2021 Year in Review

A Year of Historic Investment and Legislative Bottleneck

At the start of 2021 and the new legislative year, state leaders continued to wrestle with unprecedented challenges affecting communities across the state. As of January 2021, 2.7 million Californians had contracted COVID-19 and thousands of Californians were out of work as the unemployment rate had more than doubled compared to January 2020. Consequently, an increasing number of individuals and families with low incomes struggled to stay housed. At this time, California’s Legislative Analyst’s Office released a report highlighting that the high cost of housing had become a major contributor to housing insecurity and homelessness. The report encouraged state leaders to set goals, establish oversight mechanisms and consider revenue sources that may provide for one-time or ongoing funding for homelessness programs. The California State Legislature responded by providing a record number of competing solutions to our state’s homelessness and affordable housing challenges. Legislators also faced logistical constraints imposed by COVID-19 and working remotely which slowed progress during the year. These challenges and differing approaches helped to create a year in which legislative solutions were reduced.

In March 2021, as the culmination of a years-long effort with California Housing Partnership, Residents United Network (RUN), affordable housing and homelessness partners, and multi-sector allies, we officially launched the California Roadmap Home 2030 (Roadmap Home). The Roadmap Home is a comprehensive, racial-equity centered, and evidence-based framework of over 57 policies, which if fully enacted by 2030, would end homelessness and create stable and affordable homes for all Californians. Housing California, along with our partners, sponsored and championed 12 Roadmap policy priorities for 2021. We unveiled the Roadmap Home framework on March 25 at a virtual press conference featuring Assemblymember David Chiu; Business, Consumer Services and Housing Agency Secretary Lourdes Castro Ramírez; and allies, advocates, and supporters throughout California. Roadmap Home represents the priorities and commitments of more than 40 multi-sector partners with a proven record of creating affordable housing, fighting homelessness and advancing tenants’ rights, all accomplished through a racial justice lens–and the policies within the Roadmap Home reflect the broader housing justice and affordable housing movement.

A Historic Budget Win

In the spring, California recognized a budget surplus and saw an opportunity to meet the scale of need. During this time, Housing California advocated aggressively for robust investments that aligned with Roadmap Home’s scale and scope. Ultimately, the 2020-2021 California State Budget, signed in June 2021 by Governor Newsom, contained a never-before-seen investment of over $12 billion in solving homelessness and providing affordable housing resources. This substantial funding and the budget surplus inspired legislators to produce and advance proposals that sought to augment key programs critical to addressing homelessness and housing insecurity. As a result, we saw significant Roadmap Home policy priorities enacted through the budget, due in part to the consistent advocacy of Housing California, RUN, and our housing and homelessness advocacy partners, leading up to the release of the state budget.

Most notable is California’s first-ever multi year commitment of resources to address homelessness, with the intention for on-going support. An ongoing revenue source for local homelessness services and housing was one of Roadmap Home’s 2021 policy priorities, which Assemblywoman Luz Rivas and the 300-plus members of the Bring California Home (BCH) coalition, co-led by Housing California, championed through AB 71. While the legislation was ultimately held as a two-year bill, the heroic efforts of Assemblywoman Rivas and Bring California Home helped lay the foundation for the final budget to commit $2 billion over the next two years for local homelessness resources. Our focus will be on ensuring this commitment is funded through future appropriations. In addition, the budget includes particular emphasis on ending family homelessness through investing in essential programs at the Department of Social Services, and an additional investment of $2.75 billion over two years to augment the successful Homekey program.

Legislative Challenges and Small Victories

While 2021 saw momentous new and continued investments in affordable housing and homelessness, there was less progress made through legislation. The Legislature and Governor Newsom faced unprecedented and numerous challenges, and California’s leaders were able to coalesce around many successful responses. Yet, legislation to address homelessness and affordable housing did not go far enough to meet the scale of housing needs in California.

Housing legislation snapshot

Housing California sponsored six bills, supported 26 bills, and opposed 13 bills in the 2021 legislative cycle. At the end of the legislative session, Governor Newsom signed 31 bills focused on housing production and accountability measures to affirmatively further fair housing. Another 7 bills signed by the Governor combat homelessness, including Housing California’s sponsored bill, AB 816 (Chiu) as well as SJR 6 (Wiener).

National Housing Trust Fund

Housing California’s sponsored bill, AB 816 (Chiu) prioritized resources our state receives from the federal government in a program called the national Housing Trust Fund. This program, which receives over $100 million each year and will soon be receiving more through this legislation along with recent federal investments, will have a meaningful impact on the development of housing for people experiencing homelessness.

Systems improvements

Several bills that Housing California supported, and that were signed into law, dealt with making fixes and improvements to statewide and local systems. For example, AB 1043 (Bryan) will create a new housing income category, named Acutely Low Income, which would be defined as 15% of AMI and below, and AB 362 (Quirk-Silva) will establish and improve safety standards for homeless shelters. Additionally, AB 1220 (Rivas) will rename the Homeless Coordinating and Financing Council to the California Interagency Council on Homelessness and ensure that shelters throughout California comply with the evidence-based Housing First model.

Land use

Three other bills supported by Housing California would increase accountability and enforcement of land use laws and practices. AB 1304 (Santiago) creates more accountability by closing major loopholes that have allowed cities to ignore fair housing needs and regulations, and strengthen fair housing implementation across the state. Similarly, AB 721 (Bloom) and AB 215 (Chiu) will ensure cities dismantle known racial segregation patterns by nullifying private restrictive covenants on properties slated for affordable housing development, and strengthening housing element requirements, respectively.

Improved services and supports through data

Other critical Housing California support bills that were signed include legislation to improve systems that identify and collect much-needed data on those most in need of housing and services like AB 27 (Rivas) which creates three pilot technical assistance centers to identify youth experiencing homelessness and AB 977 (Gabriel) which requires the submission of data on people served in its local Homeless Management Information System (HMIS). Temporary housing will also see improvements as AB 362 (Quirk-Silva) establishes shelter safety standards by limiting state funding based on habitability violations and ensuring protections for those experiencing homelessness remain a priority.

Insights

Overall, the affordable housing bills that did pass relied heavily on the market to resolve our state’s housing challenge. Even with eased regulations, the market is unlikely to help the most severely rent-burdened Californians, who are disproportionately Black and brown families. Housing that is affordable to those with the lowest incomes needs to be heavily subsidized in order to even be built and operated, and the market has never provided enough healthy and stable housing that is affordable to low-income people.

Bills that Failed to Pass

The set of bills that passed this year still fell short of the bold legislative agenda needed to provide every Californian a stable and affordable place to call home. Bills that aligned with the Roadmap Home and failed to pass would have reformed zoning laws to incentivize production of more affordable housing like AB 115 (Bloom) would have provided nonprofit developers with the resources to grow California’s affordable housing stock with SB 5 (Atkins) and AB 411 (Irwin), and have enabled community organizations to prevent displacement and help low-income Californians remain in their homes through AB 1375 (Bloom). Ultimately, a cacophony of competing interests prevented the Legislature from coalescing around these game-changing solutions. Converted to two year bills, these bills can be acted upon in January 2022. Aside from affordable development, Housing California sponsored AB 328 (Chiu) which would have directed savings from the closure of State prisons to fund housing and services for formerly incarcerated people experiencing homelessness. In continued collaboration with partners like Corporation for Supportive Housing (CSH) and criminal justice reform organizations, we will work to get AB 328 passed and funded in 2022.

Besides homelessness and housing production bills that didn’t make the cut this year, Housing California had two additional support bills vetoed by Governor Newsom, AB 1487 (Gabriel) which would have created a “Homeless Prevention Fund” and provided Californians at-risk of eviction with access to civil legal aid services, and AB 369 (Kamlager) which would have reimbursed street care providers aiding unhoused people.

Looking Forward to 2022

To forge a viable path toward real progress, state leadership must accept that there is no silver bullet. Issues like homelessness and housing affordability are complex and require a comprehensive and aligned approach that leads with bold equity-centered and people-focused policy solutions like those found in Roadmap Home 2030. Making the Roadmap Home’s vision into reality requires collective action, political will, and a keen focus on evidence-based housing policy to produce benefits that will serve those that are most impacted by a broken housing system. We are exploring ways to collaborate further with our RUN leaders with lived experience and with all of our partners to advance our collective legislative and budgetary policies.We are also hopeful that federal funding through the Build Back Better Act will inspire state leaders to take bolder steps to combat homelessness and produce the affordable housing to meet the scale of need in the coming year.

Building upon the successes of 2021, Housing California is working with the Legislature and Governor Newsom to further advance budgetary and legislative policies with the vision of ensuring every Californian has an affordable, healthy and stable home in a thriving, sustainable community.