Senate Standing Committee on Housing

We have 13 bills total, and the bills that are on consent are item one, AB 1782. Item two, AB 1801. Item five, AB 2570. Item six, AB 2663. Item seven, AB 2694. Item eight, AJR 14 and item 12, AB 3122. So those are the bills on consent.

But since we have an author here who is also in the first on order given, the previous two bills are on consent. That's Assemblymember Irwin. So you may begin with AB 2114.

Thank you, Madam Chair, and thank you for the opportunity to present AB 2114. Currently, California authorizes architects and structural engineers to perform balcony inspections for common interest developments.

As the statutory deadline for these inspections of January 1, 2025 quickly approaches, it has become clear that there is a lack of available inspectors to perform the work to meet this deadline. AB 2114 addresses this issue by authorizing civil engineers to perform these inspections.

Civil engineers are highly qualified to perform this task, and authorizing them will increase the supply of eligible inspectors for this critically necessary task. With me today to testify in support of this bill is Louis Brown, representing the Community Association's Institute.

Proceed.

Madam Chair. Members of the Committee, Louis Brown, here today on behalf of the Community Associations Institute, California Legislative Action Committee. We are the sponsor of the bill and are asking for an aye vote. Our members are going through this process. We were actively engaged on SB 326 by Senator Hill when the bill was passed.

And as we quickly approach the deadline of January 1, 25 believe that the inclusion of civil engineers not only help many of those associations that have not been able to find qualified inspectors, but will also help those associations that engage in this early on and will start doing the reinspections here shortly after January 1, 2025.

So with that, we ask for an aye vote.

All right, do we have any other speakers in support? Please come to the mic.

Madam Chair, Carlos Gutierrez, on behalf of the American Council of Engineering Companies, in support.

Good afternoon. Audrey Ratajczak from Cruz Strategies, on behalf of the California Business Properties Association, NAOP California, and BOMA California, in support.

Meg Snyder, Acxiom Advisors, on behalf of the California Building Industry Association in support.

Any others? Okay, do we have any opposition in the room? Okay, seeing none,. Do our Members want to make any comments? And then we'll take the roll call as soon as you made some comments, if you have any to make. Okay. Then let's do a roll call. We don't yet have a quorum. Okay.

I was looking at all these good people and thinking we did. Oh, well, okay. That means we can't take our motion yet, but we can certainly hear your close.

Certainly I do. I should have mentioned also that this. We do have an urgency on this, and so we can have the civil engineers start working as soon as we get the governor's signature. And with that, I respectfully ask for an aye vote when the time is right.

Great. So we can't even register a motion yet, right? No, we can't. Okay. Thank you. I appreciate your bringing the bill before.

I know you're aware that there's been balcony accidents up and down the state, but the most serious one in recent memory occurred in my district, and it was definitely a problem with the construction that probably would have been able to be caught with appropriate inspection. So appreciate your bringing the bill. Thanks.

Thank you very much.

All right, we will now go to--and I see this author here--Item Four: AB 2338. Assembly Member Jones-Sawyer. Okay, so. I don't think they care about that much, but maybe.

I didn't think so. We didn't even get a letter from them.

Yes. Thank you, Madam Chair and Members. I present AB 2338, which strengthens California's response to homelessness by establishing a statewide homeless coordinator as the lead entity for ending homelessness in California. Despite the billions of dollars invested to assist local governments and support housing programs, we continue to have the nation's largest homeless population.

This is, in fact, due to the nation's disjointed approach to addressing homelessness. AB 2338 will ensure intergovernmental coordination to end homelessness by requiring the Governor to appoint a statewide homeless coordinator.

The coordinator will set goals to end homelessness, oversee related programs, services, data, and policies between federal, state, and local agencies, as well as coordinating the timing of the release of state funds and funding applications for housing and housing-based services. This bill provides the coordinator flexibility to identify a local leader and the appropriate jurisdiction to serve as a liaison to the state.

And in collaboration with local leaders, the coordinator will provide annual recommendations to the Legislature and the Governor. While there is significant overlap and a lot of existing resources, many times we see individuals going to different programs and losing valuable time when they could have received help. AB 2338 is about putting a person in charge that people can look to for guidance, not creating a new bureaucracy.

Lastly, I would like to note I will be amending this bill in the next committee to provide additional oversight in the form of Senate rules' approval of the nominee as suggested by the Senator from Yucaipa last year. Thank you, and I respectfully ask for your aye vote.

All right. Let's see if there are--if there's a key witness in support.

I'm the key witness.

You're the key witness. You're it. And there's not opposition either. Anybody here in the room for either opposition or support for AB 2338? Okay. So seeing that we will--we can have discussion even though we're a Subcommittee. Members, does anyone have questions or comments? No. And you more or less closed, but if you would like to say further, Assembly Member, please proceed.

Thank you, Madam Chair, and I respectfully ask for your aye vote.

When we have our quorum.

When you have a quorum.

Okay. Appreciate that. All right. Thank you, Assembly Member Jones-Sawyer. All right, I see that Assembly Member Connolly is here, so we'll go to his item. That's Item Nine: AB 2897.

Assemblymember Connolly, you may proceed.

Thank you, Chair and Members, good afternoon. AB 2897 will update the statutory language used to define a community land trust, or CLT, as they're known in state law, to reflect the full range of purposes a community land trust serves today.

AB 2897 also addresses a technical cross-referencing correction, an existing law that allows community land trusts to maintain the property tax welfare exemption under the same circumstances as low-income housing tax credit projects. CLTs are a nonprofit organization that steward residential property as affordable permanent housing.

Although the CLT model is well known for providing housing, it is intended to be flexible, allowing for community-controlled businesses, services, or other kinds of organizational adaptations depending on community need. However, the existing statutory definition is overly narrow and excludes some community land trusts with diverse and nonresidential practices from falling within the category.

For example, CLTs that facilitates stewardship of a community resource such as a garden, nonprofit office space, or small business retail may not fall under the current statutory definition.

CLT properties rented to tenants are often eligible for the property tax welfare exemption and in 2022, AB 1206 authorized community land trusts to keep their welfare exemption even if one or more residents' income increases.

This gives CLTs flexibility in determining who qualifies as low-income so residents can maintain their housing security even if they get a promotion or raise. This bill has no registered opposition and has received bipartisan support. I will now pass it to my witness, Amy Hines-Shaikh, representing the bill's sponsor, the Community Land Trust Network.

Thank you, honorable Chair Skinner and Members. My name is Amy Hindsheik and I'm representing the California Community Land Trust Network, which has approximately 40 affiliates in all areas of our state from the Oregon border down to San Diego, with approximately 3500 residents living in community land trust properties.

The first community land trust grew out of the Southern civil rights movement as a tool for establishing a new form of land tenure for black farmers and their families.

It is unfortunate that while the original CLTs included farming and housing, our current legal definition in California does not include all the ways that our affiliates steward land for low-income communities. AB 2897 by Assemblymember Connolly would fix that.

AB 2897 is not trying to broaden who's considered a CLT or broaden who receives a tax exemption. They've been in existence since 1970 and are still doing what they've been doing since then. All we're doing is trying to make the CLT definition legal definition on paper match what's already happening on the ground.

CLT's operate community gardens, nonprofit spaces and other community ownership projects that benefit the community. As Assemblymember Connelly just outlined, it is common for CLT preservation projects to involve the acquisition of an apartment building and then a multi-year transition to CLT home ownership. During that transition, these buildings are typical simple rentals with no ground lease.

We are updating the definition of a CLT to accommodate this common practice. AB 2897 is fixing the definition of a CLT to merely describe the work that CLTs are already doing, not broadening the universe of CLTs and not expanding any benefits to organizations that don't already have a tax benefit.

We respectfully request your aye vote on AB 2897 and we thank Assemblymember Connelly for his leadership on this issue. Thank you.

Great. Let us see if there's any other witnesses and support here for AB 2897. Okay, do we have any witnesses in opposition? We didn't have any registered, but in case there are. Alright, let's see if the Members have a question or comment on this bill AB 2897. You're looking good Assemblymember Connolly. Oh, go ahead Senator Blakespear.

I like this bill. And I'll move it.

When it's appropriate, we don't have a quorum yet. Okay. All right, so Assemblymember Connolly, you may close.

Thank you for your consideration. I respectfully ask for an aye vote at the appropriate time.

Wonderful. Okay, excellent. And we have other Members in Committee and such. As soon as we have those folks, we will get quorum and we will start taking motions. All right. We don't have anyone else in the room. We need to have Assemblymember Ting, Assemblymember Pellerin, and Assemblymember McKinnor. So perhaps they get their offices called, right?

Ah, we have Mister Tang. Yay. You are next, and we're ready for you. And that's AB 2967.

Great. Thank you, Madam Chair. AB 296 expands the Teacher Housing Act to employees of publicly funded nonprofits that operate on school district property and serve children from low and moderate income families. So, for example, after school providers, as well as potentially childcare centers that are physically on site on school district property.

This comes from one of my counties, San Mateo County, because they have taken, really, the foresight of building employee housing on some of their school owned property sites. And they would like to also give opportunity to employees of these nonprofits who work in the district but are not district employees.

So respectfully ask for aye vote on AB 2967.

All right, let us see. I do think we have some witnesses and support, so you may go ahead, identify yourself.

Thank you. Good afternoon, Chair Skinner, Members of the Committee, Audrey Ratajczak from Cruz Strategies on behalf of San Mateo County. San Mateo County is a high cost Bay Area community with plans to build 20,000 new housing units for our lower income residents over the next eight years.

One of our critical projects that we've been working on is the redevelopment of a property called Midway Village. This site was once owned by the local school district prior to it being converted to public housing. Were currently in the process of redeveloping the property to replace its 150 aging units with 555 new affordable homes.

But one of the critical things we've heard from our extensive community planning process was the desire to provide a preference for early childhood educators, like early childhood pre-k and transitional kindergarten teachers.

Early childhood educators in California earn almost 40% less than their colleagues in the k through eight system, and they would be considered extremely low income in our county, where the average monthly rent is over $3,000.

And these early childhood educators face housing insecurity and are often forced to leave the profession and find second jobs or undertake very long commutes. There have been several bills passed in recent years supporting the building of more teacher housing, but early childhood educators are not currently eligible for affordable housing development created under the Teacher Housing Act.

So we're here to support AB 2967 that would expand this law by extending these critical affordable housing opportunities to this important group of educators that set young children from low and moderate income households on a path to better academic outcomes. Thank you.

Thank you. Let's see if there's anybody else in support of the bill, wants to come and add on.

Good afternoon. Danielle Bradley on behalf of the California State Association of Counties in support.

Great. Any others? Okay, we have no registered opposition, but let's just see if there's anybody in the room who wants to indicate opposition on the bill. Right. Seeing none. Members, go ahead. Senator Blakespear.

Thank you. I think this is a great bill and I appreciate that you didn't make it a district bill because now it can apply to all of the counties, 58 counties and the entire state. So thank you, and at the appropriate time, I will move it.

Great. All right. Any other comments or seeing none, then Assemblymember Ting, you may close.

Yeah, just respect I ask for an aye vote. Really appreciate it. I think it's exciting what many districts are starting to do is take a look at their surplus land and build housing. So I think it's an exciting opportunity with that respectfully ask for an aye vote.

Great. Okay. When we have our quorum, we take motions. We will see if that works.

Thank you.

Okay. Thank you, Assemblymember Ting. And now we are looking for two other authors.

You see him out there, bill? Tell him to come in.

Yeah. Yes. Pellerin and McKinnor. Welcome, Assemblymember Pellerin, you can come right to the podium. Alright, we'll now be hearing AB 3035. Assemblymember Pellerin, and you have the floor.

Thank you. Good afternoon, Chair Skinner and Members of the Committee. AB 30-- let me get my glasses--3035 expands an existing streamlined approval process for agricultural employee housing in the two counties in my district: Santa Clara and Santa Cruz.

In 2019, Speaker Rivas authored Assembly Bill 1783, which created a streamlined ministerial approval process for qualifying agricultural employee housing projects. The projects proposed pursuant to that bill are required to meet numerous criteria, including that they must be located on lands designated for agriculture in the General Plan and that projects must include no more than 36 units.

Unfortunately, these limitations mean that there are few projects that could potentially qualify for streamlining in my district. In particular, most sites in my district that could potentially qualify for AB 1783 are outside of cities and other urbanized areas and lack the needed water and sewer infrastructure.

AB 3035 makes two changes to broaden the sites where agricultural employee housing can be streamlined in Santa Clara and Santa Cruz Counties. First, it expands the site qualification to include areas near agricultural land that are more likely to have water and sewer service that can support multi-housing, multi-unit housing.

Second, it increases the number of units that can be included in qualifying development to reflect the economies of scale typically required to develop housing in expensive housing markets like those in my district. While AB 3035 is a district bill, we hope that this pilot project can help inform future opportunities to streamline this much-needed housing for farmworkers statewide. With me to testify in support is David Campos, the Deputy County Executive for the County of Santa Clara.

Great. You may proceed.

Thank you, Madam Chair, Honorable Senators. Thank you, Assembly Member Pellerin, for carrying this bill on behalf of the County of Santa Clara. The County of Santa Clara has a long history of agriculture, and we see one of our representatives, Senator Cortese, here, and we are proud of that history, but with that history comes the fact that we haven't done enough to house those farmworkers that actually put food on the table, and what this bill does is it allows us to move in the right direction when it comes to meeting that critical need.

As of today, we have a need of 1,400 housing units for seasonal workers, as well as 700 long-term housing units for those workers. What this bill does, as Assembly Member Pellerin indicated, is that it makes two critical changes to allow the county to move forward on this important issue.

One: it expands the geographic area of where the Rivas bill applies, because the challenge with the existing structure is that the bill expedites housing in rurally zone areas, which unfortunately lack the water and sewer system to actually make housing feasible, affordable. What this bill does, it allows us to expand, to include in the zoning those geographic areas that are bordering agricultural zones. The second thing that it does is that it does increase the number of units that are allowed to be built under this streamlined process.

Please know that the County of Santa Clara is not just asking the state to do its part, but we have actually taken very important steps by adopting a very broad agricultural worker housing plan that includes ways in which we can streamline our own local process and also allocates funding to make sure that the housing that we're envisioning is built.

We know that this is a pilot program that applies to two counties, but we believe that this can be an example of how to make this housing happen for a population that has been waiting for the state to move in the right direction for quite some time. So on behalf of the County of Santa Clara, we thank again Assembly Member Pellerin and her amazing staff, and we respectfully ask for your support today. Thank you.

Great. Let's see if there's anybody else in the room who wants to add on as a support of the bill. Anyone else? All right, seeing none, we don't have a registered opposition, but if there's anybody here in opposition to AB 3035, you can come forward now. Seeing none, let's see if there's any comments by--go ahead, Senator Blakespear.

I like it. This is a bill that I thought, why is this a district bill? This should be a whole statewide bill. Do you want to speak to that?

Well, we're starting small, but we're happy to go larger later. You know, I think that it's absolutely, critically important that we build this much-needed housing, and I know that we've heard from other counties that might want to be in the bill, and I'm happy to add them in if they're willing, if they're wanting to be added.

Okay, great. I'll move the bill when appropriate.

Yeah. Go ahead. Senator Cortese.

Well, just a comment. Thank you to the author. Thank you to the County of Santa Clara for sponsoring the legislation. Having served there on the Board of Supervisors in addition to just representing the area in a number of positions over all these years, this is definitely vitally needed, and it's one of those areas--and we seem to hear this so often here in the Capitol now that really got slowed down by the pandemic--the county, it really, the Board of Supervisors has taken some real significant steps on its own forward to try to address the problem in on the 2017 to 2019 timeframe.

And then suddenly you've got building departments and planning departments and folks and agencies that are either shut down or turning all their attention to the pandemic we were dealing with, and it's just great to see the county and represented by Assembly Member Pellerin, in this case, coming right back. I know the Board of Supervisors have made this a huge priority once again to try to get caught up and really meet the needs, and it's such a reasonable thing.

And I trust the county very much in terms of implementing what needs to be done in terms of interfacing with private property owners and making sure to take advantage of those opportunities that are there. So again, just a comment. Of course, I'll be supporting the bill.

Thank you.

All right, well, you may close. We don't have a quorum yet, so we can't take our motion, but certainly welcome to.

Well, I'm definitely honored to carry this bill on behalf of Santa Clara and Santa Cruz Counties, and I respectfully ask for your aye vote.

Great. All right, we will now go to Assembly Member McKinnor.

Good afternoon, Members and Chair. I'm here to talk about AJR nine. The American dream of home ownership is slipping away from the average citizen, and the inability to obtain and keep housing has led to an increase in evictions and contributing to the increase in our unhoused population.

A nationwide shortage of housing units is further moving that dream away for millions of Americans. AJR nine would urge the United States Congress to pass and the President to sign the Housing and Homelessness package, which includes three groundbreaking pieces of legislation that would address the issues of affordability, accessibility head on.

HR 4233, Maxine Waters the Housing Crisis Response act of 2023 would provide more than $150 billion in fair affordable housing investments, which would be the largest investments of affordable housing in our nation's history.

It would also create a $1.4 million affordable homes and would address the racial wealth gap through the first ever investment in home ownership for the first time, first generation homebuyers.

HR 4232, Maxine Waters the Ending Homelessness Acts of 2023 would reduce poverty in America by transforming the Housing Choice Voucher program into a federal entitlement, allowing every household that qualified for assistance to receive it. It would also ban housing discrimination based on income and veteran status.

HR 4231, Maxine Waters the Down Payment Towards Equity act of 2023 will close the US racial wealth and home ownership gaps by providing $100 billion in direct assistance to help first time, first generation homebuyers purchase their very first home.

We are in the middle of a housing crisis and keeping people in their homes and off the streets should be our top priority. Urging Congress and the President to act and sign the housing package is a crucial step in fully investing in and tackling our housing crisis head on. And I respectfully ask for your aye vote.

Let's see if anyone in support in the room who wants to testify at the mic. All right, seeing none. We didn't have any registered opposition, so I'm assuming there's no opposition who wants to testify at the mic either? But I always have to ask. So let's see. Not. So commenters. Yes, Senator Blakespear.

Thank you. So I want to comment on this bill because when I went to Washington, DC to advocate for the rail corridor and investments on the coastal rail corridor, I spent some time also talking about homelessness because it's a top issue in the State of California and meeting with some of the officials who are responsible for our section eight voucher programs.

And what are the agencies doing in Washington, DC to forward the ball so that we can be doing more instead of doing the same or doing less? And this bill by Maxine Waters, by Representative Waters, is a really great example of that because she has put together a number of different actions that could actually make a difference.

And so when there is a renewed focus on homelessness in Congress, which I hope is soon. Imminent. But I don't know if I see that in the tea leaves.

But I appreciate that you're elevating this at the state level and that we're able to really support good policy and ask for further investment so that we can be able to reduce the number of people who are homeless instead of seeing it increase every month, as we currently are.

So I just wanted to say thank you for bringing it up.

Thank you.

And I will move it at the appropriate time.

Great. Let's see if any other comments. We don't, but we will have a quorum soon, and when we do have that quorum, we'll take motions. But if you'd like to close, go ahead.

Thank you. We know that housing is extremely important in the state, that we're tackling homelessness at every level. We also know that home ownership is very hard to obtain by our young people, our youth, especially our young adults.

And so to have something like this, to have this money coming to the State of California would just be remarkable. And I respectfully ask for your aye vote.

Great. Thank you, Assemblymember. And like I said, as soon as we get our quorum, we will start taking motions.

Thank you.

All right, we are going to take a roll call now, see if we have our quorum that we've been hoping to have.

[Roll Call] You have a quorum.

All right, we have a quorum. So we can state. What am I saying? We can start taking motions. But let's first go back to that agenda where as I opened, I indicated the bills that were on consent. Let me repeat again what bills are on consent. They are item one, AB 1782. Item two, AB 1801.

Item five, AB 2570. Excuse me. Item six, AB 2663. Item seven, AB 2694. Item eight, AJR 14, and item 12, AB 3122. So can I have a. So we have a motion from Senator Cortese for consent, Let's call the roll

On the consent calendar. [Roll Call] 6-0.

Okay, that bill will stay on call. Let's take a motion on AB 2114. Irwin, is there a motion? Go ahead. Senator Blakespear is moved. Let's call roll call on that one.

Motion is do pass to Judiciary Committee. [Roll Call] Six to zero.

All right, that Bill is six to zero now, but we'll keep it on call. We'll go to AB 2338 Joan Sawyer. That would be do pass to human services. Senator Blakespear, you still want to be the motion maker? Okay. Blakespear moved. Roll call.

The motion is do pass to the Human Services Committee. [Roll Call] That's three to zero.

All right, that bill's on call. It's three to zero. Let's go to item nine AB 2897. That's Assemblymember Connolly. Do we have a motion? Come on. Do we have a motion on AB 2897. All right, so Cortese moved. We'll roll call.

The motion is do pass to the Revenue and Taxation Committee. [Roll Call] Six to zero.

All right, that bill's now six to zero. We'll leave it on call. We'll go to AB 2967 Assemblymember Ting. And that is do pass to the floor. We have Cortese as the motion maker. Let's do a roll call.

[Roll Call] Five to zero.

All right, that bill's now five to zero. We'll keep it on call. We'll go to item 11, AB 3035 Pellerin. And we will take a motion from Senator Blakespear which is do pass to Local Government, roll call.

[Roll Call] Six to zero.

All right, six to zero. That's AB 3035. Six to zero. We'll keep it on call. We'll go to the last item, which is item 13. AJR 9 McKinnor, do we have a roll? Excuse me, a motion? Cortese's moved. Roll call, please.

The motion is be adopted to Appropriation. [Roll Call] Four to two.

All right, that bill's four to two. We'll keep it on call. Thank you, Members. All right, so, Senator Wahab, if you don't mind, your other two colleagues are on their way so we'll open the roll for all of them, and they don't get here within a minute and a half, we'll start opening rolls.

Hey, Mr. Umberg. Yay, you're here. We will reopen the call. We will first start with the consent. And hopefully I could repeat all the bills that are on consent, but hopefully you have your list in front of you, and it's the ones that are asterisk. Nobody pulled any consent items, so the. Let's proceed with roll call. On it.

Current vote is six to zero. [Roll Call]

That consent calendar's out. Did you say nine to zero? Nine to zero. Okay, now we'll move to item three, AB 2114 Irwin. And the motion is do pass to Judiciary.

Current vote is six to zero. [Roll Call] Nine to zero.

Okay, so AB 2114 is out with a vote of nine to zero. And we'll now go to AB 2338 Jones-Sawyer. And the motion is due past to Human Services. Let's do roll call.

The current vote is three to zero, with the Chair voting aye and the Vice Chair not voting. [Roll Call] That's five to zero.

We will grant that bill reconsideration. So let's now move to item nine. AB 2897 Assemblymember Connolly.

The current vote is 6-0, with the Chair and Vice Chair voting aye. [Roll Call] Nine to zero.

All right, did we finish that roll call?

Yes, 9-0.

Okay, that bill is out nine to zero. We will now go to item 10, AB 29617. That's do pass to the Floor.

Current vote is five to zero, with the Chair and Vice Chair voting aye, [Roll Call] It's eight to zero.

All right, that bills out eight to zero. We'll now go to AB 3035 Pellerin and its do pass to Local Government.

The current vote is 6-0, with the Chair and Vice Chair voting aye. [RolL Call] Nine to zero.

Great. We'll go to last item, item 13, AJR nine. McKinnor, it's referred to Appropriations.

The current vote is four to two, with the Chair voting aye and the Vice Chair voting no. [Roll Call]

All right, that bill's out, seven to two. And with that, we have concluded. We will see you all next week, two weeks from now. Okay, thanks very much. The Housing Committee is adjourned.