Senate Standing Committee on Housing

All right, folks, I want to say good afternoon. Welcome to Senate Housing Committee. I want to make a few announcements. Today's or this week is one of the last weeks that policy is being heard in our committees.

So there's multiple Members that will be in and out, either presenting their bills or in competing committees at the same time. So they will be in and out. We currently do not have quorum, so we're going to begin as a Subcommitee. And the proposed consent calendar consists of these items. File item number one, AB36 by Assemblymember Soria.

File item number nine, AB 726 by Avila Farias. File item number 10, AB 790 by Vilafarius. And file item number 16, AB 1308 by Hoover. So those items are on consent. We will later ask for a single motion. For that we are going to add File item number 12, AB920 by Assembly Member Caloza, on consent as well.

So if we can inform her staff as soon as possible as well. Thank you. We are going to move forward with the first File item number four, AB462 by Assemblymember Lowenthal to present.

What we are going to ask is that you present at this lectern and then all witnesses come up to that lectern and each witness will have about two minutes to present and then me. Twos are going to go together. Both sides support and opposition after both primary witnesses speak. So the floor is yours. Assemblymember.

Madam Chair and senders, pleased to present AB 462. This is a bill that will help streamline the approval process for ADUs in coastal zones across California. I'd like to thank the committee staff for their work on the bill and I will be accepting the committee amendments.

AB 462 was introduced in response to the devastating loss of thousands of homes, the Palisades and Eaton Fires that took place at the beginning of the year. Los Angeles County faces a severe housing crisis which became immediately worse after the fires.

One way to help facilitate housing without having to do large-scale rezoning is through facilitating the construction of ADUs. In California, ADUs are generally allowed by right on all residentially zoned parcels in the state and must be reviewed and approved in the streamlined and ministerial fashion at the local level within 60 days.

Unfortunately, homeowners in California's Coastal Zone do not enjoy the same streamlined process. The Coastal Development Permitting process to build an ADU can take years for a homeowner to successfully navigate compared to the 60-day permitting timeframe mandated by state law for ADUs outside of the Coastal Zone.

This poses a barrier for homeowners seeking to add much-needed housing supply, especially in areas like Los Angeles County. AB 462 will help with permit streamlining of ADUs by requiring Coastal Development Permits for ADUs to be approved or denied within 60 days, requiring that the Coastal Development Permit is reviewed at the same time as the local government permits, and it eliminates the ability to appeal a Coastal Development Permit for an ADU issued by local government to the Coastal Commission.

This bill will ensure that ADUs in the Coastal Zone can be improved faster with fewer delays. Here to testify in support of the bill is Nolan Gray, Senior Director of Legislation Research at California YIMBY.

Sorry about that. Good afternoon, Madam Chair and members of the committee. Thanks for the privilege to be able to testify today. My name is Nolan Gray. I'm the Senior Director of Legislation and Research at California YIMBY.

We're a statewide organization of over 80,000 neighbors dedicated to making California an affordable place to live, work, and raise a family. Across California's coast, one of our greatest assets, high home prices and rents serve to exclude many working and middle-class families.

In many other high-cost parts of the state, accessory dwelling units or ADUs have helped to ease the housing shortage. Indeed, ADUs now make up around 20% of housing construction in California, providing affordable rental options for renters and an additional source of income and stability for homeowners.

In the Coastal Zone, homeowners seeking to build an ADU are afforded fewer protections than in the rest of the state, making them harder and more unpredictable to get permitted. AB 462, as amended, aims to fix that. It will require that the Coastal Development Permits for ADUs statewide are approved within 60 days. If the Coastal Commission does not act within 60 days, the ADU Coastal Development Permit will be deemed approved, and this is really crucial for adding stability to the process.

The bill will add predictability and will help homeowners add much-needed housing in one of the most expensive parts of the state, particularly those homeowners who were affected by the recent wildfires. At the same time, it maintains Coastal Commission oversight and does not in any way abridge that power. For these reasons, we respectfully ask for your aye vote on AB 462. Thank you.

Thank you. Do we have any other witnesses? Do we have any witnesses in opposition?

Good afternoon, Chair Wahab and Vice Chair Seyarto. Jennifer Fearing, on behalf of the Surfrider Foundation. We appreciate the engagement we've had with the author and the speaker staff regarding AB 462 and support its goals, and we commend the efforts of the chair of the Senate Natural Resources and Water Committee and the author to make AB 462 consistent with our suggestion to pivot from a Coastal Act exemption to aligning with the approach to the ADU permitting throughout the rest of the state, 60 days from completed application to approve or deny, inclusive of all permits, including a Coastal Development Permit.

This maintains coastal access and resource protection while bringing consistency in the treatment of ADUs across the state without needing to or relying on an emergency declaration for eligibility. The recent amendments also deemed permits approved after 60 days, bringing further consistency.

However, we are concerned with the recent amendment prohibiting all appeals on two grounds: one, that it could reduce compliance with the Coastal Act, given that the threat of appeal is likely a strong incentive for project proponents to submit compliant applications. This is particularly worrisome for safety concerns like bluff stability, sea level rise, flooding, and around public access.

Second, we're concerned it might increase litigation since the appeals process is a quicker means to resolution than a lawsuit. Absent appeals, the only remedy for a member of the public that believes a Coastal Development Permit for an ADU was issued in violation of the local Coastal Plan or the Coastal Act will be to sue.

We can't know if litigation will increase or not because it's unprecedented to remove all appeals, but the risk seems like it can only go up without any other pathway to object. Unlike litigation, where the permit seeker could lose and be sent back to square one, appeals almost always result in a permit being issued.

Fortunately, there's an easy solution to our concerns. The recently enacted SB 130 included new Coastal Act provisions related to multifamily housing projects that limited appeals but still still allows appeals that ensure protection from climate impacts and allow public access.

That change could be paired with an amendment to include ADUs in the new annual report to the Legislature required by Section 63 of SB 130, allowing the Legislature to closely monitor appeals that would remain allowed by the bill. If the appeals provision in AB 462--I just wanted to say that Surfrider and other organizations would be prepared to move to support of the bill and remove our opposition. Thank you.

Thank you. Do we have any other opposition lead witnesses? Seeing none, we're going to move on to #MeToos both in support and opposition. Please state your name, your organization, and whether you support or oppose.

Mark Neuburger, California State Association of Counties, in support.

Natalie Brown with the Planning Conservation League. Opposition, but we would move to neutral with the amendment stated by the opposition witness; also on behalf of Defenders of Wild and the Sierra Club. Thank you.

Good afternoon. Michael Chen with Audubon California, also in opposition, but also hoping to move to neutral. Thank you so much.

This is for Bill 462?

Yes.

Eduardo Rubalcava with AARP. I'm an AARP Capital Response Team member. On behalf of 3.2 million AARP members in California, strong support for the bill.

Thank you. Do we have any other #MeToos? Seeing none, we're going to move to committee. Comments? Okay. I do just want to ask the author, one: you have agreed to the amendments of the committee?

Yes.

Now, the issue raised by the environmental advocates pursuing the amendment to permit, basically, appeals to the commission if need be, it came to us very late. I just want to know directly from you, would you be willing to continue to work with opposition on potential language that was addressed?

I'm not able to agree to anything at this moment, but certainly willing to continue a dialogue. The dialogue that we've had with opposition so far has yielded very fruitful results, but we'd have to look at this a lot.

Okay, perfect. Thank you. I appreciate it. We do not have quorum. We cannot do a motion yet, but we will have that bill available to vote on in a little bit.

Thank you.

Thank you. Sir, would you like to close?

Respectfully ask for that aye vote.

Thank you. All right, we are going to move on to File Item Number Five by Assembly Member Haney: AB 507. Yes.

All right. Thank you, Madam Chair. And Madam Chair, AB 507 is the office to Housing Conversion Act. It will accelerate reuse projects, adaptive reuse projects of historic office buildings. This is a direct response to the challenge we are having still in our cities.

Most of our major cities have anywhere from 20 to 40% office vacancies and have since the pandemic. This has to do with a number of factors including the change in remote work. And these empty office buildings should be used by people.

We should have people who use them either for work or for activities or for services or wherever possible to live. We know that many of these office buildings could be converted to housing, particularly those that were built 30 plus years ago.

But right now, the rules that govern how these adaptive reuse projects happen create significant barriers, time delays, costs that we can fix to make this easier and more possible in our downtowns which desperately need the flexibility to ensure that these buildings are available for conversion.

This bill will create a pathway for a buy right ministerial approval of office conversion projects, ensuring there's more predictability and fewer barriers. This is a reintroduction of AB 3068 when we have, with the help of Committee amendments, addressed the concerns in the Governor's veto. With me in support today is Angie Modetti representing the California Apartment Association.

Good afternoon Madam Chair. Angie Minetti here in support of AB 507 on behalf of the California Apartment Association. The creation of streamlined ministerial approval process for adaptive reuse projects is desperately needed. In light of our shifting population and work From Home Environment, AB 507 will provide financial incentives for the adaptive reuse of existing buildings.

As you know, California is in the midst of a shift in work culture. Offices in places like la, the Financial District in San Francisco, are seeing the highest vacancy rates in 30 years. Companies are shifting to hybrid work models with fewer employees working full time in the office.

At the same time, California continues to suffer from a statewide housing shortage. While there is a desire to repurpose vacant office buildings to residential ones, there are many technical challenges in doing so.

While converting existing buildings to housing is often seen as more cost effective than new construction, renovating existing office buildings in California can at times be more expensive than a complete teardown. AB 507 will help with the conversion challenges and we request your eye vote today. Thank you.

Thank you. Do we have any other lead witnesses? All right, seeing none. We're going to move on to lead opposition.

Good afternoon Chair and Members. Brady Gurdon on behalf of the League of California Cities in a respectful opposed unless amended position. I did want to thank the author's office and their staff for the continued conversations as we look to forward look to address our concerns. But our main concern revolves around three key issues here.

One is the ability of doing a ministerial buy right approval process statewide. Not every jurisdiction has these open vacant office buildings. So setting up a process that would apply everywhere is very challenging.

We also recognize that a lot of our cities, especially the bigger ones, have moved the route of promoting more adaptive reuse and are concerned that this would infringe on their ability to come up with these standards and the best policies that they have locally to do that.

The second concern is ensuring that we have all the information that we need to improve the infrastructure. As we've seen residential housing convert from office to residential housing, there's a lot more infrastructure and services we need to do locally.

And with the positive establishments of the CEQA exemption this year, we need to ensure that local governments have the ability to collect that initial information to make sure their infrastructure, such as water lines and sidewalks and roads is up to date. And this would limit our ability to do that. And then finally, regarding the impact fees.

The proportional language is helpful because they can still collect some of the costs to cover those infrastructure upgrades. But we are worried that it would still not be enough to cover that. So we do worry about the language in that change, but appreciate all the conversations we've had, look forward to continuing those.

And for today, we respectfully ask for a no vote. Thank you.

Thank you. Do we have any other lead opposition? Seeing none. We're going to move through MeToos. State your name, your organization, whether you support or oppose. And on this part we'd like to move quickly. We have a long agenda as well as other committees to attend.

Bob Naylor for FIELDSTEAD & Co in support.

Scott Ford on behalf of the Downtown Sacramento Partnership in strong support.

Madam Chair, Members of the Committee. Jordan Panana Carbaja on behalf of California YIMBY in support. Thank you so much.

Good afternoon, Madam Chair and Members. Raymond Contraras with Lighthouse Public Affairs on behalf of Habitat for Humanity California, Abundant Housing Los Angeles and SPUR in strong support.

Thank you, Madam Chair Members Rand Martin here on behalf of the AIDS Healthcare foundation which is engaged in this form of adaptive reuse. Very strong support of this bill. Thank you.

Thank you, Madam Chair, Members of the Committee. Jeremy Smith here on behalf of the State Building and Construction Trades Council. Also in support. Thank you.

Good afternoon, Madam Chair and Members. Ryan Lenny with the Student Homes Coalition in support.

Good afternoon. Leslie Rodriguez, California Strategies on behalf of Housing Trust Silicon Valley in support.

Ma' am chair Members Kobe Pizotti on behalf of the City of Thousand Oaks in opposition. Thank you.

Thank you. We're going to move to myself. Thank you. Assembly Member, would you like to close?

Thank you Madam Chair, and thank you to your staff. And we're continuing to have a conversation with the cities and we have a couple amendments that I think we are going to be able to work out together and continue some of those conversations and respectfully ask for your aye vote when that's possible.

Thank you. I appreciate that. We're going to move on to file item number six, AB1445, by Assemblymember Haney. Whenever you'd like to begin.

All right, well this bill and again thank you, Madam Chair, and the committee's work on this bill. We will be accepting the committee amendments today. This bill is also about adaptive reuse and also about supporting our downtowns. AB1445 would provide necessary tools to create affordable mixed-use housing on commercial spaces in downtowns across California.

But by providing or supporting the much-needed financing to make those projects work, this bill will allow cities to create a downtown recovery district that will help finance office-to-housing conversion projects by providing tax incentives for qualifying projects in the district. This is not mandatory.

It's another tool in the toolbox that cities can use to help to support their downtown recovery and make sure that the buildings in their downtowns are being used by people and providing much-needed housing. Currently, only the city and County of San Francisco has the option to establish this type of financing district.

But San Francisco is not unique in needing more tools to address this financing challenge. Thank you. And with me in support today is Scott Ford from the Downtown Sacramento Partnership.

Thank you. And you'll have two minutes.

Thank you. Good afternoon, Chair Waha, members of the committee. Scott Ford, Deputy Director with the Downtown Sacramento Partnership, California's very first property-based improvement district, dating back to 1995. We've been honored to continue to work closely with Assemblymember Haney and the entire Downtown Recovery Select Committee.

You know, over the past year, to really look at ways to benefit downtowns across California. We also work closely with the California Downtown Association. I think as we continue to see office vacancies soar above 20%, in some cases 30%.

As the Assemblymember said, we have to find creative ways to remove the absolute office inventory from our downtowns and provide much-needed housing in these areas. The silver lining is that with a high concentration of public services, amenities, public transit, and opportunities for careers, downtowns are naturally the most location-efficient places in California to build housing.

Smart housing policy is smart climate policy. When we build infill housing and when we convert obsolete offices into residential, we reduce vehicle miles traveled, and we also engineer affordability into California households by reducing the reliance on personal vehicles. I think in downtowns across the United States, we're starting to see the pendulum swing.

We're starting to see more conversion of existing office into residential than we're seeing new build office. The code is starting to be cracked by the industry, but it is only happening in places where smart policy is in place to support it. And we think AB1445 is an example of just such policy.

Again, we think that this is a smart tool. It gives local jurisdictions the type of opportunities that we're already seeing in San Francisco. We thank the Assemblymember and the entire Select Committee on Downtown Recovery for their innovative thinking and for working closely with us. Again, Downtown Sacramento Partnership proud to stand in support of AB1445.

It's going to add that flexibility, local jurisdictions, and when appropriate, we respectfully ask for your aye vote.

Thank you. Do we have any other witnesses in support, lead witnesses. Do we have any lead opposition witnesses? We're going to go on with me toos. State your name, your organization, whether you support or oppose.

Madam Chair, MembersMadison Dwelley on behalf of with Political Solutions on behalf of the California Travel Association and IKEA in support.

Good afternoon. Paul Shafer with the California Council for Affordable Housing here in support. Thank you.

Good afternoon, Chair and members. Brady Guertin, on behalf of the League of California Cities, in support. Thanks.

I don't know what to do now. Leslie Rodriguez, on behalf of Housing Trust Silicon Valley, in support.

Holly Fraumeni De Jesus, Lighthouse Public Affairs, on behalf of SPUR and Abundant Housing Los Angeles, in support.

Good afternoon, Madam Chair. Colin Sandmeyer, on behalf of the Housing Action Coalition, in support. Thank you.

Thank you. I'm going to move it on to Assemblymember. Would you like to close?

Yes. Thanks again and thanks. Thank you again for the amendments. The amendments will require these districts to allocate at least 30% of their funds to low and moderate-income housing.

So this is also an important tool to get affordable housing, and it's an opt-in program for cities, and I know many are excited to use it and appreciate your support and your work on it, and ask for your aye vote when, when the time comes. Thank you. Yep. Thank you.

So we are waiting on authors to make themselves available, as well as members of the committee, so we can start actually voting on bills.

So we're going to start with File item number seven, AB 660, by Assemblymember Wilson.

Good afternoon, Chair, Senators. I'm pleased to present AB 660, which aims to strengthen the integrity and efficiency of California's housing approval process. I appreciate the work of the Committee. It was hard and well, the hard work. I shouldn't say it wasn't hard to work with you. All the hard work that you all did.

And I'm taking your proposed amendments. AB 660 strengthens existing law by setting clear timelines and accountability for local agencies to process post entitlement permits and applications. It ensures housing projects aren't delayed by giving applicants an expedited process when moving forward with local agencies that don't follow the rules. While past housing streamlining bills have made progress, challenges still remain.

The California Assembly Select Committee on Permitting Reforms final report makes clear that despite state reforms, permitting delays and failures continue to be a major factor in the housing crisis. Currently, delays in post entitlement permits both slow down housing production and drive up cost, making homes less affordable for Californians. We've heard some concerns about AB 660.

It is important to note that local agencies can go beyond the two plan check limit if there's strong evidence that more reviews are needed to address a serious health or safety issue. Local agencies also still have the power to reject an application that is out of compliance with existing statutes or code.

This Bill simply closes the gaps and improves existing law regarding the timelines for local agencies to act on post entitlement permits. Now with me to testify on the importance of this legislation are not, Steve Cruz. Okay, Steve Cruz, on behalf of the California Building Industry Association and I think representing apartment associations.

Okay, sounds good. All right. Sorry about that. I'm looking at my notes and seeing different names and I was like, wait, not here.

So you guys will have two minutes each if you guys can start.

Thank you. Good afternoon, Madam Chair and Members. Angie Minetti here on behalf of the California Apartment Association support of AB 660. This Bill effectively builds upon existing law by addressing critical shortcomings in the post entitlement process. It creates more efficient, predictable and fair permitting process.

It's essential to ensuring that the housing projects California desperately needs can move forward without unnecessary bureaucratic delays. With California's severe housing shortage, the Bill is valuable to ensure timely and fair permit decisions. We respectfully request your aye vote. Thank you.

Good afternoon, Madam Chair and Members. Steve Cruz, on behalf of the California building Industry Association. SB 660, is critical legislation needed to improve the efficiency, fairness and accountability of the post entitlement permitting process for housing development projects.

Despite legislative progress in recent years, particularly with the enactment of AB 2234 by Speaker Rivas in 2022, which established important procedural timelines for local agencies when processing pulse entitlement permits, serious barriers remain that continue to delay much needed housing across the state.

And AB 660, as the Assembly woman stated, addresses those barriers and strengthens the existing framework with a narrowly tailored approach by first prohibiting last minute field changes that contradict previously approved plans limiting excessive plan check resubmittals, closing loopholes that currently allow indefinite extensions of the shot clock, thus eliminating a major source of uncertainty in the process.

The Bill offers a balanced and common sense solution that does not override local control our compromise safety.

Instead it creates a clear, consistent, accountable framework that ensures timely permit processing, fair treatment of applicants and ultimately the ability to deliver the housing our state needs so desperately. Appreciate the work of the Committee and working through a number of amendments and for these reasons we respectfully, ask for aye vote. Thank you.

Thank you. Do we have any lead opposition witnesses.

Good afternoon again Chair and Members. Brady Guertin, on behalf of the League of California Cities in respectful opposing this amended position. First wanted to commend the author's office. We've had ongoing conversations and a lot of the changes in the amendments have been steps in the right direction.

We do still remain concerned about the two plan checks limit considering it only allows local governments to do it for health and safety issues. The problem with that is that there are other building codes that are not necessarily health and safety. Take air quality regulations, environmental regulations and a lot of our local governments have those plans locally.

So so we're concerned about handcuffing our ability to require more than two plan checks after that for non health and safety issues.

We've been working with the author's office to try and find common ground on that just to ensure that we're providing enough info for cities to get or for developers and applicants to get the information they need and look forward to those continued conversations.

But we do want to just keep in mind that there are other building codes that are not necessarily health and safety issues. So it can really handicap local governments and we're trying to work. We continue to work with the author's office and look forward to those continued conversations. So with that we'll respectfully ask for a no vote.

Thank you.

Lead witness. No, I need to run downstairs real quick. Are you a lead witness or Just a me too. Me too.

Okay, so Me Too's. We're going to go all together. Both support and opposition. So if you would like to speak, please state your name, your organization and whether you support or oppose.

Thank you, Madam Chair. Coby Pizzotti on behalf of the City of Thousand Oaks in respectful opposition.

Andrew Dawson, the California Housing Partnership in support.

Paul Schaefer with the California Council for Affordable Housing here, in support. Thank you.

Cole Stemmler with Brownstein on behalf of the Bay Area Council and the Housing Action Coalition, in support. Thank you.

Graciela Castillo-Krings here on behalf of the California Housing Consortium, and also doing a Me Too on behalf of housing California. Thank you.

Madam Chair, Members of the Committee. Jordan Panana Carbajal on behalf of California YIMBY, in support. Thank you so much.

Holly Fraumeni De Jesus, Lighthouse Public Affairs, on behalf of Abundant Housing Los Angeles, SPUR, and Circulate San Diego, all in support. Thank you

Good afternoon. Michelle Wang, on behalf of Lieutenant Governor Eleni Kounalakis, in support. Thank you.

Leslie Rodriguez, on behalf of Housing Trust Silicon Valley in support.

All right, we're gonna move on to Committee Members. Would you like to close. Go ahead. I didn't know what that was.

I would like to make a comment on this. Yeah, I was kind of struggling, why I was thinking, okay, what was my opposition.

I'm not opposed to this, by the way, but I laid off of it because there's some amendments that need to be worked out with the cities because a lot of the issues that I've seen over the years with cities is trying to comply with state agencies that are dragging their feet.

And so if cities are going to get blamed for a process that's taking too long because of permits and things like that. Some of those permits are state permits.

And I would like to see the state agencies to be held to the same standard when it comes to and making sure that the permits are done on time, and in a timely fashion as we are with the cities.

So somehow we have to make sure that cities have an off ramp when they are being held up by other agencies. I can think of one major big development in the city right now that I live in that is not the city's problem.

But if you went and talked to the developer, they would say, yeah the city is permitting, they're not doing the inspections.

And, and when I talk to the city, I find out that, yeah, they're waiting for something from another agency that is outside of the city's purview that they have to fulfill before the city can do their part of the permitting.

So it's, I think it's kind of if we can get that resolved or if we can work with the cities on that and finding a solution to some of their issues, I think this is a step in the right direction.

But like I said, state agencies have to be held to the same account as the cities if we're going to do this, if we're going to have a writ that they can go file and force agencies to do that.

Because right now I'd like the cities to have a writ on some of our state agencies, so that our roads don't take five years of trying to get permits and having plans changed in the middle of the permitting process.

So they have to start over and go back to square one over and over and over. We have a road that's 10 years in the making, held up and being changed constantly. And every time they get almost to the finish line there's another, "ohh wait, we're going to have you do this too".

Well, that's part of the holdup process. And so we need to address the whole thing, not just blame everything on the cities and have them. So I'm going to lay off. That doesn't mean that I will vote no in the Committee and it doesn't mean I'll vote yes.

When it gets to the floor and some of those issues are addressed, I will be happy to support it.

Thank you. The chair is it okay to respond. And so I appreciate that comment and concern and having been in local leadership, I understand it. And it's not always state agencies. Sometimes it's the regional boards that have been delegated authority through state agency or legislation, enabling legislation. Take for instance from the City of Sussan City.

We would be regularly frustrated by work on our waterfront because BCDC would have to be involved and issue their own permit. And I would note that, you know, this is about the post entitlement phase which is primarily focused on the non discretionary permits where you're checking the box.

And also note that it does require a certain set of timelines because we're building on an existing law that was introduced by Revis a number of years ago. And so I am open to making sure that we have language.

And I have been working with the opposition and will continue to work with the opposition to see if there is a way to thread the needle to be able to count for when an outside agency is holding up the process and having that ability.

But at the same time, I don't want us to do a law that's so ineffective that it keeps us in the same environment where we have now where we have multiple tolling, multiple bites at the apple and really want to get our cities to where they're working in an efficient way to take into consider everything that they need to do at those plan check, at those two plan check processes and recognizing that, you can't do this in on the field changes when you've already approved something.

And so I look forward to continuing that discussion to balance that and hopefully being able to garner your support by the time we make it to the floor.

So two things. Assemblymember, one, you are willing, you have accepted the Committee amendments, correct? Absolutely, yes. Thank you for the work on that. No worries. And then number two, we're hearing a commitment to work with some concerns that were raised, correct? Yes, absolutely. Okay, perfect. Thank you. Again would you like to close.

Thank you. And I respectfully ask for your aye vote.

Okay. Again, we do not have quorum yet. We are waiting on Members as well as authors. So when the time is appropriate, we're going to have a motion. We're going to move on to File item number 11 by Avila Farias, AB 818. Yes, that's a lectern.

And then we're going to have hopefully more Members. And I believe Assemblymember Schultz is also going to present. File item number 17, AB 1385 by Petrie-Norris. So, Assemblymember, you can begin.

Thank you, Madam Chair and Members. I'm pleased to present AB 818. I'd like to start by accepting the Committee's amendments and thank the staff for their hard work. AB 818 streamlines permits and temporary manufactured homes, allowing residents to safely stay in their property rebuilding after a natural disaster.

Communities across the state have faced devastating wildfires with thousands of homes lost overnight. Current law lacks clear process for permitting single family homes and disasters leading to costly and timeless consuming delays. Even just to live on a site during a rebuilding recovery can feel endless.

AB 108 offers a ready to implement pathway forward using lessons from the past disasters to help families return to their property with a safe place to live. It streamlines the approval for state approved modular homes requires utility providers to respond to connection requests within 30 days and it exempts affected properties and solar panel mandates under Title 24.

When disaster strikes, families need housing, not red tape. This bill is part of a bipartisan, bicameral fast track housing package and I respectfully ask for your aye vote.

No. Seeing no witnesses in support. We're going to move on to lead opposition witnesses seeing none. We're going to move on to metoos. State your name your organization, whether you support or oppose. Like to go quickly through this part.

Paul Schaefer with the California Council for Affordable Housing here in support thank you.

Colin Stammer on behalf of the Housing Action Coalition in support.

Leslie Rodriguez on behalf of Housing Trust Silicon Valley in support.

Jordan Planet Carbaugh on behalf of California YIMBY in support. Thank you so much.

Holly Fraumeni Lighthouse Public affairs on behalf of SPUR, Abundant Housing LA and Circulate San Diego. In support, thank you.

Moving on to Committee Members. Seeing no questions concerns. Assembely Member would you like to close?

I respectfully ask for your aye vote thank you.

Thank you. We don't have quorum yet so we're going to wait until that takes place, so thank you for your time. We're going to move on to File Item Number 14: AB 1050 by Assembly Member Schultz.

Good afternoon, Madam Chair and committee members. Nice to see so many of you again today. I'm pleased to present AB 1050, which seeks to facilitate the redevelopment of vacant commercial centers by extending existing laws for removing covenants, conditions, and restrictions--or CCRs for short--on a property that otherwise preclude housing to mixed-use and mixed-use income housing development.

We all know that California faces a significant challenge in meeting its annual need for 10,000 affordable housing units due to factors such as limited land availability, high construction costs, and outdated restrictions, including CCRs.

The Covid-19 Pandemic, along with inflation, have hastened changes in our economy and consumer preferences, prompting the closure of many commercial spaces in our communities in recent years, all as Californians struggle to find affordable housing. Many commercial properties are too large for affordable housing developers to purchase and develop solely with deed-restricted units.

Therefore, legislation is needed to remove these roadblocks to expand existing law to housing projects such as mixed-use and mixed-income developments. This bill, AB 1050, simply builds on the framework previously established by AB 721 in the year 2021, which formalized a process for removing CCRs on private and publicly-owned land to promote affordable housing development.

AB 1050 would permit property owners to also move restrictions requiring exclusive commercial use. Importantly, this bill does not alter state housing laws related to project approvals nor does it change local zoning ordinances or the entitlement process. Joining me today, I believe--yes there is--is Michael Lane from the San Francisco Bay Area Planning & Urban Research Association, or SPUR for short, which is the sponsor of our bill, and he will provide testimony in support thereof.

Thank you.

Madam Chair and members, Mike Lane with SPUR, a public policy think tank in the San Francisco Bay Area. As the excellent committee analysis noted, this bill extends the existing AB 721 and AB 911 process for removing private restrictive covenants that preclude housing to mixed-use and mixed-income residential development on commercial properties.

It is important to note the bill does not alter the local entitlement approval process, nor does it change local land use or zoning. AB 1050 is only applicable in those locations where State Housing Law or local zoning allows residential development in commercial zones.

A note on the process: an application for the modifications submitted to County Recorder and County Council then determines if the modification is warranted. A fee may also be charged for agency cost recovery. We respectfully request an aye vote.

Thank you. Do we have any other lead support witnesses? Seeing none, can we get lead opposition witnesses? Seeing none, we're going to move on to #MeToos. Again, we like to move through this quickly.

Paul Shafer with the California Council for Affordable Housing, here in support. Thank you.

Colin Sandler, on behalf of the Housing Action Coalition, in support.

Good afternoon. Michelle Wang, on behalf of Lieutenant Governor Eleni Kounalakis, in support. Thank you.

Leslie Rodriguez, on behalf of Housing Trust Silicon Valley, in support.

Bob Naylor for Fieldstead & Company, in support.

Holly Fraumeni de Jesus with Lighthouse Public Affairs, on behalf of the San Diego Housing Commission, Abundant Housing Los Angeles, Habitat for Humanity, California, and Circulate San Diego, in support.

Thank you. We're going to move on to committee members. Seeing nothing, would you like to close?

Respectfully ask for your aye vote.

Okay, we have an iruka, but we have to wait. So I appreciate your time. And we're going to move on to final item number 617 AB 1385 by Petrie-Norris, which you will be presenting on her behalf.

Yes. Thank you. Again, Madam Chair and committee members, I'm here to present AB 1385 on behalf of Assemblymember Petrie-Norris, which authorizes properties in areas impacted by the January 2025 Los Angeles County wildfires to utilize the existing process in California law to remove restrictive covenants that impede housing development.

She will be accepting the committee's proposed amendment to clarify that the bill does not override any state housing laws. Six months ago, the Palisade and Eaton fires destroyed more than 16,000 homes, devastating thousands of families and exacerbating an already strained regional housing market. State and local officials have already taken steps to speed the city's housing recovery.

But we all know that rebuilding can and will take years. Communities impacted by three recent fires, 2017's Tubbs Fire and the 2018 Car and Camp fires, are still not back to near normal.

But where there is adversity, there is often opportunity, a chance to reshape the future of housing in California and increase housing stock in an otherwise constrained market. Between the lengthy rebuilding process and the psychological impacts of the devastation, history illustrates that many disaster displaced families are likely to sell their property to developers in favor of relocation.

Unfortunately, the presence of private covenants on many of these properties, some of which the owners were unaware of when they purchased the property, restrict the density at which redevelopment can take place, making it impossible to proceed.

AB 1385 builds upon the successful process established by AB 721 to eliminate covenants that stand in the way of developing housing and rebuilding in counties impacted by the Eaton and Palisades fire.

The measure provides a mechanism to remove exclusionary language in property covenant to allow the parcel to be used for housing development while maintaining local control and input. AB 1385 is critical to removing legal barriers that stand in the way of redevelopment and resettlement of our community.

And with that, and on behalf of the assemblymember, I ask for your aye vote.

Thank you. And just to clarify, there were no amendments on this bill just flagging. Do you have any lead witnesses?

Not that I'm aware of.

Do we have any lead opposition? Great. Me toos. Thank you committee members. Senator Seyarto.

Thank you. I have a question regarding the. You know, because this is specifically talking about Palisades area, correct? Yes. So this surmises that there are areas where they have HOAs or CCRs that people who bought those properties bought into.

And a lot of times when you do that, you understand that your property comes with some restrictions. And a lot of times those restrictions are meant to enhance your property and that's what you're buying into. And sometimes that's what you're paying extra money for.

Because I look at other areas that have these type of things, including at one of the areas up in, up in Temecula near my area or in my district, that the area is better cared for. They have all these things. That's why people bought into it. And so they're trying, you know, their investment is being protected.

And that's part of their contract with the real estate people to buy this property with those covenants on it. Because the place burns down. I don't know that that relieves them of the covenants, because they still are the property owner.

And building back to what it was is really what our goal is to try to allow people to recover back to where they were before this awful thing happened to them.

So, and I understand also that if a developer wants to come in and buy lots from people because they've decided that, hey, this is too much of a problem for me to, you know, I'm 80 years old and I don't want to rebuild.

They also know that it comes with the covenants and there are people that will buy that property and people that won't. Why should we change the.

That the neighbor, that neighborhood, that particular area that's covered by these, and allow people to basically ignore those covenants just so that a developer can come in and build, you know, whatever they want to build, whatever they're legally entitled to build, which is a lot now, and change that neighborhood forever when the neighborhood probably didn't want to be changed forever.

Well, thank you very much, senator. I'll do my best to answer. Right.

I know this is not your bill, but I was going to ask her that.

Believe me, I'll do my best. I would just say in brief, your point is well taken. But having walked the devastation of what was Altadena, I can tell you that the possibility of rebuilding these communities back to what they were in many cases is just not possible.

Not possible because so many people will be leaving those areas because of the long term environmental hazards that remain. But also because even the area, as we now understand, was built to a building code that is more than 50 years out of date. So what does get built back?

I agree with the assemblymember will be an opportunity to reimagine these communities, to add more housing in an area of Los Angeles that it desperately needs. And with that, I would also note that the assemblymember did try to take a narrow approach in this bill. She didn't try to come forward with the statewide measure.

This is really targeted to Los Angeles County and really expediting the rebuild and complementing existing local and state efforts. So it says it's specifically the Palisades. Palisades in Eaton, I believe, both of which are in Los Angeles County. Oh, I know where they are. Okay.

Used to cover those areas anyway. Yeah, you know, I understand what her intent is here, but I'm concerned that there is some legal ramifications to what they're trying to do.

And I also, you know, I've always believed that when somebody suffers a tragedy, they should be able to rebuild what they had before without having to worry about where they were before is being transformed. In other words, they're taking advantage of the tragedy to take them out of what they had and change what they had forever.

Because if they wanted to do that, they would have probably moved out if they knew that was going to happen. So that's all. Thank you.

Thank you, Senator Grayson.

Thank you, Madam Chair. I just want to align my comments with my colleague, Vice Chair here on on the same concerns. So if we can just pass that along to the author. I get the fact, because the author's office did confirm, that this does not impact local zoning and general plans and specific plans, all local ordinances and plans stay intact.

However, the point about HOAs and the fact that you can rebuild something different than what was already there just because there was a catastrophe like a fire, does that also burn up the HOA agreement or whatever existed priority with that? It's not something going to keep me from, you know, supporting the bill today.

It's just a question that I had and would be nice to know prior to a vote on the floor. Thank you. I'll be supporting today.

Thank you. Would you like to close?

Just briefly, Madam Chair? I will certainly pass along the comments to the assemblymember. And the other thing I would just note is that at the end of the day, nothing is automatic about the bill.

It would simply allow those seeking to rebuild to avail themselves of the processes already set forth in 8721. With all that and with all of the comments, duly noted. Respectfully ask for your aye vote.

Thank you. So again, we do not have quorum yet, so we're going to wait. But we really appreciate your presentation and stepping in as well. So we are waiting for Assemblymembers Ward, Lee, Wicks and Harabedian. If you guys would like to come to present your bills, that would be great.

We have roughly four bills and then the rest are all going to be votes at that point.

All right, we are.

And they're all standing.

Look, we're gonna move forward. The smart move is to go with the probes chair. Right, so right before probes week. Right. Okay. So we can wrap that up. File item number 13 AB 1021 by Assembly Member Wicks.

Thank you, Madam Chair.

It was a sprint. I'm going to pause right now. You guys would be presenting at the lectern. Thank you, Assembly Member. Anytime.

Thank you. I can still run in heels, it turns out. Thank you, Madam Chair and Members for allowing me to present Assembly Bill 1021. I'd first like to thank the chair and the Committee staff for working with us. And I accept the proposed amendments.

This Bill will make it easier for school districts and other local educational agencies to build housing for their employees. The lack of affordable housing has long been a challenge to the recruitment and retention of school district employees, including teachers and all the other administrative, technical, and support staff that make our schools function.

The cost of housing has skyrocketed since the Great Recession, far outpacing the ability of teachers and classified staff to keep up. As a result, these staff are moving further and further away from the schools they serve or leaving the workforce altogether. It's also creating a chronic staff shortage across the state.

And I know in my district I have teachers that want to teach at Oakland Unified School District, where my daughter goes to school, and the realtors say, drive till you qualify. And they're going further and further out because they can't afford the housing in our area.

In response, local educational agencies have begun to consider solving the problem by building workforce housing on land they own. In some ways, these agencies are well positioned to build employee housing. They already own the land, they are not required to turn a profit, and they are exempt from property taxes.

However, in other ways, these agencies still face substantial barriers to do so, including zoning, density, environmental review, and procedural hurdles unique to school districts. To help address this challenge. AB 2022.

In 2022, the Legislature passed AB 2295 from SEMs Member Richard Bloom, which made housing an allowable use on land owned by local educational agencies and set minimum density and heights. The Bill was based on the experience of the handful of local educational agencies that were seeking to build employee housing before 2022.

In the intervening three years, this movement has grown, and a substantial number of local educational agencies are now interested in building employee housing. As these agencies have tried to navigate the process, they have identified a handful of ways in which further changes are needed to truly unlock their potential to build employee housing.

This Bill systematically addresses these issues raised by these real world cases, including one, removing some of the geographic barri that made it difficult to build housing in the rural areas.

Two, increasing the allowed density of these projects to reflect what is necessary to make them viable, and three, increasing the economic feasibility of projects by using the rent standards maintained by the Tax credit allocation Committee.

AB 1021 is sponsored by the true experts in this area, the California School Board Association, UCLA City Lab, which has been studying this issue for years, and rooted, an organization from my hometown of Oakland that advocates for more teacher housing. And we have two folks who are here to testify and from ROOTED and the School Board Association.

We will allow them to self identify and respectfully ask for an aye vote when the time is ready.

Thank you. You will each have two minutes. Good afternoon, Madam Chair and commemors. Thank you for the opportunity to speak today. My name is Jack Woodruff and I am here representing Rooted, a program of the Oakland Fund for Public Innovation and a co-sponsor of this bill. Rooted's programming focuses on housing affordability for Bay Area educators.

So we witness daily the struggles faced by those educators who serve our communities yet cannot afford to live in them. Teachers and staff are commuting long distances or leaving the profession altogether, resulting in chronic instability in our schools. What we see is that California's teacher shortage is fundamentally a housing shortage, an affordable housing shortage at Rooted.

Simply by providing access to that housing, we've seen year on year teacher retention rates increase significantly. Apply those kinds of results across California with AB 1021, and we can expect several thousand more teachers to stay in the profession every year, bringing deeply needed stability to their students, their districts and their communities.

AB 1021, backed by years of academic research at UCLA and UC Berkeley, accomplishes this by improving the existing pathway for school districts to build workforce housing by expanding site eligibility, providing the option of a more deeply affordable unit mix, and yes, cutting a little red tape.

AB 1021 will transform what is today merely permissible into what is actually buildable. We urge you to embrace these common sense reforms. Thank you.

Thank you. And before we move on to the next witness, we're going to establish quorum. If we can get a roll call, please.

[Roll Call]

So quorum has been established. I do want to highlight another announcement. We will not be having Senator Cabaldin join us in this meeting, nor a fill in. But with that, I would like for the second witness to come and present. Thank you.

Thank you Madam Chair and Members. Chris Reif, on behalf of the California School Boards Association, I just want to thank the work of the Committee and also thank the author and her steadfast dedication to this issue. As you have heard, CSBA has been working on this issue for many years now.

We have been working with our partners at UC Berkeley's Center for Cities and Schools, UCLA City Lab and others to help identify and develop the best practices for districts to be able to. Pardon me, school districts and County Office of Education to be able to build their own workforce. Housing.

As we survey our teachers today, the number 11 of the number one factors as to whether or not they will go into the profession or stay in the profession is housing affordability.

We have had a number of success stories somewhere in some of your backyards in Santa Clara Unified we have one of the best examples in the Casa De LA maestro started with 40 housing units, almost doubled to about 70 and has never had vacancy since 2002.

We have another one, Jefferson Union High School District out of Daly City. They broke ground to address an issue where they were seeing 25% turnover in staff every year. And the first three years that they had after they cut the ribbon on their project, they have not had any turnover.

That means 25% of their classrooms were never did not go unfilled. They were filled and students receive the supports and teaching that they deserve. So for many of these reasons and others, I respectfully ask for your aye vote. Thank you.

Thank you. Do we have any lead opposition? Seeing none. We're going to move on to MeToos both in support and opposition. Please line up as quickly as possible. State your name, your organization and whether you support or oppose.

Good afternoon. Sasha Horowitz, Los Angeles Unified School District in support.

Sarah Brennan on behalf of SEIU California, in support.

Mark Neuberger on behalf of the California State Association of Counties. In support.

Josh Gallagher on behalf of the Santa Barbara County Board of Supervisors. In support.

Thank you. Committee Members. Would you guys like to comment? Senator Grayson.

Thank you so much. Madam Chair. Really want to commend the authority on a fantastic piece of policy that truly will move the needle, especially when it comes to providing housing for those that should be some of the most respected in our communities, whether it's teachers and staff that are in our schools.

This is a great use of land that right now just sits there unused so with that love to be a co author and make a motion when the time is appropriate.

Thank you.

Assembly Member, would you like to close? Just appreciate the comments and chair your work and I know you're always expressing the need for us to focus on affordability and I think this Bill explicitly does that. So I appreciate your help on this Bill and respectfully ask for an aye vote. Thank you.

Could I get a motion, Senator Grayson?

[Roll Call]

That bill's on call. Thank you. Thank you. We are going to next have Assembly Member Ward and I appreciate that you're going to be presenting both bills. So we're going to get a lot done. We're going to then move on to Assembly Member Harabedian. And I think our last person presenter will be Assembly Member Lee. Okay, perfect.

Assembly Member Ward, if you would like to present File item number two, AB 253.

Well, thank you and good afternoon, Madam Chair and Senators. First, I want to thank the committee staff for all their hard work on this bill, and I do accept the committee amendments outlined in your analysis.

AB253 would allow homeowners and developers to hire licensed third-party professionals to conduct building plan checks if it would take the local building department longer than 30 business days to conduct that review.

Under current law, local governments review building plans to ensure compliance with state building codes and local ordinances, a process that's prone to delays due to fluctuating workloads and resource constraints at local building departments.

Lengthy review periods at this stage hinder housing production by delaying the transition from approved projects to active construction, affecting overall construction costs and, of course, housing affordability here in California.

AB253 addresses this critical administrative hurdle by ensuring timely post-entitlement plan checks for small residential projects, providing an alternative mechanism for applicants to use licensed private professionals at the stage, helping to focus the workload of cities on larger projects requiring more thoughtful action.

This project is consistent with best practices adopted in other countries and states and is already in use by some local governments here in California. For witnesses and support, I have Nolan Gray, the Senior Director of Legislation at California YIMBY. And when the time is right, I respectfully request your aye vote.

Thank you very much. You're going to be testifying at the microphone up there. And you have two minutes.

Good afternoon, Madam Chair, members of the committee, thanks for the privilege to testify this afternoon. My name is Nolan Gray. I'm the Senior Director of Legislation and Research at California YIMBY and an AICP city planner here to speak in support of AB253, which we're a proud sponsor on.

California YIMBY is a statewide organization of over 80,000 neighbors dedicated to making our state an affordable place to live, work, and raise a family. There's a lot that California legislators don't control when it comes to the housing crisis.

You all don't control interest rates, you don't control tariffs on building materials, you don't control the construction labor force in many respects. But one thing that we do control here in the state is the speed and predictability with which we issue permits.

Unfortunately, in California, many housing projects face extended delays in the permit plan review, which stalls construction, increases carrying costs, and places an unnecessary burden on missing middle small-scale local builders in particular. The average length for a fully entitled apartment building to receive post-entitled permits is nine months.

Research consistently finds that this is dramatically longer than in many other peer states. That timeline alone can undermine a project's financing, especially in cases where it's a small-scale project or it's reliant on public sources of financing. AB253 offers a focused and practical solution.

It allows the license third-party independent professionals to conduct these reviews in cases where cities cannot conduct these reviews in a reasonable timeframe of 30 business days. And this is limited to projects of 10 or fewer units.

I would add local agencies retain full authority to review these permit reviews conducted by licensed third-party individuals, and they ultimately retain final authority over whether or not to approve the permit.

The goal of AB253 is not to replace any sort of local public review, but to serve as a capacity-building tool that helps jurisdictions prevent unnecessary permitting delays and empowering public permit reviewers.

This approach gives local jurisdiction support in managing workload, especially during times of extreme surges in permits, as with the post-wildfire reconstruction that's happening in Southern California, and it reduces uncertainty.

Please wrap it up.

For these reasons, we respectfully ask for your aye vote. Thank you.

That's what I'm talking about. Thank you very much. Appreciate it. All right, at this time we'll take lead opposition witness. Anybody want to test for as a lead opposition witnesses? This is your big chance. There's nobody's. Oh, here we go. We got somebody. Come on up. You got two minutes, please.

So, good morning, Chair Seyarto, committee members. Bryant Miramontes of the American Federation of State County Municipal Employees. I do want to clarify we are not officially opposed at this point. We do have registered concerns. Just wanted to clarify those up here.

We deeply appreciate the author's commitment to addressing California's housing crisis, and we absolutely share the goal of streamlining housing production. We also recognize that permit processing can be a significant hurdle and commend efforts to find effective, responsible solutions.

Just for context, AFSCME represents over 300,000 public employees in California, including the dedicated professionals who work tirelessly, tirelessly in our cities and counties to review plans, conduct inspections, and uphold the safety standards that protect our communities. From our perspective, we see the urgent need for solutions that empower public departments to serve more efficiently.

While we firmly believe the most robust path forward involves strengthening the capacity of the public sector and holding local agencies accountable, we understand the intent behind exploring mechanisms like those in AB253. Our primary goal is to ensure that any new approach truly supplements and enhances our existing public services.

To that end, it is critical that we do not inadvertently harm building departments, the public that they serve, or the dedicated public sector workforce. We must prevent any outcome that could lead to the hollowing out of essential public services or a diminished capacity to protect community safety.

We are particularly concerned that this bill, as currently drafted, will inadvertently empower some local governments to continue to disinvest or even disinvest altogether in their current departmental capacity.

Our fear is that in three to five years from passage, certain departments will have significantly decreased their staffing and infrastructure, given this new flexibility, with less liability for the resulting impact on public service and safety. But that said, we are committed to working collaboratively with the author and this committee to address our concerns.

But at this point our concerns are significant, and we sincerely hope that we can reach an agreement that fully addresses these issues. But appreciate the time.

Thank you for wrapping up. All right, next up, we will have the me-too's in favor and in opposition. State your name, who you represent, and your opposition or support for the bill.

Good afternoon, Chair and members, Colin Sandmeyer with Brownstein on behalf of Bay Area Council, Chamber of Progress and Housing Action Coalition in support. Thank you.

Good afternoon. Paul Shafer with the California Council for Affordable Housing here in support. Thank you.

Good afternoon, Chair and members. Brady Guertin, on behalf of the League of California Cities, wanted to remove our opposition and thank the author's office and the committee for working with us. Thank you.

Mark Neuburger with the California State Association Counties, I'd like to aline my comments to those of Cal Cities and thank the authors and sponsors for working with us on our concerns.

Mr. Vice Chair, Bob Naylor, representing Fieldstead and Company, in support.

Sabrina Gleitz with Axiom Advisors on behalf of NV5, in support.

Good afternoon, Chair and members. Obed Franco here on behalf of the California Fire Chiefs Association and the Fire Districts Association of California. I would like to align our comments with Cal Cities. We are also removing our opposition on this bill. Thank you.

Mr. Chair and Senators, Coby Pizzotti on behalf of the cities of Carlsbad and Merced, we're regrettably in opposition. Also, with the cities of Rancho Cucamonga and Belmont, we're opposed unless amended. Thank you.

Holly Fraumeni de Jesus, Lighthouse Public Affairs on behalf of Abundant Housing Los Angeles SPUR, and Habitat for Humanity California in support.

Leslie. Pardon me. Leslie Rodriguez on behalf of Housing Trust Silicon Valley in support.

Ryan Linney, on behalf of the Student Homes Coalition, in support.

All right, anybody else?

Whoops. There we go. All right, we'll bring it back to the dais. Mr. Grayson.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. Not wanting to be terribly chatty today, but very interesting, one of the opposition brought up something that is.

That is concerning, and that is some cities may want to choose to just do away with their planning department and then let it be completely outsourced, but you've been able to work with them, and some even remove their opposition.

In your closing, would you mind just addressing how you were able to do that and how opposition can look forward to anything else that you can do to secure the jobs that are there?

Yes, I can do that in my closing.

Anybody else? All right, I have a couple of comments. Number one, I made some comments earlier about, you know, the cities not being the only ones that are not. Not getting some of this or causing some of these obstructions, and some of it is beyond their control.

And, you know, one of the other comments I want to make is it would be nice to see some bills that come through that actually reward cities that are able to get these things done on their own and then maybe be rewarded with money that they could potentially use to put in some of the infrastructure that it goes along with being successful at moving this stuff along.

And so, you know, with the opposition, removing some of their opposition, you know, I'm going to support your bill today, and I would, you know, but like I said, you know, everybody's a lot of people working on this, and they're working on it from the the stick angle, not the carrot angle.

And I'd like to see more carrots given to local agencies for being good actors, as opposed to just trying to figure out how we punish agencies that don't necessarily achieve what are sometimes very unrealistic goals and guidelines.

And also, I want to make sure that we are equal participating, we have equal participation from all levels of government when it comes to holding people responsible for what's holding up our ability to achieve, you know, not only housing goals, but, you know, also all the infrastructure goals and commercial and business goals that go with it.

So with that, you may. Oh

Mr. Chair, I know this is not a protocol.

Boy, is it. Go ahead.

But one of the points that I wanted to make is that by going to the private sector, you know, when it's government and planning and they're doing the inspections of the plans, they are bound to law. It's cost recovery.

But if you get a situation where they're now just depending on the private market, the unintended consequence or the cost could go up exponentially in a marketplace. So, if you could address that as well. Thank you.

I'd be happy to with Mr. Chair. Thank you for your comments, Mr. Chair. And I appreciate your support here today. You gave me a lot to think about when we were discussing this in local Senate, local government committee as well.

And I think you can see a lot of that was reflected in the work that we did here, along with senate housing staff and Madam Chair, to be able to get this into a better place as well.

And so I appreciate, you know, that we're written that we saw that there has been some removal of opposition, because that is my intent is to make sure that this is workable for everybody.

I want to let you know that to address Senator Grayson's interest, when I was thinking about how to be able to frame up this bill, the first thing I did was talk to my city staff and their representatives because I wanted to make sure that this was never going to be seen as something that was going to be replacing or would diminish the importance of the work that they do over time.

And I think that it made sense to them. And they said, yeah, we wouldn't have any opposition with that because the work will always be there. You have a pipeline of work that you're trying to get through the city.

But if you're doing great and you actually have more permitting activity going on, which is great in housing-deficient California right now, you get that bottleneck. Right. And so, what can we do right now? Because right now, there is no relief valve.

And so the genesis of AB253 was for your small and simple, and just residential only projects right now. Can we at least offer that relief valve for some of this work, which does two things. One, I don't see it as a stick at all, but actually kind of a carrot in two ways.

It's about that homeowner or that property owner trying to get their project through and not submitting something to a city or a county, and saying, okay, now you're just going to wait nine months because that's just what we do. We accept that as status quo. But there are other alternatives.

And in fact, those alternatives do exist electively here in California.

And so we want to be able to say if you want to be able to go and be able to have that report run, submit that report to the city and have them do like the check to make sure that report was done correctly under this bill, Although I'm aware the conversation is touching on other subjects through other bills in this session.

Under this bill you still have inspections, you still have final review. The city still has an important responsibility to make sure that the work was done right. Meanwhile, through our amendments, we're thinking about things around liability.

We're thinking about things to make sure that there's certified plan checkers which do exist right now, but that's now would be codified under this bill. So all this has really been taken into to make sure that these concerns could be alleviated. And I'll continue to work with opposition as well.

Some of the interests there are to make sure that we're looking at quarterly reporting. We agree with that. And that's part of the senate amendments that we're taking here from the housing chair. Talking about a sunset, talking about automatic limiting automatic approval mechanisms. So that dialogue will continue.

But you know, I would say this, the status quo is definitely not working, and it definitely won't work if we're successful in trying to ramp up our housing production. So we want to make sure that this can be something that, you know, electively will allow a little bit of relief, will allow those projects to get done faster.

And the benefit to the cities overall is that they'll be able to focus in on everything else that has higher intensity, a much greater rationale to be able to focus on health and safety issues. So I think all these dots will connect. So I look forward to continuing to work with everybody.

And I respectfully request your aye vote.

All right. Do we have a motion? We have a motion by Padilla to move the bill. Go ahead and call roll.

[Roll Call]

Okay, and that is on call, and we'll keep it on call for remaining members to come in. Thank you. And next bill is going to be AB 518. I can still read without those glasses. Go ahead. When you're ready.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. Yes, Item Number Three. Senator, I want to thank the committee staff also for their work on this bill and state that I'll be accepting the committee amendments as outlined in your analysis, which will increase oversight and address a lot of the enforcement concerns.

Outdoor recreation hit a record high in 2022, with an estimated 19 million Californians getting outside, and it provides, of course, an estimated $74 billion for the state's outdoor recreation economy. However, nearly half of all campers report difficulty finding and booking available campsites.

Meanwhile, farmers, ranchers, and rural landowners across the state are struggling with the increased cost of land ownership in California. Currently, landowners look to set up campsites on their property to share it with the public, often face a self-imposed bureaucratic barrier and lengthy permitting system at the state level, which can cost more than $100,000, and in some cases, even significantly more than that.

The process of getting a permit through the California Department of Community Housing Development, in addition to a local Land Use Permit from the county, can take years and cost hundreds of thousands of dollars.

So AB 518, the Low-Impact Camping Areas Act, streamlines the permitting process for low-impact camping areas, or LICAs, or commercially available campgrounds that are approved by and meet all the requirements set by local government. LICAs are typically small, rural properties located on at least two acres that will have no more than nine available campsites.

Low-impact camping will help California meet its goals to provide affordable access to the outdoors, conserve land and biodiversity, expand rural economies, and supplement income for farmers and ranchers.

With me to speak in support of the bill are two of our co-sponsors, the Head of Government and Community Relations for Hipcamp, Meesha Rosenauer, and Steven Fenaroli, the Director of Policy and Advocacy of the California Farm Bureau. When the time is right, I respectfully request your aye vote.

All right, thank you. Next, the support witnesses can come up. Main support witnesses, you have two minutes.

Thank you, vice chair and members of the committee. I'm Meesha Rosenauer, Head of Government and Community Relations for Hipcamp. I appreciate the opportunity to testify in support of AB 518. AB 518 modernizes the outdated Special Occupancy Parks Act, a rigid one-size-fits-all state mandate that governs the infrastructure requirements for all campgrounds.

Across California, more than 20 counties already permit low-impact camping under the local ordinances that they've had on the books for decades, but as counties have gone up to update these land use codes in recent years, they've come into issue with state law.

Today, whether you have 200 RV parking spots or two tents on a working farm, SOPA imposes the same commercial grade standards for infrastructure: 18-foot paved roads, flood lighting, septic systems with gendered bathrooms, etcetera.

For a small landowner, complying with these requirements in addition to local permitting needs can cost tens of thousands of dollars, effectively pricing them out, and these requirements are often incompatible with ranching or farming operations and conservation efforts. I want to be absolutely clear: AB 518 maintains all of SOPA's existing fire, health, and environmental safety standards.

Under current law, these standards already defer to local governments, especially for campgrounds of 15 or fewer sites--or 14 or fewer sites, rather. AB 518 does not loosen or weaken these protections in any way; it just simply gives landowners a chance to comply with infrastructure development requirements set by their local governments instead of the state.

This framework was also purely voluntary, it has an opt-in, and it comes at a crucial time when over 4,000 campsites across California on public lands are being defunded and shutting down. It helps close this widening outdoor access gap while maintaining the strong safety and environmental standards that protect campers and our natural resources.

That's why so many counties are supporting it. For these reasons, we respectfully urge your aye vote on AB 518 to expand access to the outdoors, unlock private land for safe and responsible camping, and strengthen our connection to the landscapes that make California so special.

Very good. Thank you very much. You're right on the money. Next speaker, two minutes please.

Good afternoon, vice chair and members. I'm Steven Fenaroli with the California Farm Bureau. Farm Bureau represents over 24,000 farm and ranch families in California who are responsible for growing 400 specialty commodities in our state. We are facing a time when commodity prices are down, the cost of water is rising, and regulation is at an all-time high.

According to a recent study from Cal Poly, the cost of regulatory compliance on a lettuce farmer has increased 1,300% since 2006. As it continues to be more difficult to farm in California, AB 518 offers farmers and ranchers the opportunity to diversify their income.

Agritourism gives these farmers the opportunity to explore new sources of income while educating the public on commodities grown in the region. California is home to over 400 specialty crops, more than any state, and many of the public--many members of the public do not know where their food comes from or the many forms that agriculture play in their daily lives. We've seen creative things from U-Pick: farm stands to hosting bloom parties and almond orchards.

AB 518 is another tool that will help increase agritourism by offering low-impact camping options, all while giving farmers and ranchers the ability to safely maintain their working lands and not be required to make improvements that would be inappropriate for a working farm or ranch. To be clear, this bill will not make new RV parks on a farm and will not create overflows of waste. When appropriate, I would appreciate an aye vote. Thanks.

Thank you very much. At this time, we'll take lead opposition witnesses. Anybody want to speak as a lead opposition witness? Come on up to the microphone and you've got two minutes.

Thank you. Andrew Govenar, on behalf of the California Outdoor Hospitality Association, which represents RV parks and campgrounds. We appreciate the author and his staff trying to work with us on our amendments, but we must respectfully remain opposed. Our two amendments really are, we don't believe low-impact camping is actually RVs.

When you look up definitions of low-impact camping, it really means leave no trace, which no one can attest and say an RV doesn't leave a trace. While the bill now limits it to four RVs, these sites are unstaffed, which means you don't know whether there's four RVs or nine RVs.

So one of our amendments is, we don't believe there should be any RVs allowed in these campsites. If it's truly low-impact, tent, glamping, yurts, it should be no RVs. You have sewage and waste issues. The reason why HCD does the regulatory work they do is to ensure environmental safety and protections for the land.

They want you to have dump stations for people to put these things. The bill allows for 14-day stays at these campsites. RVs can only maintain seven days of sewage. So what happens after seven days? They either come to one of our campgrounds to dump it, which is permitted by HCD, or they do what with it?

The other amendment is the Civil Code is now exempted because they're no longer under SOPA. So how do you actually regulate these parks and a homeowner to evict and actually to regulate these campgrounds to make sure that somebody can actually follow through with something?

And if you're a neighbor, you want to ensure that it doesn't turn into an encampment when there's no rights for anyone to actually evict. So we believe the Civil Code should be applied and there should be no RVs. We'd remove our opposition. Finally, we think HCD does a great job of actually regulating them.

They actually go through the concise work that's necessary to ensure proper safety for both the patrons and also the landowners. If anything, we should be coming up with a SOPA light that maybe addresses tents and canvas structures instead of having to exempt nine and under.

Right now, facilitators advertise these campgrounds right now throughout the state, yet the premise of the bill is that you can't actually allow these campgrounds till a local government opts in, so how are they able to now actually advertise campgrounds right now if the bill is going to facilitate then a local government actually regulating them and they're actually advertising right now?

So we believe they should be banned from advertising currently until the bill, if anything passes, and then a local government opts in. So for these reasons, we remain opposed. Thank you.

Thank you. I appreciate your testimony today. Anybody else? All right. At this time, we'll take #MeToos. For opposition or support, just come on up. State your name, organization, and whether you support or oppose the bill.

Good afternoon, Mr. Chair and members. Karen Lange, on behalf of the Solano County Board of Supervisors, remaining in opposition until it's deemed banned until a county ops in. Thank you.

Good afternoon. Tracy Rhine with the Rural County Representatives of California. We are continuing to work with the author to hopefully find amendments that will bring us to neutral. Thank you.

Hi, good afternoon. Michael Chen for Audobon California, in support.

Thank you.

Josh Gauger, on behalf of the Santa Cruz County Board of Supervisors, currently in opposition.

Burns.

Kelly Brooks, on behalf of the County Board of Supervisors of Santa Barbara County, in support.

Mr. Vice Chair and Senators, Doug Houston, representing the California Outdoor Recreation Partnership and the California Trails Foundation. Strong support.

All right, thank you very much. Anybody else? If there's no one else, we'll bring it back to the dais for comments, questions. Ms. Durazo.

Yes. I'm going to support your bill, but I, I hear some things that, you know, create some questions for me, so if you could address or respond to some of the last issues brought up by the, the opposition, in particular, the--I think the--who would--you know, the oversight, the oversight and how long--in this case he mentioned the RVs--would stay and the cleanup, the oversight. How do you address?

Sure. No, thank you for the question, Madam Senator, and so I think it's important to understand the framework that we have today right now, which is really--and would still lie--actually, more importantly lie with local government approvals and regulations to be able to drive and frame this kind of activity.

Right now, 50 of our 58 counties permit low-impact camping. The other eight do not. And so that is the first test, and so if there's not--if you're in one of those eight counties that does not permit it, no, you should not be having that, no, none of that should be permitted on site or be on any listing site that is suggesting that you can perform this kind of activity. A little bit of a different issue if you're looking at platform-related regulations.

The question about that HCD does a good job is really the crux of this bill, the fact that it can take one to two years to be able to do that secondary review that's just looking at much of the very same issues and criteria that the local governments have already looked at, and they can decide for themselves how great or how little and how stringent they want to be on many of those very same regulations. With respect to the fire issues and the wastewater issues, again, I think you heard from our testimony, but I'll reiterate.

SOPA, the Special Occupancy--let me get the word--the Special Occupancy Parks Act, which is the issue of question here within ECD--that already, with or without AB 518 going into effect, does not even take into consideration any enhanced review for fire issues if the site of question is 15 or less, which all of these would be.

And so for those with regard to how we regulate human waste and greywater, blackwater, that is something that is not actually applicable for--and I'm reading this right from their own code--areas that have tent and dry camps, which of course all of these would be dry tent facilities.

Now, if you've ever been RVing like I have, and you've been at facilities that do not have a dump station like I have in even a National Forest setting, you need to get there. You can't just dump your waste, and that probably also is something that's going to be very well and strongly regulated through that county ordinance that requires that no waste be dumped on site.

So that is on the responsibility for you probably within three days, maybe pushing it to five days, to find that dump site, probably for a fee, that you're going to pay for that, but that's on you, and so all this works out today in practice, actually, and I don't think actually would affect the success and the health and safety of many of these potential future sites.

Anybody else?

I have concerns with the RVs and I have concerns with the fires because a lot of these areas that we're talking about, I've seen, you know, the El Dorado county and all those areas have a lot of flashy brush that is highly susceptible to even little, little sparks coming off of fires and things.

If there's nobody on site, there's no, nobody's watching the store. And that's where the bottom line is. Nobody will be being careful about that. And so it's hard for me to get on board with this. I think there's a lot of things that need to be addressed and so I will not be supporting today.

I hope you can address them. I understand some amendments were offered and you did not take them.

Not entirely true. We did take amendments right now, but rather than a complete ban of RBs, we've decided proposing to limit them four.

Yeah. So, yeah, I used to do the RV camping too and I, I wouldn't call driving a big RV into a, into a rural environment that's not got RV hookups and things like that. You're running your generator, you're running a lot of different, you know, you're, you're holding your tanks. Yeah. And all of that.

And so that's not what I would call low impact camping. So they, that, that has to be addressed in order for me to support it. That and the fire issues, who's. Who's responsible because it's private land.

So the private landowner is going to have to at least be within shouting distance of their land to be able to control some of what's going on on that property. Sure. Anyway, but that's well allow you to close.

No, I respect for that. And you know, just for the record too, for all those places that I've been, I've left no trace and made sure that we were responsible stewards of the environment that we got to recreate and enjoy.

You know, I would just really underscore, while this is not going to change your mind for your vote and your consideration here today, that a lot of our fire regulations again really can be set in place by that local government and are set in place already today and would be and would continue with or without enactment of AB 518 existing right now if that landowner is on site within view.

Look, if you had a farm and you had your 10 or 20 acres out there, that farmer might very well be doing his own campfire or his own bonfire.

I mean that happens already here today and everything so that the regulation of that fire activity is consistent with or without this bill, regardless of who is on that land, using a lot of that land. And to say that, you know, sometimes there's no attendant on site.

That happens also in the wilderness right now at many of our. Many of our public parks as well. And you are left to both best. Well, not just best behavior, but also local, ordinary local. The requirements being good stewards.

If somebody showed up, you could certainly be fined or more for not tending to your campfire and in some places having a campfire at all during certain seasons. So just wanted to make sure that we had that healthy conversation.

But I think there's a lot of benefit here for all the issues that we're trying to encapsulate through the benefits of this bill. And when the time is right, I respectfully request your aye vote.

All right, thank you very much. I think the time is right. Do we have a motion on the bill? I think I heard Mr. Durazo first. So we have a motion by Senator Durazo. Go ahead and call roll.

[Roll Call]

And that was due pass as amended to rules. Thank you. Thank you very much. And we'll keep it open until others are able to add on. Mr. Harabedian, come on up. You have AB 1206.

Thank you. Mr. Chair. Good afternoon to you and the rest of the Senators. Great to see you. Hope everyone is surviving this week. Would like to just start by thanking the chair, the Committee for and the Staff for their work on this Bill. I am accepting the Committee amendments as noted in the analysis.

Also, after very fruitful conversations with many of the Senators here and in local gov. I'm also including within the delayed implementation of this Bill. All cities, 25,000 residents or less, would be included in that delayed implementation that we agree to as a Committee amendment.

But we're just adding as an author amendment, we're going even further and looking out for our small cities. And I know that many of you will probably be happy to hear that. Housing remains one of California's most pressing issues, especially in the wake of devastating natural disasters like the Eaton fire which hit my district.

The loss of these homes in Los Angeles has only exacerbated California's housing shortage of millions of homes. And we're obviously looking for smart solutions for cutting bureaucratic red tape and stopping delays in housing construction. The model for AB 1206.

This Bill was based on Assemblymember Carrillo's Bill AB 1332, which successfully used pre-approved plans to expand ADUs accessory dwelling units. Places like South Bend Indiana, Kalamazoo, Michigan, Groveland, Florida and Norfolk, Virginia have successfully used programs such as this pre-approved plans for single and multi family housing.

AB 1206 brings this proven concept to California by empowering local agencies to establish pre-approval programs for single family homes and smaller multi unit projects. So that is defined as any development with 2 to 10 units, nothing larger and no track homes. Importantly, the Bill preserves local control.

It does not impose any specific design requirements or overrides zoning laws and will not apply to large scale developments or master planned communities. AB 1206 is one practical flexible tool that we have in a larger toolbox and hopefully this can help us address our housing crisis. I respectfully ask for an aye vote.

Madam Chair, now that you're back, just want to thank you again for all your work on this Bill and also thank the previous chair and local government Senator Durazo for her work. Here's my witnesses. Holly Fraumeni De Jesus, on behalf of Habitat for Humanity. Thank you. You have two minutes back.

Holly Fraumeni De Jesus, lighthouse public heroes on behalf of Habitat for Humanity California. Who's building affordable homeownership opportunities in 42 different counties throughout the state. This Bill is about best practices and not just for cities that have been hit by major wildfires.

But a city should not have to be hit by a major wildfire to adopt what is the right policy.

This is about affordability and removing the costly costs of custom design and architectural review and and we're just hoping that even a Habitat home which is modest and entry level could be pre-approved and more of those can be built by non habitat homeowners throughout the state. We respectfully ask for your aye vote.

Do we have any other lead witnesses.

Seeing none, we're going to move on to lead opposition. Seeing none, we're going to move on to Me toos. Nice and fast. Name organization whether you support or oppose.

Paul Shafer, with the California Council for Affordable Housing here, in support. Thank you.

Good afternoon, Chair Members. Brady Guertin, on behalf of the League of California Cities wanted to thank the author's office. We will be moving to neutral once. The bills are the amendments are in print. Thank you.

Good afternoon, Madam Chair, Members. Colton Stadtmiller, with Brownstein Hyatt Farber Schreck, on behalf of the Bay Area Council, in support. Thank you.

Good afternoon. McKinley Thompson-Morley, on behalf of Zillow and support. Thanks.

Madam Chair and Senators Kobe Pizzati, on behalf of the City of Thousand Oaks. Respectfully in opposition.

Madam Chair, Members of the Committee. Jordan Panana Carbajal, on behalf of California YIMBY in support. Thank you so much.

Thank you. We're going to move on to Committee Members. seeing no comments. Sorry. Senator Caballero.

So just so I understand, the amendment you were talking about, author's amendment, and I'm assuming you'll take it later, but you are including communities of 25,000 people or less.

Correct?

I just needed to understand what we were doing because I hadn't looked at the paperwork yet. I do appreciate that. I mean, let me just say that part of the challenge from my perspective, in a lot of the planning that we do, is that we do a one size fits all kind of model.

And the challenge is, is a majority of my cities are significantly less than 40,000 by population. They don't necessarily have engineers on staff. They are desperate for housing in their communities. Developers don't go there to develop, and yet if they did, the housing would be affordable for the population there.

So the ability to be able to reuse property and to do it in a way that's clean, efficient and gives them some control over it is really important. So appreciate that. Thank you.

All right. And I just want to be clear that the author has accepted the Committee amendments. One point of those amendments is to require local agencies to include information regarding the number of developments that used pre-approved applications in the annual progress report or the APR beginning in 2027.

Point number two is delay implementation of the Bill until 2028 in small counties, defined as counties with a total population of less than 250,000. These counties comprise roughly of 2.5 million residents, or less than 7% of California's total total population.

The author also intends to amend the Bill on the floor to further narrow the Bill by delaying implementation for cities with a population of less than 25,000 as well. Which is fine. And I just want to be very clear, obviously all amendments are going to be shared with Committee staff.

So I really want to thank you and if you would like to close.

Thank you, Madam Chair. Respectfully, ask for an aye vote.

Thank you. Do we have a motion. Senator Padilla has moved the Bill.

Motion Do Passes amended to appropriation. Senators Wahab. Wahab, aye. Seyarto. Arreguin. Cabaldon. Caballero. Caballero, aye. Cortese. Durazo. Durazo, aye. Gonzalez. Grayson. Grayson, aye. Ochoa Bogh. Padilla. Padilla, aye.

All right. That bill's on call. Thank you. We are going to move on to File item number eight by Assemblymember Lee, AB678.

Thank you, Chair and Senators. I want to begin by thanking the Committee for their Thoughtful Analysis. AB 678 will require California's intervention agency Council on Homelessness to develop and recommend best practices and policies for ensuring LGBTQ individuals receive culturally competent, inclusive and affirming services when accessing state funded housing and homeless programs.

Since the Interagency Council on Homelessness plays a critical role in coordinating statewide efforts to address homelessness, it is essential to recognize and respond to unique vulnerabilities faced by LGBTQ Californians, particularly queer youth and elders who are disproportionately impacted by housing instability.

AB 678 will ensure our homeless program Sorry, our homelessness programs are inclusive and affirming so we can improve outcomes by connecting LGBTQ people to housing faster and reducing the risk of returning to homelessness. I'm proud to partner with Equality California and SAGE and to say that everyone, regardless of identity, deserves safe and supportive housing.

With me today in support I have Craig Pulsipher from Equality California and Eve Banis from the Sacramento LGBT Community Center.

Respectfully ask for your aye vote thank you.

Good afternoon, Chair Members. It's Craig Pulsipher on behalf of Equality California, Proud co-sponsor as you know well, the affordable housing crisis is affecting nearly everyone in our state, but LGBTQ people oftentimes face even greater challenges to accessing safe and affordable housing.

Last year, Equality California partnered with several LGBTQ and housing organizations to convene town halls across the state and hear directly from community Members about their housing challenges. We set out to better understand the barriers LGBTQ people face in accessing stable housing and what changes are needed to make our systems more inclusive and affirming.

We heard consistent themes across the state. Housing providers often lack the training, tools and cultural competency to serve LGBTQ people effectively, and Trans people in particular described avoiding shelters altogether due to fear of mistreatment or violence.

AB 678 responds directly to these concerns by requiring the Interagency Council on Homelessness to identify best practices and make concrete recommendations to ensure that state funded homelessness programs provide safe, inclusive and culturally competent services.

I do want to emphasize that the need for this bill could not be more urgent, as the Trump Administration recently announced that it will stop enforcing the Equal Access Rule, which provides protections for Trans people in housing programs. And we have already seen some federal agencies insert discriminatory language into federal housing grants.

The DOJ's Office on Violence Against Women, for example, is explicitly requiring grantees that provide transitional housing assistance for victims of domestic violence to certify that they will not use grant funds to promote, quote, gender ideology. In this moment, California has a responsibility to lead and ensure their system remains safe and inclusive for everyone.

And I respectfully urge your aye vote.

Thank you. Can we have the next witness? Two minutes?

Yeah. Good afternoon, chair and Members. My name is Eve Banis with the Sacramento LGBT Community Center. The center works to create a region where all LGBTQ people can thrive. We support health and wellness, advocate for equity and justice, and work to uplift our diverse and culturally rich LGBTQ community.

We operate two LGBTQ youth housing shelters, making us intimately familiar with the needs of this community. Research shows that LGBT youth experience homelessness at a disproportionate rate. These youth often face hostile environments in their homes, and many even experience family rejection, leaving them to fend for themselves on the streets.

Housing programs provide support to help people secure stable housing. But given the traumatic conditions that lead to someone losing their housing, a safe shelter environment is crucial. In fact, one in three of our residents have seriously considered suicide, and many have been victims of sexual assault and violent crimes.

The situation is made worse when individuals enter a program that discriminates against them. Residents of the center's housing program have shared that there are many housing programs that they refuse to go to for fear of their own safety. They say they would rather take their chances on the streets.

These challenges do not stop when LGBTQ youth become adults. Housing providers lack understanding of how to support Trans adults, especially in sex segregated facilities. And non inclusive data practices perpetuate the invisibility of LGBT people when doing point in time counts. Coordinated entry and building housing programs.

We collect so much information when folks enter programs, but residents are often not provided the opportunity to self identify. Our LGBT community deserves better, and this Bill is a much needed step in the right direction to support all California's unhoused people. We must ensure that LGBTQ youth are centered in these conversations.

I urge you to stand with the LGBT community and ensure they receive culturally responsive and inclusive services. Thank you.

Thank you. Do we have any lead opposition witnesses? Seeing none, we're to move on to MeToos, both in support and opposition. Please state your name, your organization, whether you support or oppose.

Madam Chair and Members, Rand Martin, on. Behalf of the AIDS Healthcare foundation in support of AB 678. Thank you.

Thank you.

Mackenzie Mcdaniel, youth of Sacramento in support of the bill. Thank you.

Crystal Chavez with the Mesa Verde group on behalf of the Asian Americans Advancing Justice Southern California, in support. Thank you.

All right, Committee Members, any comments? Or. Senator Padilla moved the bill. Assembly Member, would you like to close?

Respectfully, ask for your aye vote. Thank you.

[Roll Call]

Thank you. Alright, thank you, guys. That bill's on call. I'm going to ask the senate sergeants to call every single member of the committee because we are done with our authors, and I would like to finish up this committee. Can we get an ETA on each of the members that are absent? Thank you.

Two o' clock in the morning is too early for me.

Alright, folks. Again, members, if you guys can show up to housing, we'd appreciate that. We're going to lift the call on consent. Again. File item number one, number nine, number 10, number 16, and number 12 are all on consent. Do we have a motion? Senator Seyarto moves the consent items.

[roll call].

Alright, consent still on call. We're gonna move on to file item number two. AB 253 by Ward.

Motion do pass as amended to appropriations. Current vote 5, 0. [roll call].

Alright, we're gonna move on to. That's on call. We're gonna move on to file item number three. AB 518 by Assemblymember Ward.

Motion do pass as amended to rules. Current vote 4, 0. [roll call].

Alright, that's on call. We're going to move on to file item number four. AB 462 by Lowenthal.

Motion do pass as amended to appropriation. [roll call].

Okay, we're gonna. We're gonna move back to consent. So we're gonna start with consent. I just want to make sure that we're all ready to go. So consent. Can we.

[roll call].

Alright, consents out 10 to zero. We're gonna move on to nine to zero. Sorry, 10.

Zero. zero, sorry.

Zero, okay. One second. Eyes on her. Do we know, like she said, she's coming, so, like.

She's in the building. Coming over. I I.

Alright, we're going to move on to file item number two by Assemblymember Ward.

Do it again.

Motion do pass as amended to appropriation. [roll call].

Okay, that bill is on call. File item number three. AB 518 by Ward.

Motion do pass as amended to rules. [roll call].

Alright, that bill is on call. We're going to go to file item number four. AB 462 by Lowenthal.

Motion do pass as amended to appropriation. [roll call].

Alright, we're going to keep that bill on call. File item number five. AB 507 by Haney.

Motion do pass to appropriations. [roll call].

Okay, we're gonna pause for two more seconds.

Yeah. We need a motion for that bill before we can call roll.

Motion do pass to appropriations. We need a member to make a motion.

Could. Could we get a motion for AB 507? File item number five moved by Senator Gonzalez. We have to revote. Let's just revote. Yeah.

Motion do pass through appropriation. [roll call].

That bill's on call. We're going to move on to file item number 6. AB 1445. Can I get a motion? Senator Padilla moves the bill.

Motion do pass as amended to appropriation. [roll call].

Alright, that bill's on call. We're going to move on to file item number seven. Can I get a motion for AB 660? Wilson, move the bill. Moved by Arreguin.

Motion do pass as amended to appropriation. [roll call].

That bill's on call. We're going to move on to file item number eight, AB 678. Can I get a motion or. We have a motion. Sorry.