By Manuela Tobias

WHAT THE TWO BILLS WOULD DO

AB 2011, by Democratic Assemblymember Buffy Wicks of Oakland, would fast-track housing development along the ubiquitous strip malls that flank California’s roads. In order to skip lengthy and costly local review processes, including the much-dreaded California Environmental Quality Act, or CEQA, developers would pay their workers union-level wages and in bigger projects, offer apprenticeships and health benefits, and cap at least a portion of rents. Apartments would have to be either 100% affordable or mixed-use, meaning market-rate but affordable to at least 15% of lower income earners, or 8% of very low income and 5% of extremely low income earners.
SB 6, by Democratic Sen. Anna Caballero of Salinas, would bypass the first step in permitting housing on commercial real estate while allowing other opportunities for local input, like CEQA. It applies to a much wider swath of land and doesn’t cap rents, but developers must use at least some union labor on every project. If at least two union shops don’t bid on the project, union-level wages kick in.

WHO SUPPORTS THEM

The Building and Construction Trades, an umbrella union of 450,000 workers, and the bigger Labor Federation behind them, support SB 6, while the state carpenters union and affordable housing developers backed AB 2011. The bigger unions dropped their lethal opposition to AB 2011 once the Assembly and Senate struck a deal that let both bills through. Pro-housing Yes in My Backyard activists, or YIMBYs, who have been trying to increase density through similar measures for years, are among the proposal’s loudest cheerleaders.

WHO IS OPPOSED

Dozens of cities and local control advocates say the bills take away critical neighborhood input to development decisions and worry local governments may lose tax revenue from commercial properties. The Assembly bill, which razes more neighborhood forums, has a longer list of opponents. Equity groups who originally pushed for higher affordability requirements in both bills had to settle for less, while developers worry the labor and affordability standards will be too high to meet.

WHY IT MATTERS

California needs 2.5 million more homes by 2030 and almost no one wants them in their backyard. These bills would unlock a glut of empty stores, offices and parking lots for as many as 1.6 million housing units — market conditions permitting — without contributing to urban sprawl. The labor truce also matters: Following years of heated debate and dead bills, unions put their differences aside, at least for this year.

GOVERNOR’S CALL ✅

Newsom signed both bills on Sept. 28.

After calling housing affordability “the original sin” of California, Newsom said that these housing bills would be different. “This is a big moment as we begin… to take responsibility,” he said at a press conference in San Francisco. “Not to give the same speech and expect the same applause, but to begin to do something about it.”