BILLS PASSED & SIGNED BY THE GOVERNOR:
(And supported or sponsored by CalRHA)
- AB 916 (Salas): Prohibits a city or county legislative body from adopting or enforcing an ordinance requiring a public hearing as a condition of reconfiguring existing space to increase the bedroom count within an existing dwelling unit.
- AB 1695 (Santiago): Allows for state funding and loans for the development of affordable multifamily housing projects utilizing adaptive reuse of existing buildings.
- AB 2011 (Wicks): Affordable Housing and High Roads Jobs Act allows housing to be built by right in infill areas currently zoned for office, retail, and parking uses.
- AB 2139 – (Gallagher): Aids disaster recovery efforts by authorizing local agencies to continue using template floor plans for a period of six years from the plan’s approval by the local agency.
- AB 2221 (Quirk-Silva): Clarifies state ADU law to make ADUs easier to build, especially in unused commercial space, in “missing middle” housing, and in existing single-family homes.
- AB 2503 (Garcia): Funds study to establish consistent terminology across California codes to describe parties to an agreement, lease, or other contract for rental of residential real property.
- AB 2668 (Grayson): Planning and zoning. Specifies that a local government is required to approve a development if it determines that the development is consistent with objective planning standards, as specified.
- SB 897 (Wieckowski): ADUs. Requires that the standards imposed on ADUs be objective, defined as one that involves no personal or subjective judgment by a public official and is uniformly verifiable.
- SB 989 (Hertzberg): Prevents unintended tax increases when homeowners move, be they seniors, disabled or forced to relocate due to natural disaster; became necessary due to unclear language in Prop. 19. … and opposed by CalRHA:
- SB 679 (Kamlager): Establishes an independent county-wide agency able to raise its own public and private revenue to fund solutions to Los Angeles’s current affordable housing crisis.
- SB 1017 (Eggman): Allows survivors of domestic violence who are tenants to retain their current housing, avoid eviction, and even sue their landlords who try to unlawfully evict them because of the abuse.
- SB 1477 (Wieckowski): Limits the use of wage garnishment in the collection of unpaid rent and other debts. CalRHA took no position:
- AB 1738 (Boerner-Horvath): Requires multifamily communities to install EV charging stations and infrastructure in common areas during certain retrofit projects.
- AB 2559 (Ward): Reusable Tenant Screening Reports.
- SB 1157 (Hertzberg): Urban water use objectives. Require that from January 1, 2025, to January 1, 2030, the standard for indoor residential water use be 47 gallons per capita daily and beginning January 1, 2030, 42 gallons per capita daily.
- SCA 2 (Allen and Wiener): Repeals Article 34 of the California Constitution, requiring that development, construction, or acquisition of publicly-funded low-rent housing projects to be approved by a majority of voters in a city or county.
BILLS VETOED BY THE GOVERNOR
AB 1687 (Seyarto): Governor’s powers during emergencies. Governor’s veto message: This bill provides that the Governor, during a state of emergency or state of war emergency, may only suspend a statute or regulation that is in connection with the specific conditions of the proclaimed emergency. At best, this bill is redundant and therefore unnecessary. The Emergency Services Act already requires any suspension of laws or regulations issued by the Governor during times of emergency or war be directly related to the mitigation of the declared emergency. By imposing duplicative obligations, this bill compromises the state’s ability to swiftly respond to the needs of residents in times of crisis. Additional redundant layers of justification, as required by this bill, would only invite frivolous lawsuits. This could delay or de-rail state emergency response and recovery efforts, negatively impacting the most vulnerable California residents and potentially costing lives.
SB 1262 Bradford: Access to court records. Governor’s veto message: I am returning SB 1262 without my signature. This bill would change superior court rules to allow publicly-accessible electronic court criminal indexes to be searched with a subject’s driver’s license number or date of birth. This bill would override a 2021 appellate court decision and current court rules that strike a fair balance between public access to court records, public safety, and an individual’s constitutional right to privacy. While this bill may provide for a more convenient process for companies conducting commercial background checks, it would also allow any member of the public to easily access individuals’ sensitive personal information online.
SB 1482 (Allen): EV Charging Infrastructure. Governor’s veto message: This bill requires the Department of Housing and Community Development to research, develop, and consider proposing for adoption mandatory building standards for installation of electric charging infrastructure for parking spaces in new, multifamily dwellings. I agree with the author’s intent to increase access to EV charging technology for Californians living in multifamily housing, which is necessary to increase the number of zero emission vehicles on the road. However, I believe this issue is best addressed administratively in order to balance our charging objectives with our efforts to expand affordable housing. DHCD is already working with many stakeholders and state agencies in a deliberative public process to aggressively expand mandatory EV charging requirements in new housing developments. This approach allows for other important considerations, such as the cost of affordable housing and feasibility of implementation.
BILLS KILLED
Better than defeating bad legislation at the ballot box or at the very end via the Governor’s veto, is killing it before it can come to a floor vote. Following are such bills:
- AB 1710 (Lee): Would enact legislation relating to the regulation of residential LED fixtures that create artificial light pollution at night.
- AB 1771 (Ward): Would charge an additional 25% capital gains tax on almost every residential property sold within three years of purchase.
- AB 1791 (Nazarian): Would authorize cities and counties to cap rent increases on single-family rentals, regardless of age, if owned by corporations with 10 units or more and with a specified gross income.
- AB 1858 (Quirk Silva): Would extend health and safety regulations to substandard buildings.
- AB 2021 (Wicks): TOPA, Tenant Opportunity to Purchase Act, gives right of first refusal to purchase the property to tenants and non-profits.
- AB 2050 (Lee): Would prohibit property owners who have owned a rental property for less than five years from using Ellis Act to withdraw rental accommodations and someone who used Ellis Act from being able to do so again for 10 years.
- AB 2203 (Rivas): Would prohibit rental property owners from accessing a credit report when a prospective tenant receives a government subsidy.
- AB 2289 (Lee): Would impose an annual tax at a rate of 1.5% of a resident of this state’s worldwide net worth in excess of $1 billion or in excess of $500 million for married taxpayers filing separately.
- AB 2297 (Wicks): Tenancy in Lieu of Security Deposit.
- AB 2383 (Jones Sawyer): Would make it illegal for landlords to require an applicant to disclose a criminal record during the initial application phase.
- AB 2469 (Wicks): Would create a rent registry to collect information from landlords.
- AB 2713 (Wicks): Would prohibit an owner from terminating a tenancy if the owner or relative already occupies a unit at the property or if there is a vacancy at the property.
- SB 1026 (Weickowski): Would require landlords to provide a specific energy-efficiency disclosure form to tenants before entering into a rental agreement.
- SB 1324 (Durazo): Would treat unpaid rent from the pandemic as consumer debt, just like an unpaid credit card debt, subject to debt collection rules.
Reprinted with permission of the Small Property Owners of San Francisco Institute (SPOSFI) News. For more information on becoming a member of SPOSFI or to send a tax-deductible donation, please visit their website at www.smallprop.org or call (415) 647-2419.