New California housing laws in 2024
These are my notes about interesting housing laws that the California legislature adopted in the 2023 session (and went into effect in 2024).
I did a presentation on this for Napa Solano for Everyone (a chapter of YIMBY Action) and for the Napa Housing Coalition.
But realistically, this is useful to the entire state of California, and maybe housing providers in other states.
Slides:
This is the slide show I used for the presentation on state-wide housing reform.
A bit of context...
I was presenting to a group of people who think a lot about housing at the local level in Napa.
So I told them:
- If you’re here you think we need more housing at all levels of affordability to support the people who work, live and play in Napa
- Traditionally, planning for that is the role of local government (cities and counties, made up of local agencies)
- More and more, we advocate for statewide progress - why is that?
We went into the shortcomings of local control and made some distinctions between good faith local actors and bad faith local actors.
This way, I could deliver the new laws with the context of whether those were designed to help good faith actors or "help" bad faith actors.
Laundry lists are not useful
I don't think it's particularly helpful to list all of the bills that passed (AB xx, SB yy, etc)
Partially because the bill numbers are confusing and they get re-used each year.
Also partially because a lot happens outside the bills.
For example cases litigating Builder's Remedy, and examples of the state Attorney General coming after cities that fail to meet their housing numbers:
So ... here's the laundry list, but also here's how I think about the year...
3 buckets
There are 3 categories I slot these housing laws into...
- Enforcement against bad actors
- Opportunities to build
- ADUs !!!!
Enforcement against bad actors
- Cities can’t abuse CEQA anymore to delay projects indefinitely (AB 1633)
- The sound of students is not an environmental impact that can block housing (AB 1307)
- Streamlining post entitlement permits (AB 1114)
- DOJ can intervene faster to help housing projects (AB 1485)
- Zoning must be updated to reflect general plan / housing element within 180 days (AB 821 Grayson)
Opportunities to build
- Streamlined applications for faith-based institutions doing affordable housing (SB 4)
- A bill that passed in 2017 that kicked off a lot of this reform, got strengthened and extended (SB 423, expanding SB 35 in 2017)
- Streamlined process for dividing multifamily land (SB 684)
- 50% Density bonus for projects that provide low and moderate income housing (AB 1287)
- Easier to pass housing and related infrastructure bond measures (reducing vote threshold from ⅔ to 55%) (ACA 1 Aguiar Curry)
- Single stair case for multi-family buildings (AB 835)
- Streamlined permitting for starter homes in <10 home developments in multi-family zones (SB 684)
ADUs !!!!
- ADU Condo-ization (AB 1033)
- Prohibit owner-occupancy requirements indefinitely (AB 976)
- Pre-approved ADU plans (AB 1332)
- Expanded HCD authority (AB 434)
- $25 million in ADU incentive funds – fully subscribed
A case study...
After going over all these laws, we approached how this all works in practice with local government...
ADU example
Napa's says it's going to get 366 ADUs in the Napa housing element.
Every city has a plan on how they'll deliver more housing, and it's updated every 8ish years in the housing element.
But it's not enough to just assume these ADUs will happen. The city also has to plan for infrastructure like sewer, roads, safety and schools.
And some of these responsibilities are shared with other local agencies. For example, the school district tries to plan for schools and it's not uniquely the responsibility of the city. Or you might have regional transit options that are not uniquely the purview of the city government.
Project example
Next, we looked at a hypothetical project...
In truth, everybody in the room understood that there is a real life project which closesly resembled my hypothetical example.
It was a large mixed use development and we all know the current owner is keen to get approval for it and then sell the land with entitlement to somebody who is responsible for development and execution.
The development includes a highly profitable hotel allowance conditioned on the fact that the development has a ton of residential development in it, including some deed-restricted affordability.
And we walk through how WE HAVE TO ACCEPT THE DEVELOPMENT because it is a housing project in the state's eyes and it should be allowed.
We also talk about how we can make sure the permit-seeker/developer is accountable for actually building the housing before launching the hotel.
We want to make sure anybody who buys the land is fully informed that they do not get to launch a hotel without building the housing.
But we are also committed to allowing for the hotel as long as it comes with the housing.
That's a wrap
That was my run down of the new laws adopted in 2023, and how some of them play out in reality in a small-ish jurisdiction
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