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Episode 1: What we need to accomplish, and why it's at the state level
81 Plays9 months ago
Introduction - who I am, why I care so nerdily about housing and why California legislation in particular, and what I'm hoping to do with this podcast. Brief primers on zoning, parking, discretionary approvals, and more of the many topics that will surely come up in 2024 legislation.
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Transcript
Introduction and Advocacy
00:00:00
Speaker
Hello and welcome to John Nerds Out on housing legislation. My name is John Meinert. I'm a resident of San Leandro, California, which is right next to Oakland. I work in healthcare and I'm a member and co-executive of the housing advocacy organization East Bay for Everyone. This podcast, of course, represents my views only. I've been dedicated to ending the housing crisis and making housing affordable for all for some years. That's why I do what I do.
00:00:29
Speaker
with a focus on the Bay Area, but also California and the United States as a whole. I have seen the crippling lack of housing, in fact, so many in my generation and other generations as I've lived here since 2009. The lack of housing impoverishes people at low income levels, but also middle income levels.
00:00:50
Speaker
It pushes families apart from each other. It forces people away from jobs that they prefer. It forces people out onto the street. It is a travesty in practically every way. It is a moral imperative for us to put an end to it. Ending the housing crisis is not about saying housing must now be affordable or else.
Impact of Housing Crisis
00:01:11
Speaker
The biggest piece of making housing affordable is making sure that we are building housing, and that's housing of all kinds. Public housing, private housing, all income levels of housing, low income, middle income, high income, all constructions. The basic insight that the pro-housing movement, also known as the MB movement, comes with is that the more homes you have, the cheaper housing is, and it really is that simple. People have tried to disprove this concept
00:01:41
Speaker
many times, many ways over the years, and they have all failed. Both in theory and in practice, through the experience of different countries and different cities and through the published research, we know that the supply of housing is the single biggest factor in the affordability of housing.
Barriers to Development
00:02:00
Speaker
So in this podcast, I am not intending to be going over all those arguments again.
00:02:06
Speaker
I'm going to be presupposing that we're adults here and we understand that we need housing of all kinds and all income levels. And we're going to talk about how we actually achieve that. Now, people who care about housing talk a lot about zoning. And fundamentally, zoning is the laws that cities pass that say, this is what you can build here. You cannot build above a certain height. You cannot build a certain type of building. You cannot build above a certain density.
00:02:37
Speaker
These laws exist in pretty much every city in California, and in my opinion, zoning has never really proven itself as a good policy unless your goal is making housing less affordable. As I said, browsers talk about zoning a lot, and so too am I, because zoning at the city level really is one of the biggest hindrances out there in getting enough housing bills.
00:03:03
Speaker
Literally, in most of the places you would want to build apartments, apartments are banned. Apartments should not be banned. It's pretty simple. I do recognize at the same time that zoning is by far not the only reason that there is not enough housing.
Legislative Efforts
00:03:21
Speaker
There are lots of other things besides zoning, including construction costs, including building codes, including labor availability, that there is not enough housing being built compared to demand.
00:03:35
Speaker
take a kitchen sink approach to this work, meaning I try to learn everything I can. When we learn of something that needs fixing, we try to fix it. But we also try to learn more things, and we try to find all the different things there are out there to fix. So a lot of this, though, is going to be about attempts at the state level by the California State Legislature
00:04:01
Speaker
to reduce or even eliminate exclusionary zoning, including single-family zoning, at the city level. Cities have pretty broad legal power to pass a wide range of regulations, especially on housing.
00:04:17
Speaker
But by the same token, the state has the legal authority under the California Constitution undo almost any of that if it is for a statewide purpose to address the housing crisis. They have started doing this earnestly and they are continuing to do it. And we must do it a lot more because we have passed a number of laws, but construction is still just inching along. Because we started way back in the game.
00:04:44
Speaker
from a point of exclusionary zoning being so deeply embedded in almost every city in California that the distance between what kind of laws are politically feasible to pass and what kind of laws are really enough to unlock construction is vast. The exciting thing, and one of the reasons I focus on the California legislature as opposed to other parts of the state,
00:05:07
Speaker
is that there is a lot of appetite at the state legislative level to ensure that more housing is built.
State vs City Politics
00:05:14
Speaker
And that goes kind of contrary to the common consensus at the city level. City politicians usually listen to NIMBYs, usually listen to people who say, oh, I support housing, but not in my backyard. But at the state legislature, you see the politicians who have graduated up and who have spoken to many more people and realized the systemic issue at the state level
00:05:36
Speaker
And they realize that NIMBYism adds up. They realize that NIMBYism needs to be stopped and that they are the ones with the role and responsibility to stop it.
Financial Hurdles and Regulations
00:05:47
Speaker
There is some stuff that the state is still bad at. We are still pretty bad at raising enough tax money to fund important social priorities like affordable housing and supportive housing to bring people out of homelessness.
00:06:02
Speaker
Some of that comes down to business not wanting to be taxed. Some of it comes down to the legacy of the 1970s tax revolt that is still written into our constitution. It makes it difficult to raise money even when there is a strong majority for it. But as I said, the state has pretty broad authority to change what cities are allowed to do. To the extent that the lack of housing supply comes down to regulations,
00:06:30
Speaker
The state has strong authority to undo that. So we are going to follow how the state does that and specifically what laws we pass or do not pass in the year 2024 to continue that effort and continue to move towards solving the housing crisis. So far, this podcast has sounded a little bit like an essay. And I don't think it's going to be like that as we continue.
Legislation and Guest Insights
00:06:57
Speaker
It's actually going to be a little gossipy.
00:06:59
Speaker
because we're going to go into individual bills. We're going to talk about the kinds of things they would do, who is driving them, what is the background of how they came up with it, and how might it be amended over time. Some of that comes down to personalities, interests, fundraising, as well as relationships with other activists. And the many different perspectives that different legislators bring to the legislature.
00:07:28
Speaker
You can see such a variety of different things happening when you look at laws coming out of the legislature as they start as bills and as they get amended, sometimes killed or completely changed from what they started over the course of their life. And again, that is what this podcast is going to be about. I hope to bring additional guests on so it will not be not just me talking.
00:07:54
Speaker
We will see who is listened to, who is not listened to, what concerns are addressed, what concerns are not addressed, and how we can do better over time.
State Laws vs Local Zoning
00:08:03
Speaker
Bills are already being introduced this month as we speak in January 2024. And we'll probably start focusing on the most interesting ones as they continue to be submitted. I will probably have to tell you some context about previous laws and previous years, some that have succeeded, some that have failed.
00:08:20
Speaker
They often color how the housing movement thinks about state legislation and what we want to achieve. There may be entirely new things too. Sometimes this will be technical. I will be looking at the exact details of how a bill was amended. Sometimes I will be talking with people about specific subject matter or their specific backgrounds and what they are looking for and what they are hoping for in state legislation.
00:08:49
Speaker
Now, I hope to talk about many different subjects on this podcast, but I know that I'm going to be coming back over and over to a lot of usual suspects. So let me give you a preview of what some of those are likely to be. First, as I mentioned, there are overrides on local zoning. There are laws that simply say for areas that meet these criteria, maybe it's being close to transit, maybe it's being close to a commercial street, maybe it's being in an affluent area,
00:09:19
Speaker
Here, the state now decrees apartments will be allowed when they were not before. So that is preemption of local zoning, where the state preempts or overrides the city ordinances on the subject. I'm also going to be talking about tenant protections. So laws like rent control that say that a landlord can only raise your rent by so much every month.
00:09:43
Speaker
This may not directly affect the housing supply. It protects tenants who are already living in existing housing. It does not make new housing appear or make new housing more affordable. It primarily just keeps rent from growing too fast. However, it helps people who are right here right now in need of help.
Costs and Parking Minimums
00:10:03
Speaker
It prevents a lot of harm and it is a major part of the pro-housing movement. We pay our production and protection.
00:10:12
Speaker
Another big topic is off-street parking minimums. These are the laws that many cities have, that for every new home you build, you have to build at least one parking space, sometimes one, sometimes one and a half, sometimes two. It turns out, the more parking you have to build alongside housing, first of all, the more expensive it is to build housing, second of all, the less room you have for the actual housing, and third, the more you induce
00:10:40
Speaker
the residents of this new housing to use cars, which they might not have otherwise. So it really is counterproductive from beginning to end and is worth sweeping aside.
Approval Hurdles and Incentives
00:10:52
Speaker
We may talk about the standards of discretion for housing approvals. This is a little more complicated than zoning, but it's more of a stealth way that cities make it hard to build housing. They may say, okay, well, it's legal to build an apartment building here.
00:11:09
Speaker
but you have to get the approval of our commission and they can deny it for any or no reason. They can deny it because neighbors complain. They can deny it because they don't like the color of your tie. Who knows? You have to go back to the drawing board every time that adds costs, every time that adds uncertainty, and it can make the zoning meaningless at worst. So making clear standards and practices by which developers can know in advance what will be allowed and what will not be allowed,
00:11:39
Speaker
is another very effective way to make housing more buildable. Another topic, density bonuses. We have the density bonus law that says, if you build to simplify an additional affordable unit in your apartment building, you then get to build an additional non affordable unit or market rate unit, with the idea being that the profit you make on that extra market rate unit makes it
00:12:07
Speaker
feasible to build that extra affordable unit that you got it for. This has been a way to get affordable housing that is restricted to certain incomes to be built, even if you don't have tax money to pay for it. The more density bonus you provide, the more affordable housing the private sector can give you. This law has actually been around for decades, but it has been made a lot more muscular recently and it can be made better.
Construction Costs and Reforms
00:12:38
Speaker
We know construction costs are through the roof, so another topic is the grab bag of making construction more feasible and less costly. And that can come in a lot of ways. An example that we're dealing with right now is single stair. What that means is pretty much every apartment building has to have two staircases, not one, even if it's a fairly small apartment building. That was instituted for fire reasons,
00:13:04
Speaker
but it's not necessarily well justified on fire reasons. And one of the downstream results has been that most of the housing we get in California is one of two kinds, single family housing or really big apartment buildings. Other countries, as well as the cities of Seattle and New York, allow for apartment buildings to use single staircases in more instances.
00:13:29
Speaker
And that may open up a lot more construction possibilities without, importantly, increasing fire risk. There's lots of stuff that we didn't really know was a hindrance until people started looking at it. Single stairs is an example. I think more are going to come to light over the next few years, maybe even new ones this year. Other things in the grab bag, labor. It takes very skilled laborers to put together an apartment building.
00:13:57
Speaker
There are not many of them, they are not treated very well, and not a lot of them are trained up.
Impact Fees and Zoning Challenges
00:14:03
Speaker
Another topic that we're probably going to get into, impact fees and inclusionary zoning. Impact fees are when a city says, okay, for every home you build, you have to pay us $20,000. Sometimes this is justified, but a lot of the time it's another way of being exclusionary without saying you are.
00:14:24
Speaker
Inclusionary zoning is when a city says, okay, you can build, but only if 10 or 15 or even 20% of the housing you build is affordable, restricted to certain income levels. Once again, can be good in some circumstances, but we do often see it as a disguised way to exclude housing being built at all. The California Environmental Quality Act, or CEQA, this is a very complicated subject.
00:14:53
Speaker
But I will say that the California Environmental Quality Act is certainly a hindrance to a lot of housing and reforming it in viable ways that continue to protect the environment is really important to the cause of housing.
City Planning and Housing Needs
00:15:08
Speaker
The last thing I'll briefly mention is putting obligations on cities.
00:15:13
Speaker
California has been doing that for decades as well. You may have heard it as RINA. That's R-H-N-A, which stands for Regional Housing Needs Allocation. It basically says that every city has an obligation to plan for, not necessarily build, but plan for a sufficient amount of housing to meet regional needs. And every eight years, the city has to not only update its plan for a new allocation,
00:15:40
Speaker
It also has to show the state that its plan is reasonable. The state has to sign off on it. The way we've implemented this has had mixed results, but there is room for reform. And it is a way to allow cities to plan for housing in their own way. You know, they like to say, oh, we know how we can build housing. We know what's the most appropriate place for it. Just let us do it. Well, this is a chance to let them put their money where their mouth is.
Legislative Cycle Overview
00:16:09
Speaker
So, follow along with me as we go through this year's cycle. We'll see what gets proposed, how it gets put through the ringer from its initial ambition, how different legislators and committees extract their pounds of flesh, and what eventually gets signed by the governor and passed into law. I'm going to mention a little housekeeping about the California legislative cycle. I really think of legislation as being on a one-year cycle. People call it two years. I'll explain why I think of it as one year.
00:16:36
Speaker
Most bills get introduced at the start of each year and then has the rest of the year to go through the various committees and get voted out. It gets introduced in the assembly or the Senate. If it gets out of the assembly or Senate, then it goes to the other house, the Senate or the assembly, to go through the same process again, to go through committees there and get out of that floor. This year, the deadline to get out of the second house is August 31st, 2024. Then by September 30th, the governor will have to sign or veto all the laws.
00:17:06
Speaker
Or in some cases, if he wants to make a point, he can let it go into law without his signature. And then if he signs the law, then it will take effect January 1st, 2025. There are exceptions. Some can go into effect earlier. Some can go into effect later. January 1st is the default. Technically, we are currently in the second year of the two-year 2023-24 cycle.
00:17:30
Speaker
It is a two year cycle in the sense that sometimes a bill will fail in the first of two years, and then in the second year it will be brought back. And they call that making it a two year bill. However, honestly, most bills are not two year bills. Most bills live or die in the year they are proposed.
Podcast Timing and Strategy
00:17:50
Speaker
And calling something a two year bill, unfortunately, sadly, is often a euphemism for this is not making it through, but we're not going to abandon it quite yet.
00:18:00
Speaker
I will also point out that because it's 2024, it's an election year, all 80 assembly members and 20 of the 40 senators, their seats are up for election. So this is sort of the lighter of the two years. Usually a lot of the really big legislation happens in the first year of the cycle, the odd year, the non-election year. So this will be a good place, I think, to start the podcast because it will not be quite as frenetic, but I'm sure there will still be a lot to talk about.
00:18:31
Speaker
I'm hoping in the next podcast to talk about some of the victories we've had at the state level in the past several years and why they've been mixed victories. And either in the episode after that, or maybe in the same episode, we will start to look at the bills that are being submitted and start to sort out which are more and less exciting and which we want to follow. That's all for this time. I hope to join you again soon.
Listener Engagement Plans
00:18:58
Speaker
I hope to make an email address that listeners can direct questions to. I do not have that email address yet, but frankly, if you're listening to this episode when it comes out, you probably already know how to contact me. But until next time, thank you and keep on learning.