciate former Senator's Bell's advocacy and passion, and respectfully ask for an aye vote.

7 to 0. That bill is out.

Thank you. Great to see you, Senator, grace us with your presence again here. And I want to thank the author for your work on this bill and appreciate the water districts trying to be part of the solution here. And with that, I'm happy to support the bill. It's a motion Do Pass.

[Roll Call]

Thank you, Ms. Bonta, for being flexible. And you are here to present AB 846, the floor is yours.

Good morning, Madam Chair and Members. I want to thank the Committee for the Time Spent on this Bill. I decided to author AB 846 to protect low-income renters living in publicly assisted affordable housing from significant rent spikes. The Low Income Housing Tax Credit Program, or LIHTC, is a critical source of funding for affordable housing production and rehabilitation nationwide. The program provides deed-restricted units for tenants at 80% of the area median income and below.

Unfortunately, the way that federal law regulates rent for LIHTC units provides no assurances that a tenant's rent will remain affordable over time. Tenants have the income qualify for LIHTC units, and will pay anywhere between 30% to 40% of their income in rent at the start of their tenancy. There is no relationship between a tenant's income and their rent.

Overtime rent increases are solely tied to increases in AMI for the county in which the property is located. LIHTC property owners are free to raise rent up to the new allowable maximum whenever AMI rises. This means that LIHTC tenants can face unpredictable and often high rent increases over time. They can become severely rent-burdened, paying over 50% of their income in rent -

- despite living in affordable housing. States are free to impose additional restrictions on rent in LIHTC properties, and there are a growing number of states have taken advantage of that authority to provide more stability and predictability to low-income tenants, including Oregon, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and Minnesota. The Biden Administration even recently challenged other states to consider taking similar action as part of their tenant protection strategy. And here we are today with AB 846 which would establish a limit on rent increases in LIHTC properties in California.

I appreciate the chair's willingness to support the bill moving forward in its current form to allow for more time for us to continue our conversations with the developers and come up with a framework that is both protective of low-income tenants and sensitive to the complexities of affordable housing finance and the need to ensure that LIHTC properties can remain financially viable over time. Although a rent cap sounds simple, this is not a simple task.

I understand and respect the concerns that have been raised by nonprofit affordable housing developers, in particular about the need for some flexibility and to carefully consider how a cap would work within the already complex regulations that govern LIHTC properties. I have already taken a very close look at committee's analysis and particularly focusing on capping rent increases based on attendance income, which I think is a very creative strategy.

And you definitely have my commitment to work with the committee moving forward to make sure that we have a fair and equitable solution presented. That is going to be because this is a long-standing issue with me. To speak more on this bill, I have Anya Lawler with the California Rural Legal Assistance Foundation and Deb Thrope with the National Housing Law Project for technical support.

Thank you.

Good morning. Chair Members: Anya Lawer here again today representing the California Rural Legal Assistance Foundation, one of the co-sponsors of AB 846. The issue of LIHTC rents is something we've been hearing about for years from legal services attorneys working with low-income tenants across the state. But the high AMI increases and the resulting high rent increases in a number of properties coming out of the pandemic have created more urgency to find a solution.

As the Assemblymember noted, federal law provides a relatively flawed system for determining rents in LIHTC properties that leaves tenants vulnerable to unpredictable and large increases and, as she noted, the possibility of becoming severely rent-burdened over time. LIHTC is a crucial program, and we need it to be robust. And frankly, I hope we put more money in it in the budget this year, but we can also make it work better for the low-income families it is designed to serve.

As a number of states have already done, we greatly appreciate the conversations we've had thus far with our affordable housing developer colleagues. I think really understanding the nuances of their financing and the challenges that they're facing has been super helpful. It's also been particularly useful to learn how some of the mission-driven nonprofits are working within the confines of the existing program to try to keep rents at between 30% to 40% of tenants' income. I think that's a really useful and novel approach.

We are definitely committed to continuing to work collaboratively with the developers. That is, in fact, why the bill really doesn't have language. We didn't want to put something out to sort of force a negotiation. We wanted to work collaboratively behind the scenes to come up with something that worked and made sense. We're really excited about the point in the analysis about capping rents in relation to income. Again, I think that's a really great potential solution.

Among other things, we have a lot of stories of tenants who are paying 50,60,70, or even, in one case, almost 100% of income in rent in LIHTC properties, which really shouldn't be happening in housing that is supposed to be affordable. We really appreciate your willingness, Madam Chair, to support the bill moving forward in its current form to give us more time to get the details right. We're committed to doing that. Thank you. And I respectfully ask for your aye vote.

Thank you. Okay, great. Any additional folks want to express support in the room?

Monika Lee with Western Center on Law and Poverty; co-sponsor and strong support.

Thank you. Primary witnesses in opposition?

Mark Stivers of the California Housing Partnership, and not in opposition. We've had very friendly and ambiguous conversations with the sponsors, and we appreciate that. We look forward to those continuing on. So we are expressing just concerns. We just want to share with the committee today some of the concerns of why we are in these conversations. Obviously, the bill has a blank in terms of what the rent cap would be.

Depending on what that is, it could be something we could support or would be very detrimental to affordable housing and to the point where it could starve the development of the income needed to pay their mortgages and whatnot. Every year, if you can't pay the mortgage and the loan defaults, we actually lose all affordability on the development where we would have had it for 55 years. So we need to be very careful there.

And also, as Marina will describe, the issue is actually the biggest with respect to the Michelin-driven nonprofits who have not actually charged the maximum allowable rent under the tax credit program. And there's a lot of sort of potential nuances and unintended consequences of sort of a flat cap, as probably my colleague Marina will describe greater. No matter where we set the cap. There's also the issue. There's probably three situations that need to be carved out of the cap.

One is where you have tenant-based rental assistance, that is where they are paying 30% of their income, and the housing authority determines what the tenant's percentage of the rent is. And you want to make sure that that is still allowed to fluctuate per the federal housing rules. Also, when you have project-based rental assistance, so rental assistance is tied to the unit, not the tenant, you have a similar issue.

And then lastly, whenever we're doing permanent supportive housing, if rental assistance goes away, all the tax credit committee and HCD regulatory agreements say that they may allow those unit affordability levels to float up, as we say because you no longer have the federal rental assistance that you are experiencing. And in that case, we need the flexibility to be able to sort of raise rents. As unfortunate as that case may be, it is kind of a dire situation. And so, in any event, we have concerns.

We're working with them, and we hope to get to an agreement sometime soon. Thank you.

Thank you.

Good morning. Marina Wiant with the California Housing Consortium, again, really appreciate all the conversations we've had with the sponsors and with other staff, and really are hopeful that over the next month, we can find a reasonable solution to address, in particular, the egregious rent increases that some of the tenants have been seeing. I just want to note that these properties are heavily regulated by multiple layers of regulation, both at the local, state, and federal level.

And the rent cap does add another administrative burden on the management of these properties. The average AMI increase, if you average it across the last 15 years, has never exceeded 5% in any county of the state. And so, as Mark noted, we're particularly concerned about the impact on properties that are far below the maximum. Many of these properties are already focused on the resident's rent burden as a key mission as part of how they deliver affordable housing.

But they also have to balance this with the long-term stewardship of the properties. And many circumstances arise where larger rent increases are necessary to cover for years of little to no rent increases. As noted in the analysis, we've seen a 26% increase on operating expenses just from 2018 to 2021. And so those are also reasons why these broad sort of caps and extremely low caps can be really challenging.

And we don't want to lead to an undesired effect where the owners of the properties have to levy annual rent increases at the max, no matter what. So, keeping flexibility is really important to us to ensure the sustainability of the properties in long term. So look forward to the continuing conversations. Thank you.

Anyone else wish to express opposition to the bill?

Hi, J.T. Harechmak with Nonprofit Housing Association in Northern California. I want to echo the concerns that have been previously voiced. This is a serious issue for our nonprofit and mission-driven housing developers, and we look forward to good conversations on this bill and finding a solution and a way forward.

Chris Martin with Housing California just want to align my comments with the previous speakers and appreciate the author and sponsors for working with us to find a solution that's going to work for tenants and for providers, and nonprofit, mission-driven developers. Thanks.

Thank you. Let's bring it back to the Committee. Any questions? Ms. Quirk-Silva and Mr. Gabriel.

Just a few comments. I do support this bill with the caveat that you'll continue to work with the opposition.

I know that it gets very tricky because you want to maintain the residence; you want to make sure that people can remain in those units, in essence, not being priced out. I think one of the things that we spend time on is looking towards the future with new units, but we want to keep the individuals in the units that they are, and also the rental assistance is part of that.

So often, we deal with problems after somebody's been moved out of a unit, and then you have evictions and all of those things. So I do support it, and I'm just hoping we can get to a place where we get remove opposition.

Mr. Gabriel?

Yeah. Thank you, Madam Chair. And I first, I just want to appreciate the author. I know you have been a tremendous advocate for our most vulnerable and for folks in your community, and I certainly can see that thread running through this bill and understand what you're trying to do. I will confess having a little bit of heartburn about this and particularly the opposition that we've heard from the mission-driven nonprofit folks.

And I do worry about unintended consequences here, particularly market signals that we might send that on the margin would discourage investment in affordable housing or the development of additional affordable housing. And so I think Mr. Stivers said it very well. This is an area where we need to be very careful, and there's a lot of nuances, and I see everybody shaking their heads. So I know people appreciate that because we need to do two things at once. Right?

We need to protect our vulnerable folks that are in affordable housing, and we need to build more affordable housing for all the families out there that need it that don't currently have it. And that's a tricky balance to strike.

So, I'm going to reserve my right on the floor but extend a courtesy vote today because I have great confidence in you and as an author and because I'm encouraged by the conversations that we have here, but would really encourage you to talk to all of the developers of affordable housing, nonprofit for profit, because, again, we need to protect these folks, but we also need more affordable housing. So with that, happy to support the bill today.

Mr. Patterson.

Thank you. I know what you're not trying to do, Assemblymember, is make it more difficult for affordable housing to be built. And I know that's not your intent of this bill. I've said here before, but my own family is a beneficiary of affordable housing, and I think it's really important. And in my own community, I've approved a lot of affordable housing units. So I actually understand what you're trying to do with this bill.

I'm personally going to wait until it's sort of. I do have a lot of concerns right now, and I do want to check with my not non-profit, the for-profit affordable housing developers, which have delivered in my community, and see how they feel about this bill as well. But I know your intentions are definitely in the right place. I can't support it today, but I hope when it gets to the floor, those conversations keep going, and I hope I can support it there. So thank you.

Thank you. Any other additional questions with that? Would you like to close, Ms. Bonta?

Yeah, I've certainly made a similar commitment, and I appreciate my colleagues' comments and our ability to be able to move forward with this. The fact of the matter is that my family also benefited from affordable housing right here in the state of California.

My mother was in a LIHTC property, and the reality is that she was one of those who, when she initially joined the LIHTC property, she was working, and that was where she, as a tenant, was able to have her income be considered in her tenancy. And over the course of years, even though she was in a LIHTC unit herself, a BMR, she ended up getting priced out because she needed to retire.

And at some point, when fixed income is the reality, particularly for elders, and we're moving LIHTC units according to an AMI, and that is not changing for the individuals who are in those units, we have a challenge. And so I know that AB 1482 really excluded, at the request of the affordable housing director - developers really excluded, made an exemption for LIHTC properties. But we need to be able to kind of take the next step.

And I think that this is an opportunity for us to be flexible and really make sure that over time, we don't have people taking 40, 50, or 60% of their income to pay rent that is not affordable in the state of California. So, I really appreciate an opportunity to continue working on this. I know that there are three different types of developers.

Obviously, we are going to be incredibly supportive of making sure that the nonprofit affordable housing developers are and the for-profit developers who are trying to do well in this space, as well, have an opportunity to do so. But I think we do need to take the next step. So with that, I respectfully request your aye vote.

Great. Thank you. And do we have a motion? Motion by Mr. Gabriel, a second by Ms. Quirk-Silva. Ms. Bonta, appreciate your advocacy. I know that you are a champion for folks who need that and appreciate that. I know you're also trying to land a pretty delicate, tough plane here. It's a little unusual for our bill to move a bill like this out of committee without more detail.

But I really want to give you the time, because I think if anyone can land this plane, you can. And I want to see that happen, because I do think the issues that you're raising are really important. And I know in our discussions, you agreed that we'll give you more time, hopefully, that we can come up with an agreement by the time it hits the floor. And I think that's important for everyone here on committee.

But as I mentioned, I think if anyone can do it, you can. And I'm happy to assist in any way as needed. And with that, happy to support the Bill today in the efforts to do that. And it's the motion to pass.

[Roll Call]

That's on call.

Okay. Thank you. Okay, Mr. Haney, I believe you are up next. Oh, wait. Mr. Santiago got here before you. I'm so sorry. Matt's listened to about 10 bills at this point, but, Mr. Santiago, we could have you join the Committee. Mr. Santiago, we have a motion and a second.

And because Mr. Behay has been so patient, how about I be very quick, other than to say, look, this is an extension of what we've already done before with 1197, which CEQA exempt permit supportive housing emergency shelters in the City of Los Angeles with said funds. Today we're coming back, adding affordable housing to that with said government sources.

And we feel this is incredibly important because there's no other way we're going to be able to meet the moment and help house our unhoused community if we don't move at lightning speed. I appreciate the suggested amendments, Madam Chair, which we will be taken, and we recognize that will make it a much stronger Bill. I'd like to introduce the representative of the sponsor, Mayor Karen Bass, who will present. And I was only quick in the interest of the Committee, not because I wanted to slide over any of the details. Thank you.

Thank you very much, Assembly Member. Kevin Keller, Senior Advisor to LA Mayor Karen Bass. Very pleased to be here. Thank you for having this important discussion. We know that the state is facing a homeless crisis. Nowhere is this more apparent than in the city and County of Los Angeles. As you may know, the County of Los Angeles represents 25% of the state's population, but has over 40% of the city's unhoused population.

The city, which we work on, has 10% of the state's population, but nearly 25% of our state's unhoused population. Mayor Bass has made confronting this crisis with the urgency that it requires her top priority. On day one, she introduced three Executive directives and declared a State of Emergency for the City of LA on homelessness.

The Executive directives streamlined approvals for 100% affordable housing launched Inside Safe, which is a new citywide proactive housing led strategy to bring people inside from tents and encampments, and thirdly, maximizing the use of city owned property for temporary and permanent housing. In the first hundred days of her Administration, nearly 4000 Angelina's have already been housed. These efforts build on the work that the city has championed for years.

The city's adopted housing element is considered amongst the state's most ambitious with the commitment to plan for over 456,000 homes. Governor Newsom and the California Department of Housing and Community Development recently designated the City of Los Angeles as a pro-housing city in recognition of our efforts to streamline multifamily housing development upzone in places near job and transit, to reduce emissions, and to create more affordable homes in places that historically or currently have excluded households of lower incomes and households of color.

While state law has created important tools to facilitate the production of housing and has allocated significant funding, barriers continue to exist, including the California Environmental Quality act. Although the CEQA process was established with good intentions and serves an important function in mitigating the environmental impact of government led projects, it often hinders development, especially in relating to affordable housing. AB 785 builds off the Assembly Member's previous legislation. As he mentioned. I just want to share some stats.

The city has created over 2000 shelter beds using this initiative, over 3000 units of permanent supportive housing and has an additional 6500 units in our pipeline. So this is a very critical Bill for us to continue to move forward in this capacity in a year where additional state investments in housing and homelessness may be hard to come by. This legislation offers an opportunity to meaningfully address California's homelessness crisis with no additional cost to the state.

We appreciate very much the Committee's important work in this arena and mayor Bass wishes to thank Assemblymember Santiago for authoring this important legislation and respectfully ask for an aye vote thank you.

Thank you.

Additional support Mark Stivers of the California Housing Partnership for the same in support for the same reasons we discussed with AB 1449. Thank you.

Thank you.

Good afternoon. Sasha Horwitz, Los Angeles Unified School District in support thank you.

Additional or primary witnesses in opposition? Additional folks in opposition and bring it back to the Committee motion and a second with that. Would you like to close, Mr. Santiago?

I'll do the brief version or respectfully ask for your aye vote.

Thank you, Mr. Santiago. I appreciate your steadfast commitment to housing and your leadership in the space and with that, I'm happy to support the bills do pass as amended to the Assembly Committee and appropriations.

Wicks aye. Patterson aye. Carrillo aye. Gabriel aye. Kalra. Quirk-Silva aye. Sanchez aye. Ward.

That has five votes. It is out. We'll let folks add on. Thank you. Thank you. Finally, Mr. Haney, here's your big moment. Thank you for being with us all morning.

Thank you. And thank you, Chair and members, for your great work today. It's great to have been with you for the morning. I'm here to present AB 572, the Affordable HOA Fees Act, which will cap annual Homeowners Association, or HOA fee increases at 5% for below-market-rate homeowners to prohibit exorbitant fee increases that are pushing them far too often to foreclose on their homes. Below-market-rate homeownership programs target first-time homebuyers who are low or moderate-income.

These folks are often teachers or nurses or other working people for whom homeownership would otherwise be out of reach. The potential homebuyers have to go through a rigorous verification process to show that they are income-eligible, and as a result, their mortgage rate can only be a third of their monthly income. Below market rate units are, in some cases, in mixed-income buildings with monthly HOA fees.

In most of those circumstances, the mixed-income buildings are 80% to 95% market rate owners and 5% to 20% below market rate owners. Under current law, HOA fees can increase by 20% every year. These increases are not only applied to homeowners in market-rate units, but also to homeowners in below-market-rate units.

These extreme HOA fee increases can cause the payments for BMR owners to increase so rapidly that their HOA fees end up costing more than their actual monthly mortgage payment, making the unit patently unaffordable to the BMR unit owner based on their verified income level. This is clearly a deficiency in current law.

Contrary to the understanding we already have that some families require fixed monthly payments tied to income to afford a home, it is obviously unreasonable and counterintuitive to have a maximum on how much the mortgage of a BMR unit can be without a maximum on its annual HOA fee increases. It is important to underscore that the benefits of HOA fees are not enjoyed equally among all homeowners.

For example, market rate owners get to recoup the cost of HOA fees through the eventual sale of their units at a new, appreciated price, or even can pull equity out of their homes in ways that a below-market rate unit owner cannot. BMR units don't have the same opportunity because their listing price has to stay in the low or moderate-income threshold.

HOAs may choose to increase their fees in order to make investments in a property in order to raise property values while BMR income-verified owners do not benefit from those property increases in the same way. To address the inequitable HOA fee increases, AB 572 will set a 5% cap on annual HOA fee increases for BMR units. This reduced cap for BMR HOA owners is reasonably designed to balance affordability and stability for BMR homeowners with the HOA's need to keep up with expenses.

I also want to underscore that this cap does not apply to emergency assessments or special HOA assessments for specific projects. This is a simple, straightforward, timely bill to make sure that folks who are promised homeownership at an affordable cost are able to remain in their units and aren't forced to foreclose on their homes. Here to testify with me in support today is Colleen Peterson, a hospital worker and BMR owner from San Ramon and Mitch Mankin from the San Francisco Housing Development Corporation.

Hello, my name is Colleen Peterson. I'm a single mother, a healthcare worker and a BMR homeowner in San Ramon. Our community has suffered 150% increase in HOA dues. We used to pay $373 per month. We are now paying $921 which is almost as much as my mortgage each month. How does this affect us BMR homeowners?

I'm worried that any other increase in my HOA fees from regular or special assessments will put my family in a place where we need to make a tough decision about our home. If our HOA was originally $921, none of us would have qualified for the program based on the income limits in place.

It puts us homeowners under a lot of financial stress to come up with the $554 difference each month so we don't end up foreclosing on what was supposed to be an affordable home and become homeless with our families. I personally had to sell my car that I own so I could put the cash in my savings to be able to pay the HOA dues monthly. Luckily, I'm able to use a family member's car for the time being.

My son is very athletic and loves to play multiple sports throughout the year. I had to tell him that his sports will be limited to only a few now. How disappointing for an eight-year-old. It's not only affecting us adults, it is affecting our children too. Lastly, when we go to sell our BMR home, we cannot sell it for market rate. We have to sell it as a BMR home so we won't even get our money back like the market rate homeowners will.

I want you to think about if this was a family member, friend, or loved one in our shoes. We need action to address these issues, and AB 572 will help slow the rise in HOA fees for people like me. Thank you.

Thank you.

Hi. Thank you, Assemblymembers, for your time today. My name is Mitch Mankin. I work at San Francisco Housing Development Corporation. We're a community-based affordable housing developer, and we're also a HUD-certified counseling agency. Over the last few years, we've heard an increasing number of complaints about high HOA fee increases, and these cause BMR owners like Colleen to be pushed into default, foreclosure, or having liens put on their homes because of HOA fees that sometimes eclipse their mortgage payments.

So in conversations with other organizations, we heard this is a pattern that extends to the rest of the state. So, working at Assemblymember Haney's office, we think the AB 572 can help. The proposed solution in AB 572 is to limit those increase in regular HOA fee assessments on BMR homes specifically to 5% per year. That gives BMR owners predictability, stability, and it mitigates the most difficult increases while leaving routine increases untouched.

And any decrease in affordable homes offset with a smaller increase in fees and market units. So, in a typical development with 10 to 20% of the units below market rate, each market unit would only pay between a quarter and a ninth more than what they would have paid otherwise. AB 572 doesn't change an HOA's ability to levy a special assessment. So that's left to the side.

We think the status quo on HOA fees is unfair to BMR owners because they're unable to sell their house at market rate. Evenly splitting the costs of insurance, maintenance and improvements appears equitable at first, but it's actually the market owners that are able to reap the monetary benefit through equity and higher resale value.

State law currently requires HOA fees are the same on all members in HOA, regardless of income or ability to pay or BMR, which results in BMR owners subsidizing market home values with their HOA fees. So we're committed to working with all stakeholders in this conversation, happy to help answer questions or clarify. We also have J.T. Harechmak from NPH, the other co-sponsor here, to answer questions as well.

I know that affordable homeownership is a big priority for the legislature, so I'm hopeful the committee will advance AB 572 today. Thank you.

Thank you. Additional witnesses in opposition or, sorry, in support.

J.T. Harechmak from NPH, Nonprofit Housing Association of Northern California, proud co-sponsor on this bill.

Thank you.

Good afternoon again. John Scribner, California Association of Realtors, joining the chorus in support. Thank you.

Thank you. Witnesses in opposition. Any primary witnesses in opposition. Surprise.

Good afternoon, Chair and Members. My name is Becky Jolly. I work for OMNI Community Management in Fair Oaks. We manage homeowners associations, and I can say that I believe this approach is not only wrong, but dangerous. While I wholeheartedly sympathize with homeowners having to pay assessments that do continue to increase, the problem here is that every homeowner bought in to these associations on the premise that it was equal, so everyone is paying the same rate.

The reason assessments continue to increase is because we have wildfire insurance premiums up by 1000% this year. People are losing insurance. We have mandated balcony inspections due to the tragic collapse in Berkeley, and those are all covered by the association. You have years of associations using it as a political standpoint to say, I won't raise your assessments. And now we come to, we don't have the money in the reserves. The only way to do that is a special assessment.

Special assessment has to be voted on by the membership, and they most often fail. So when you have life changing options of saving one but then harming everyone else, you're taking that bucket of water and pouring it from one person and drowning everybody else. And I know that sounds extreme, but that's what happened in the Florida collapse. They pushed the assessments off. They removed their board. They did everything in their power because they didn't want to pay for it.

And then the tragedy happened, and people lost their lives. So I understand affordability is key and paramount, and I agree wholeheartedly, but there are ways to do it. I've worked with, specifically, a mobile home cooperative in Southern California as well. In Northern California, both of them allow for a percentage of the assessments to be applied towards low income homes. So they have agreed, as per their documents, that this is what they're going to do.

But imposing this across the board to everyone that didn't buy into that system is dangerous because they're already underwater, they're already drowning, and they're the same homeowners. They're the same doctors, nurses, janitors. They have to sell their items. They have to do what they have to do. So I wholeheartedly agree that is paramount, to have affordable housing. But to do it as a broad spectrum across the board and throw the water in someone else's life boat is just unfair and the wrong approach. I strongly urge you to vote no on this.

Thank you. Any additional folks wish to express opposition?

Madam Chair and Members, Jennifer Wada on behalf of the California Association of Community Managers. We are opposed. We do believe this bill will result in underfunded communities. Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you, Madam Chair and Members. Carlos Gutierrez on behalf of the Community Associations Institute, California Legislative Action Committee, representing 13 million California residents and 55,000 of our homeowner associations, in opposition.

Indira Mc Donald on behalf of the California Mortgage Bankers Association in opposition.

Madam Chair and Members, Robert Gonzalez with Cruz Strategies on behalf of the California Building Industry Association in respectful opposition.

Thank you. Let's bring it back to Committee Members. Mr. Kalra.

Thank you, Madam Chair. And I want to thank the author for bringing this forward. I understand and have lived in communities that have HOAs, and regardless of whether you're in a market rate or deed affordable or deed restricted, when the rates go up, everyone certainly feels it. However, I do think that if we have a public policy that is having folks that are living in communities with HOAs in deed restricted affordable housing units, the public policy should be consistent in terms of making sure that those folks continue to live in those communities.

I think having a reasonable cap on what the HOA should be for those deed restricted units makes sense. Because if you think about an entire complex and everyone chips into the HOA and the HOA goes up and maybe more amenities or other things are added or beautification, whatever it might be, happens to be added, those that are not deed restricted benefit from that, because when they put their property on the market, they benefit from those improved benefits of the property.

Well, the deed restricted don't necessarily benefit. And they're already getting their benefit. Absolutely. But the public policy of why they're getting their benefit is to make sure that families can actually afford to live there that otherwise wouldn't be able to. And if they're, look, I'm not going to be one to defend HOA fees going up. And if market rate or deed restricted have issues with it, they should take that up with their property management and join together and fight against it.

If it's really getting to a point where the HOAs are kind of getting out of hand, which can happen sometimes at some of these complexes. But I think this is a reasonable solution to making sure that those that are already, indeed restricted units don't have the spiraling HOA fees that make it harder for them to be able to stay there, which is the whole public policy of having those deed restricted units. And so very happy to support the bill if there hasn't been a motion like to move the bill.

Thank you. Mr. Gabriel.

Yeah, thank you, Madam Chair. And I just want to appreciate the author for raising this issue. It wasn't one that I was aware of, and I want to thank the witness also for putting a human face on it. I appreciate that, and it's certainly something that resonated with me. I guess heartburn will be my word of the day, maybe because I'm getting older. I 100% appreciate what you're trying to do.

And God forbid any of the people in these units should end up losing their units, should end up homelessness. I mean, this is a real issue, and it's so contrary to the public policy objectives that we're trying to accomplish if folks are put in these units and then priced out of them because of their HOA fees, and it's just hearing the numbers you were mentioning are just staggering to me. I mean, that's just crazy.

The flip side of that, and the reason I'm having a little bit of heartburn here is for a few reasons. Part of it is the retroactivity issue, and I'll be brief here because you and I had the opportunity to speak about this. I always get hesitant about changing the rules of the game after the fact on folks, because folks sign on the dotted line with an understanding.

And when we pull the rug out from under them, that's something that starts to make me a little bit nervous. Also, because HOA fees can go to different things. Some can be cosmetic upgrades and others can be health and safety issues that are really important. And also, I don't know that I know enough about these developments to know what is essentially a subsidy from one person to another, from one resident to another.

It may be that there are folks that are very wealthy and can afford those additional subsidy of their neighbors, and it may be that folks that are really right there, month to month, kind of on the line. And so that's also giving me a little bit of pause. So I have incredible confidence in you as an author. You are one of the brightest minds up here.

I'll let you use your Stanford law degree to figure out if there's any constitutional or legal issues with all of this. But I do want to give you the time to continue to work on this, and I'm hopeful that you can think a little bit creatively about how to address some of these issues, about how to get folks more comfortable.

So I'm going to reserve my right on the floor, but I am going to support it today because of the author and because of the real issues that you're raising and hope that you guys can find. And we talked about this. Maybe there's some creative ways to help these folks, to address this problem, because it does need to be addressed. It really does. And it would be so disappointing if because of this issue, folks are ending up out of their units.

But we do need to think about the equity issues here and being fair to all of the residents, and maybe there are some ways that you can massage that. So because of my confidence in the author, happy to support the bill today and happy to second it.

Okay, great. And Mr. Haney, do you want to respond to some of the...