Housing Is a Statewide Crisis, and All Communities Need to Pitch In
On Monday, I was sworn in as a California State Senator. That same day, I introduced my first bill, Senate Bill 35 (SB 35), which will make it easier to create affordable housing in California by streamlining the approval process, while also ensuring that all communities in California, not just some, create the housing we so desperately need to address our housing crisis.
Specifically, the bill will put some teeth into the numerical housing goals that are currently assigned to each city in California through a process called the Regional Housing Needs Assessment (RHNA). Every 5 years, each city receives a goal for how many units of housing the city is expected to produce at various income levels over the following 25 years. The problem is that RHNA isn’t enforceable, and too many communities either ignore it or make inadequate efforts to comply with it. Under my legislation, if a community is not on track to meet its RHNA goals, a state-mandated streamlined housing approval process will kick in. Streamlined projects will be required to pay workers prevailing wage — we need more housing and also need jobs that pay people enough to support their families.
(Affordable housing in San Francisco’s Mission Bay, by Mercy Housing, an affordable housing nonprofit developer)
I didn’t introduce SB 35 in a vacuum. Rather, I put it forward after decades of experience as a community activist and local elected official, during which I observed more and more people struggle with housing. People are keenly aware that San Francisco and the Bay Area are in the depths of a housing crisis. It’s way too expensive to rent or buy a home here. The results are horrific — evictions, displacement, families being pushed out as they grow, lack of housing for teachers, retail workers, and first responders, crushing commutes for people who can’t afford to live near their jobs. The negative impacts of this crisis are numerous, threatening our region’s economic growth, environmental well-being, and diversity.
Yet, we aren’t alone. The housing crisis is no longer limited to San Francisco and a handful of other communities. In more and more parts of California, we are seeing explosive housing costs due to lack of housing creation. We hear the same stories from friends and family in Los Angeles, San Jose, Sacramento, and communities throughout California. We hear about low-income people being pushed out of areas they have traditionally called home. We hear of young families being unable to rent or purchase a home and leaving the state. We hear of employers, ranging from retailers to manufacturers to farmers, who can’t find workers due to the cost of housing.
It’s way too hard, expensive, and time-consuming to create housing throughout much of our state. By discouraging housing, California is strangling itself. Without enough housing, we threaten economic growth in the sectors that drive our state, including technology, life sciences, agriculture, healthcare, and manufacturing. Without enough housing for our growing population, we are at risk of losing exactly what makes our state great — our status as an epicenter for creativity, art, economic and technological innovation, and diverse populations.
SB 35 — a state-level approach to housing — is certain to engender a robust discussion about how we make, and who makes, decisions about housing in California. We have a long tradition of pure local control, and many people, myself included, support local control in so many areas, since local communities are frequently in the best position to judge what makes sense for their residents. As a former local elected official, I deeply believe that local communities, far more often than not, are in the best position to know what is best for our residents.
However, there are limits, and there must be limits, to local control. If unfettered local control means that local communities refuse to create enough housing — instead punting housing creation to other communities — then the State needs to step in and make an adjustment to ensure that all communities are equitably contributing to housing needs. Allowing local communities to ignore their responsibility to create housing has led to what can only be described as a housing disaster — triggering huge economic, environmental, and other problems — and we must fix this problem using statewide policy tools.
SB 35 clarifies what local control over housing is about. Local control should mean that communities get to decide *how* they comply with their housing goals, not *whether* they comply with their housing goals. Under SB 35, cities that are on track to meet their goals will retain full local control over how they approve housing. Cities that aren’t on track will lose some local control until they get back on track.
As a member of the San Francisco Board of Supervisors, I worked hard on housing affordability issues, due to the dramatic negative effects of high housing costs in San Francisco. Working with a great coalition of housing advocates, I authored legislation to streamline the approval process for affordable housing, allow for new in-law units, increase housing density, and protect rent control.
It’s time to take this work statewide, since housing is no longer a city-by-city siloed issue. Housing is absolutely a statewide issue in California, and we need to treat it as such. SB 35 will move us in that direction.
I look forward to working with environmental and housing advocates, labor, housing developers, and others over the coming months to flesh out and deliver a policy that will help improve our state’s untenable housing situation. Working together we can do it.
