Budget Success for Homelessness
$2 billion for the No Place Like Home (NPLH) initiative. No Place Like Home includes funding for the “Bringing Families Home” pilot program, which would provide housing assistance to families whose children remain in the foster-care system solely due to the parents’ lack of stable housing. An estimated one-third of the children in foster care could be reunited with their families if their families could afford a stable place to live. Housing California advocated for $10 million for the first year in order to ensure success of the pilot program. Housing California also:
- Assisted Senate pro Tem’s office in language for the California Emergency Solutions Grants Program, which secured $35 million for rapid re-housing and street outreach.
- Assisted in increasing by $12 million (to a total of $47 million) CalWORKS Housing Support Program and creating Housing and Disability Advocacy Program, with $45 million, to enroll people in SSI and get them housed.
Homelessness
AB 801: Success for Homeless Youth in Higher Education (Bloom) requires public universities to give priority admission preferences to students who are homeless in the same way that foster youth receive a preference.
AB 1760: Decriminalize Youth Victims of Trafficking for Sex Work (Santiago & Liu) stops the senseless criminalization of trafficked minors for sex work or non-violent crimes related to trafficking victims by granting them immunity from prosecution. It also creates an interagency working group to develop a state plan to serve and protect sexually exploited and trafficked minors that incorporates developing specialized supportive services.
AB 1995: Community College Shower Access for Homeless Students (Williams) requires community college campuses that have shower facilities for students to grant access to those facilities to any student that presents as homeless, who is enrolled in coursework, has paid enrollment fees, and is in good standing.
AB 2346: Better Access to Social Services Hearings ‘Statement of Positions’ (Baker) creates better access to county “Statements of Positions” and improves individuals’ ability to represent themselves in hearings by making the statements available in an electronic format, online, at least two days prior to a hearing.
Affordable Housing, Land Use, and Finance
AB 2031: Boomerang Bond (Bonta) gives cities the authority to approve issuance of bonds for affordable development that will be paid for with any portion of its “boomerang funds” without voter approval. There is no fiscal impact to the state’s General Fund and no property taxes would be diverted from the other taxing entities.
AB 2501: Strengthen Density Bonus Law (Bloom) addresses a number of vague provisions of Density Bonus law and strengthens Density Bonus incentives. It clarifies that the legislative intent of the law is to encourage the development of affordable apartments and that the incentives provided for in the law are available “by right” to housing providers who include affordable apartments. This law ensures that local governments process Density Bonus applications quickly and efficiently, creates certainty that inaction by a city or county will not delay their proposed housing development, clarifies that applicants for a density bonus do not need to provide financial justifications for the incentives they’re requesting, and increases certainty regarding the number of additional apartments a developer gets to build as a result of the density increase. It also limits cities’ and counties’ ability to impose additional requirements on Density Bonus developers that are intended to block development, for example design and size limitations that make inclusion of affordable apartments infeasible.
SB 873: Increase Value of State Housing Tax Credit (Beall) eliminates the state housing tax credit’s “ownership” requirement, thereby increasing the value of every housing tax credit that investors purchase. This increase in value of every state housing tax credit purchased incentivizes investment in state tax credits, which in turn supports the development of much-needed affordable apartments for Californians priced out of the rental market.