Last Saturday, Governor Newsom put down his pen after signing the last of this year’s bills into law.
We’re so excited to share that the Governor signed nine of EBHO’s endorsed bills into law! An additional endorsed bill, a proposed constitutional amendment, is heading to the ballot for voter approval in 2024.
We could not have done this without you! Thank you to all of the members of our Policy Committee who helped us determine this year’s endorsements, and everyone who to your legislators or the Governor in support of our priority bills.
Team EBHO sent over 350 emails to 21 representatives in support of four of our priority bills. Your advocacy made a huge difference – all of these bills passed!
Legislative Highlights
Many of these new affordable housing laws reduce barriers for affordable housing developers so we can build affordable housing as quickly as possible.
- AB 480 (Ting), which EBHO cosponsored, strengthens the Surplus Land Act, which encourages the use of public land for affordable housing development. New provisions guarantee affordable housing on large sites such as the Concord Naval Weapons Station.
- SB 4 (Wiener) unlocks over 171,000 potentially developable acres statewide owned by faith institutions or nonprofit colleges.
- SB 423 (Wiener) extends streamlining provisions that have led to the creation of thousands of new affordable homes statewide.
The fight for comprehensive tenant protections at the state level continues, but we did score one key legislative win this year.
- SB 567 (Durazo) closes loopholes in existing tenant protection law to protect renters facing evictions for renovations or landlord move-in.
EBHO is proud to be part of the growing conversation about social housing!
- SB 555 (Wahab) requires the state to conduct a comprehensive study on creating affordable and social housing at scale by December 31, 2026.
Finally, there’s an exciting fight coming to your ballots in 2024!
- ACA-1 (Aguiar-Curry) will be on our ballots in November 2024 and will give our communities the tools they need to invest in affordable housing by lowering the outdated voter threshold supermajority to 55% for affordable housing bond measures.
What Comes Next
The Legislature reconvenes in January to kick off the second year of this legislative session. We will continue advocacy on our endorsed two-year bills. Two critical fights to look forward to will be an effort to give tenants the first right to purchase rental properties and efforts to secure more funding opportunities for affordable housing across the East Bay.
We want to hear from you! Join EBHO’s Policy Committee to weigh in on our endorsements in 2024 and learn how to take action on state, local, and regional policy.
To learn more about Policy Committee, contact Senior Director of Policy Jeff Levin at jeff@ebho.org. For questions about our legislative work, please contact Policy Associate Megan Nguyen at megan@ebho.org.