To: CRLA Foundation Board of Directors
From: Brian Augusta, CRLAF Housing Unit
RE: Legislative Report, October 1, 2009- September 30, 2010
Policy Bills: CRLAF’s Housing Unit sponsored six bills this year, focusing on a range of housing and land use issues.
AB 602 (Feuer/Steinberg) – Restoring Housing Element enforcement: One of the most important tools for ensuring that each city and county plans for housing for our clients, including farmworkers, is the “housing element” of the general plan. The element is a five-year plan that is reviewed by the state department of housing, and must demonstrate that locals are planning for the housing needs of poor folks, setting a side enough land, removing barriers to housing and directing resources to its construction. Legal services advocates have successfully used these requirements in litigation to get real units built for our clients.
Unfortunately, a bad court of appeals decision in Urban Habitats v. Pleasanton significantly shortened the statute of limitations for challenging an inadequate housing element. Instead of allowing advocates to mount a challenge at anytime, the court shortened the SOL to the first 90 days, making future challenges very difficult. AB 602 is a two-year effort to restore the law to its status pre-Pleasanton. Despite strong opposition from local governments, the bill received bi-partisan support in both houses. The governor, however, vetoed the bill, in an almost incomprehensible veto message.
AB 702 (Salas) – Farmworkers: This bill would make a simple change to the Joe Serna, Jr. Farmworker Housing Grant Program. It would expand the definition of “farmworker” to include low-wage workers who process agricultural products off the farm, ensuring that more farmworker families can access Serna-funded affordable housing. The measure was signed by the governor, and took effect immediately.
SB 454 (Lowenthal) –Preserving Existing Affordable Housing: Much of the affordable and farmworker housing that exists in California has some form of financial subsidy attached to it that keeps the housing affordable for a fixed number of years (usually between 30-45 years). When those subsidy periods end, there is a risk that the housing will go to “market-rate” ending the affordability restrictions that make it affordable and accessible to our clients. In the early 90s advocates enacted a housing preservation law that ensures that tenants get notice when these restrictions end, and gives affordable developers an opportunity to step in and preserve the affordability. That law was set to expire this year, but SB 454 removes the sunset, making the law permanent. The measure was signed by the governor.
SB 1149 (Corbett)-Tenants living in foreclosed homes: CRLAF co-sponsored this measure along with Western Center and the California Reinvestment Coalition, to address the many problems legal services field offices have reported of tenants being forced out of foreclosed homes. Many tenants are told to leave in as little as 3 days, even though Federal law now guarantees them 90 days. Moreover, if they attempt to defend themselves in court they risk having a negative mark on their rental history that may prevent them from renting a unit in the future. The bill provides additional notice to tenants so they understand their rights, and ensures that tenants who defend themselves don’t end up on the ‘bad tenant’ list, by prohibiting the court from releasing their names. The measure was signed by the governor.
Disadvantaged Unincorporated Communities: CRLAF advocates Martha Guzman Aceves and Brian Augusta teamed up this year on a three-bill package, co-sponsored by several other CRLAF allies, aimed at addressing long standing infrastructure deficits in disadvantaged unincorporated communities (DUCs). The bills have grown out of our work with CRLA, Inc and Policy Link on the Community Equity Initiative (CEI), a multi-year project to work with residents of unincorporated communities to build leadership, develop political representation and address infrastructure deficits in island and other DUC communities.
The Community Equity Investment Act, SB 194 (Florez), encourages better use of federal infrastructure dollars (the Community Development Block Grant program) and ensures the involvement of disadvantaged communities in prioritizing how those dollars are spent. AB 863 (Arambula), focuses on the critical, if arcane, process of getting approval from the regional Local Area Formation Commission (LAFCo) to annex unincorporated communities, or extend services such as water and sewer. The bill gives residents the ability to initiate an annexation and requires LAFCos to consider the infrastructure problems in low-income communities in updating regional planning documents. The Governor vetoed both measures.
SB 1174 (Wolk), would have prioritized state planning dollars for cities and counties that agree to amend local plans to identify DUCs and begin addressing infrastructure deficits. The bill grew out of our successful efforts to convince the state Strategic Growth Council to set aside $12 million in state planning dollars specifically for disadvantaged communities. SB 1174 was held in the Appropriations committee, but our efforts to get the $12 million out to DUCs continues.