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Housing Bills

Make Calls and Send Letters to the Legislature

You can call or submit letters as an individual or as part of your neighborhood, homeowner, or renter group.  Forward to others. Leverage!

  • Instructions for Action: Includes background information, directions, committee members’ names and contact info, and a sample script
  • Sample Letter: You have access to the Catalysts’ letter as a word.doc so you can remove our logo, edit, cut & paste, make improvements of your own, and submit them through the legislative portal. For information on submitting letters via the legislative portal please see the Livable California website. Occasionally we’ve included a letter from the League of CA Cities.
  • Staff Analysis: Includes the committee staff report and a list of organizations in support and opposed to the bill.

SB-951: California Coastal Act of 1976: coastal zone: City and County of San Francisco. (Weiner): OPPOSE

What is this bill about?  This bill is about removing the authority of California Coastal Commission from designated areas to allow for streamilining of housing development.
Summary: Current law requires a city or county to prepare and adopt a general plan for its jurisdiction that contains certain mandatory elements, including a housing element. Current law requires the housing element to identify adequate sites for housing, including rental housing, factory-built housing, mobile homes, and emergency shelters, among other things. This bill would additionally apply specified rezoning standards for any necessary local coastal program updates for jurisdictions located within the coastal zone.

Hearing Date: Natural Resources and Water Committee: April 9, 2024
Letters Due: Noon, March 28, 2024

California Coastal Commission Hearing on SB951 on February 7, 2024

Sen. Scott Wiener’s remarks to the California Coastal Commission  December 12, 2023

SB-1211:Land use: accessory dwelling units (Skinner): OPPOSE

What is this bill about?  The text of the bill is about ADUs andministerial review of attached and unattached ADUs.  But the dark underbelly of this bill exposesthree common themes in California’s floundering housing policy.

Summary: Existing law, the Planning and Zoning Law, authorizes a local agency, by ordinance, to provide for the creation of accessory dwelling units (ADUs) in areas zoned for residential use, as specified. Existing law requires ministerial approval of accessory dwelling units, as specified, if the local agency does not adopt an ordinance governing accessory dwelling units, as described. Under existing law, a local agency is also required to ministerially approve an application for a building permit within a residential or mixed-use zone to create any of specified variations of accessory dwelling units. This bill contains other existing laws.

Hearing Date: Housing Committee: 3/19/2024

SB968: Roll over RHNA Credits (Kelly Seyarto) –  SUPPORT

What is the bill about?  This bill introduces a reasonable, much neededapproach to RHNA.  Quite simply, itallows a Council of Governments to consider prior overproduction of housingunits from a particular income category and allocate it to the same incomecategory in the next cycle.

Summary: Current law requires each council of governments or delegate subregion, as applicable, to develop a proposed methodology for distributing the existing and projected regional housing need to cities, counties, and cities and counties within the region or within the subregion, as provided. Current law requires the consideration of several specified factors in developing the methodology. Current law prohibits certain criteria from being a justification for a determination or reduction in a jurisdiction’s share of the regional housing need, including prior underproduction of housing in a city or county from the previous regional housing need allocation, as specified. This bill would permit the council of governments or delegate subregion, in developing the methodology, to consider prior overproduction of housing units in a city or county from the previous regional housing need allocation in a particular income category and to count it as credit toward the future regional housing need allocation of that same income category in the next cycle. The bill would provide that the amount eligible to count as credit toward the next cycle is determined by each jurisdiction’s most recent annual progress report, as specified.

Hearing Date: Housing Committee: 3/19/2024

California Housing Legislation Highlights 2019-2022

Download a .PDF of these images here.