More on Affordable Housing in CA
Hey Church Family,
Thanks to those who took the time to read and use the tool to contact our elected representatives about SB 9 and SB 10 two weeks ago. I wanted to share a brief update and give you a couple of other opportunities to help our community this week.
Big week for SB 9 and 10 this Week!
There is a strong chance that SB 9 and 10 will be up for a vote in the Assembly this week. For those who missed my explanation in my last email, you can go back and read it here. You can also read the LA Times’ Editorial Board endorsement of the bills, where they said the following:
In California, lawmakers have an opportunity this year to take small but vital steps toward easing the housing crisis. Senate Bills 9 and 10 would allow small multifamily buildings on single-family lots. These are the two most controversial housing bills this year. That should tell you just how politicized housing legislation has become because, despite all the angst, these bills probably won’t make a big impact on home construction any time soon.
And yet, lawmakers should still pass SB 9 and SB 10, and Gov. Gavin Newsom should still sign them. California needs to dismantle exclusionary zoning. This will have to be a bill-by-bill and city-by-city process until, finally, California communities remove the restrictions that stifle home creation and perpetuate segregation and inequality.
If you want to see them pass, it is crucial to contact your assembly member this week. I just got off the phone with my Assemblymember’s office, and they said, “Please have your neighbors call us too! We want to hear from the community before we take these votes!”
You can call the office in support by using this tool.
I promise, it is easy and only takes 2 minutes of your time, and can help our state make progress in becoming more affordable! If you are intimidated by that option, you can also email them using the tool below. Of course, email is not as effective as a call, but it takes even less time (10 seconds!) and gets the message across:
You can also forward this email to your friends and family to make the message heard loud and clear!
Fair Housing Element in LA
In addition to state-level housing bills, the city of LA is in the midst of an update to its housing element. The housing element has the potential to be a very impactful document in the coming years: the housing element is a master plan of where the city will legally allow new housing (which is desperately needed!) over the next ten years. In the past, I have given a more detailed explanation of how this works, but the short of it is: without planning for more housing, the status quo of rents going up and up will get worse. The last time LA did this (in 2010/11), it did not set ambitious targets for building new housing, and that was a big reason why rents did this over the last seven years:
Thankfully, the Housing Element that LA currently is looking at adopting is much better than past iterations. But there is one big problem with the proposed housing element: it does not go far enough to ask wealthy parts of the city to produce housing. In the current draft of the housing element, much of the more affluent and exclusive neighborhoods in Los Angeles (especially the westside and San Fernando Valley) are allowed to keep stopping the production of homes in their neighborhood. LA has a long history of limiting the homes in wealthy neighborhoods, which has limited our city’s economic growth; and made our city more unequal. Furthermore, asking neighborhoods like Lincoln Heights to do all the building creates more risk for gentrification. If we can spread new housing throughout the city, we would likely see rents and gentrification pressures stabilize and eventually decrease significantly.
So it is essential to let the city council know that we want more housing, but we also want to see fairness in how that housing is built throughout the city. So please, use the button to send public comments to the city council. You can copy this template I made to create your text for your public comment.
Also, check your email inbox to make sure you validate your public comment (otherwise, they may think you are spamming them and not read your comment into the public record).