California lawmakers sped to the close of the legislative session on Friday, addressing one of their signature issues with a sweeping package of bills aiming to address the state’s crippling housing costs.

The bills expect to raise billions in funding to help finance the construction thousands of new homes for the state’s low-income residents. They also attempt to ease local regulations on home building — a necessary move, lawmakers said, to help middle-class Californians who are now overwhelmed by costs.

“I’ve read study after study after study outlining this crisis,” said Assemblyman Richard Bloom (D-Santa Monica), one of the leading legislators on housing issues. “We’re here to do something about it.”

Three measures, Senate Bills 2, 3 and 35, comprise the key parts of the housing deal. Under SB 2, those refinancing their homes or filing other real estate documents — aside from home and commercial property sales — will pay a starting fee of $75 with a maximum of $225 paid per transaction. The measure is expected to raise about $250 million a year to finance the construction of affordable housing.

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SB 3 places a bond measure on the November 2018 statewide ballot with $3 billion set aside to also finance low-income development, and an additional $1 billion for veterans home loans. SB 35 would require cities and counties to limit environmental, planning and other reviews on land already zoned for a developer’s proposed amount of housing.

Gov. Jerry Brown is expected to sign the three bills.

“This comprehensive approach does what’s long been needed in California — build new homes and improve access to housing,” Brown said in a joint statement over the summer with Assembly Speaker Anthony Rendon and Senate President Pro Tem Kevin de León.

Housing was one of many major issues lawmakers addressed before adjourning for the year, including legislation that would make California a so-called sanctuary state for immigrants here illegally and a bill to move up the 2018 presidential primary to the spring.

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Growing housing costs have touched every part of California. The state’s median home value of $505,800 is more than 2½ times the national average, and nearly 2 million residents pay more than half their income on rent.

Just this week, the U.S. Census bureau revealed that one in five Californians is living in poverty — the nation’s highest rate — once accounting for housing and other costs of living.

“The poverty rate in California, everyone talks about it,” said state Sen. Toni Atkins (D-San Diego), author of SB 2. “Look at everything we do. For child care, for education, for minimum wage, for health care. All those things are significant. And because of housing costs, it negates all those good things.”

This year’s decision represents lawmakers’ largest attempt to address the problem in recent memory. In 2011, at the height of the state’s budget crisis, legislators ended an urban renewal program that contributed billions of dollars to finance low-income housing. Ever since, lawmakers introduced a version of SB 2 every year to no avail. Last year, other major housing legislation crumbled after Brown and lawmakers couldn’t agree to a final deal.

Even though lawmakers hailed Friday’s votes as historic, the bills won’t put much of a dent in California’s affordability problems. The state will remain billions of dollars short annually of the money needed to finance new homes for the neediest Californians, according to state and third-party estimates of the legislation. Similarly, tens of thousands of additional new homes will be needed each year simply to keep pace with population growth.

Opponents of the legislation noted that the state’s problems are so large that it would be prohibitively expensive to address them with new taxpayer spending.

“The numbers prove that this is simply not the case,” Assemblyman Jay Obernolte (R-Big Bear Lake) said during debate on SB 2 Thursday evening.

Despite the bills’ limited effects, the votes were far from assured. Rendon held the roll call vote on SB 2 open for nearly an hour Thursday evening as the measure was two votes short of a two-thirds supermajority threshold needed for passage. SB 2 passed after Rendon held beer-fueled lobbying efforts off the floor of the Assembly with two Democrats who were holding out, and thanks to a Republican assemblyman who unexpectedly voted in favor.

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The lawmaker, Brian Maienschein of San Diego, said his decision was motivated by an outbreak of hepatitis A in his city, which has killed 16 homeless residents in recent months. Maienschein, who worked on homelessness issues at the United Way in San Diego prior to his election, said he didn’t like forcing homeowners to pay more, but the problem had reached emergency levels.

“This is a public health crisis,” Maienschein said. “Our economy is at risk. And everyone in San Diego’s quality of life is affected by this.”

Republican lawmakers also raised sharp objections to SB 3, the housing bond. GOP legislators who are military veterans argued that legislative leaders included $1 billion for veterans’ home loans only to engender sympathy from voters at the ballot box.

“We have taken the image of a veteran and wrapped this other item in the flag,” Assemblyman Rocky Chavez (R-Oceanside) said during debate Thursday night. “Ladies and gentlemen, as a veteran I find that offensive.”

Atkins attributed part of the difficulty in securing the votes for a housing package to fatigue among Democrats, who voted earlier this year to increase the gas tax and extend cap and trade, the state’s primary program to combat climate change. Like SB 2, both those measures required two-thirds supermajorities, and Democrats vulnerable to reelection battles next year were wary of a third such decision.

The lone Democrat who voted against SB 2, Sabrina Cervantes of Riverside, called the bill “a regressive tax that disproportionately affects the middle class.”

“It took a lot of effort,” Atkins said. “But it was time.”

liam.dillon@latimes.com

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Twitter: @dillonliam

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Updates on California politics</s>If California lawmakers needed another reason to pass legislation to address the state’s housing crisis, the U.S. Census Bureau has provided one.

Annual data released this week again confirm that when housing costs and other living expenses are figured in, California has the nation’s highest poverty rate. One in 5 Californians lives in poverty. Why? Because the staggering cost of paying for a roof over one’s head has left people struggling to survive.

This should be no surprise. The evidence of California’s housing crisis — and the poverty that results — is right in front of our eyes. It’s there in the tents and homeless encampments that have sprung up in recent years, and in the prevalence of people living in campers on city streets. It’s also there in the bumper-to-bumper traffic on the freeways every morning and evening as people commute to their city jobs from far-flung, somewhat-more-affordable suburbs.

Given all that visible evidence, it has been truly mind-boggling to watch California lawmakers hem and haw over whether to pass a handful of bills that would begin — just begin — to fix the problems that have led to the state’s housing crisis. Those include both the general shortage of housing construction for people of all income levels and the lack of funding to build affordable housing for the poorest residents.

Three key bills are designed to address those problems. Two of them appear to have enough support to pass, thankfully. SB 35 would streamline housing approvals in communities that have fallen behind on their “fair share” housing construction goals. SB 3 would put a $4-billion bond on the June 2018 ballot to help construction of new affordable rental housing and to provide low-interest loans to veterans buying homes.

But SB 2 is in jeopardy. That bill would impose a new $75 fee on certain real estate transactions, such as mortgage refinancings or liens filed by contractors. That’s a minor additional cost, but the payoff for the state would be a permanent source of funding — $250 million a year — to help build affordable housing.

The bill requires approval by two-thirds of the members of each house of the Legislature. Some lawmakers have balked because they don’t want to be accused of approving yet another tax after a session full of hard, tax- and revenue-raising decisions, including raising the gas tax to pay for road repairs and extending the cap-and-trade program.

Those lawmakers ought to take a serious look at their own districts. Do they have homeless people living in parks or under freeway overpasses? Are poor, working families choosing between rent and food? Are good companies closing shop and moving to other states where their workers can afford housing? The lack of affordable housing is driving poverty in California. It’s time to change that.

Follow the Opinion section on Twitter @latimesopinion and Facebook</s>SACRAMENTO (AP) — The California Assembly approved a package of bills to address the state’s housing crunch late Thursday as lawmakers search for ways to generate more money and streamline regulations that can stifle new construction.

The tense and dramatic late-night vote in the Assembly sets up a final decision on Friday in the Senate, which has already approved earlier drafts of all the measures in the six-bill package.

California lacks an estimated 1.5 million affordable housing units compared to demand, and the state’s homelessness rate is disproportionately high. Still, alleviating the crisis has proved a difficult issue in the Capitol as lawmakers deal with thorny issues of raising taxes and easing environmental regulations.

“We are living during the worst housing crisis our state has ever experienced,” said Assemblyman David Chiu, a San Francisco Democrat who leads the Assembly housing committee.
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Republican critics said spending money wouldn’t solve the housing problem and advocated a more aggressive reduction in regulations, which they said would spur developers to expand the housing supply.

The bills “are based on the misguided premise that we can spend our way out of this problem with government spending,” Assemblyman Jay Olbernolte, R-Hesperia, said.

The major bills would: Put a $4 billion bond on the 2018 ballot, with $3 billion for existing housing programs and $1 billion for veterans’ housing; allow developers to bypass some local development regulations when building affordable apartment complexes; and establish a $75 fee on real estate transaction documents such as those signed when refinancing a mortgage. Several lower-profile bills aim to ensure that local governments allow building of homes for all income levels and waive environmental reviews that can be used to slow down the building process.

The real estate fee is expected to generate $200 million to $300 million per year for local and state government to share. Documents from residential and commercial sales would be exempt, and total fees couldn’t exceed $225 per transaction. Still, several Democrats from competitive districts were hesitant to get on board, prompting a weeks-long delay in bringing the bills up for votes. All new taxes and fees require two-thirds support to pass.

Assemblyman Brian Maienschein of San Diego was the only Republican to vote for the fee after citing a hepatitis outbreak among the homeless in his city. Assemblywoman Sabrina Cervantes, a freshman from a competitive Inland Empire district, was the only Democrat opposed.

The measure passed after a tense last-minute effort to cajole two Democrats. The vote that would typically last seconds was held open for an hour while Speaker Anthony Rendon and others met privately with Assemblymen Marc Levine and Adrin Nazarian. A photo later posted to Twitter by Levine showed Rendon and Nazarian sitting on a couch with beer and coffee on the table under the caption, “The room where it happened.”

Rendon said the Assemblymen had lingering questions about the measure.

A bill amended last week creates a “hardship refund” that would waive the fee for some low-income homeowners, a clear effort to earn votes.

Money generated from the fee is just a minor piece of the funding source for more housing. Most would come from the $4 billion bond if voters approve it next year. One billion would be set aside for veterans housing programs. Of the remaining $3 billion, half would go to an existing program that aids construction and preservation of rental housing units for people with incomes up to 60 percent of an area’s medium income. The rest of the money would be distributed to existing programs that aim to build more housing near public transportation, provide grants for “innovative” housing programs and give homeowner loans, among other things.

A third bill by Democratic Sen. Scott Wiener of San Francisco will waive some local regulations for apartment builders in communities that aren’t meeting housing production targets. To qualify for the streamlined process, developers will have to pay workers a “prevailing wage,” an industry standard rate that is backed by labor unions.

© Copyright 2017 The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.</s>Housing in California was a point of contention for the state Senate Friday, as several bills were up for vote after they passed through the Assembly late last night.

Senate Bills 2, 3 and 35 have been the headliners in a package of bills designed to help the housing crisis. These bills have passed through Senate once before, but because the California Assembly made some amendments last night before passing the bills, they had to return to the Senate again.

Designers of Senate Bill 2 say it would impose a $75 charge on real estate transactions with the goal of generating over $200 million dollars to combat homelessness and create low-income housing opportunities. Opponents of the bill say this $75 fee is essentially another tax and that legislators can’t expect to spend their way out of the housing issue.

Senate Bill 3 also passed with a 30 to 8 vote. Writers of the bill say it would place a $4 billion bond on the November 2018 ballot that will work towards housing projects. Of that bond, $1 billion would be focused on veterans and enable former military personnel to receive financial help when purchasing a home.

The third bill of note is Senate Bill 35, which creators of the bills say aims to require cities and counties to form development plans for land usage, including housing. These plans would allow for the process of approving housing projects to be streamlined.

California legislators estimate the state is lacking over a million affordable housing units and State Treasurer John Chiang released this statement following the passage of most of the bills presented:

“California’s housing shortage has metastasized from a problem to a crisis to, now, a full-scale catastrophe. But with today’s approval of a $4 billion housing bond, a permanent source of funding and regulatory reform to ease construction, we are making a meaningful down payment on providing a roof and four walls to every Californian.”

Chiang added that it is premature to celebrate and more work remains for the housing crisis in the state.

If these bills do pass through Senate, they will make their way to Governor Brown’s desk for his signature.</s>SACRAMENTO >> After years of havoc caused by budget-busting rents and runaway home prices, a collection of affordable-housing bills negotiated with Gov. Jerry Brown passed the Assembly late Thursday night.

With much suspense and arm-twisting, the Assembly narrowly passed the most controversial legislation: Senate Bill 2, a measure to create a permanent funding source for affordable housing through a new real estate fee. The last two lawmakers — Assemblymen Marc Levine, D-San Rafael, and Adrin Nazarian, D-Van Nuys — created an hour of drama by waiting to cast their deciding votes.

“For any of you who are not yet ready to vote for this bill,” said Assemblyman David Chiu, D-San Francisco, who has championed the housing effort, “I ask you to do one thing — to think about the face of your constituents.”

One Republican lawmaker, Assemblyman Brian Maienschein, of San Diego, supported it.

“To do nothing for me is not an option,” he said. “I wouldn’t even be considering this if we didn’t have a state of emergency in the city of San Diego” over hepatitis A deaths in homeless people, he said.

The proposal, Senate Bill 2, was perhaps the toughest sell and what had been holding up the vote for weeks. It would create a new fee of up to $225 on certain real estate transactions, such as mortgage refinancing, to fund affordable-housing projects. (Home sales and commercial real-estate sales are exempt from the bill.)

Carried by Sen. Toni Atkins, D-San Diego, it would collect an estimated $200-$300 million per year in real-estate document fees. The state estimates the bill would generate more than $5 billion over the next five years once the new fees are matched with federal, local and private matching funds. And unlike in past years, the powerful California Association of Realtors supports the bill.

But the proposal — like Silicon Valley Sen. Jim Beall’s proposed $4 billion housing bond, Senate Bill 3, which also passed, 55-20 — needed a two-thirds vote in the Assembly to pass. Republicans and a handful of Democratic lawmakers who could face tough re-elections were reluctant to support it.

“We can’t spend our way out of this problem with government spending,” Assemblyman Jay Obernolte, R-Hesperia, said during the floor debate.

Both funding bills — SB 2 and SB 3 — passed the Senate with two-thirds votes earlier this year, and will now go back to the Senate on Friday for final approval before going to the governor’s desk. Brown supports the proposals, which were negotiated with his office.

“There’s no place like home. #SB2 #SB35,” the governor tweeted late Thursday night.

The legislative package before the Assembly Thursday night also included four bills to coax — or in some cases, force — cities to approve more housing developments, adding teeth to existing laws that city governments have found it easy to skirt. The goal for many of the bills, such as Senate Bill 35, is to tackle the housing shortage by making it faster and cheaper for developers to build projects that meet a city’s zoning requirements — which Brown has long insisted on including.

The state Senate is expected to take up a half-dozen of the Assembly’s bills on Friday, the final day of the legislative session. All of them require just a simple majority to pass.

“Today we took a step toward addressing a housing crisis that has been plaguing California for years,” Assembly Speaker Anthony Rendon, D-Lakewood, said Thursday. “The package of bills we approved today addresses funding, project streamlining, stricter enforcement, and real accountability – all the affordable housing elements necessary to help more Californians pay the rent or buy a house.”

“After decades of neglect in Sacramento,” said Silicon Valley Leadership Group CEO Carl Guardino, “the Legislature has opened the door for more affordable rental and for sale homes throughout our state by advancing a package of revenue and reform housing measures vital to the high-cost Bay Area and beyond.”

The California Housing Consortium agreed, issuing a statement saying that the bills “turned the tide on our crushing housing catastrophe by pressing for record-setting investment in affordable homes for struggling Californians to live.”</s>SACRAMENTO (AP) — The California Assembly has approved a multi-bill package to address the state’s affordable housing crunch.

California lacks an estimated 1.5 million affordable housing units compared to demand, and the state’s homelessness rate is disproportionately high.

Six bills aimed at addressing the crisis cleared the Assembly late Thursday after months of negotiations and cajoling.

They would allow developers to bypass some local development regulations when building affordable apartment complexes and provide housing money through a $4 billion bond and a new $75 fee on real estate transaction documents.

Several Assembly Democrats in competitive districts were wary of backing the new fee after already voting this year to raise the gas tax.

The bills all need Senate approval on Friday.</s>Clock is ticking for California lawmakers to vote on several bills.</s>SACRAMENTO, Calif. — California lawmakers sent Gov. Jerry Brown a package of bills Friday aimed at easing the state’s affordable housing crisis, after a handful of hesitant Democrats were persuaded to back a new fee to generate money for subsidized housing.

Brown, a Democrat, has said he plans to sign the bills.

The three major pieces of the deal include a $4 billion housing bond, a new $75 fee on real estate transaction documents, and a bill to streamline building regulations that can hamper developers looking to construct low-cost apartments and homes.

California lacks an estimated 1.5 million affordable housing units compared to demand — a situation that is contributing to the growth of the homeless population.

On Wednesday, Anaheim became the state’s latest city to declare homelessness an emergency. San Diego is struggling to contain an outbreak of hepatitis among its homeless population.

Even with the deal passed, relief won’t be immediate.

The primary money source for new building and redevelopment — the $4 billion bond — needs approval from voters next year.

The collection of the fee on the real estate documents will begin immediately but is expected to bring in only $200 to $300 million annually to be shared among local governments and the state. That’s far less than the more than $1 billion communities used to get annually under a redevelopment program halted during the Great Recession.

In the first year, half of it will go toward efforts to reduce homelessness, while the remaining half will aid communities in updating their planning and zoning laws. After that, 70 percent of the money will go to local communities for housing projects.

Democratic lawmakers cheered the package of bills as comprehensive solution to a crisis that’s been difficult to solve.

“We need to do our part and stop creating reasons why we can’t fix things,” said Democratic Sen. Ben Hueso of San Diego. “When you talk to the people of California they are concerned, and more and more concerned, that they have no affordable place to live.”

Republicans, meanwhile, argued middle-class families can’t afford another new fee and questioned whether the money from it will be used effectively.

“I believe that we are shortchanging the middle income, the average, hardworking Californians with this imposed fee,” Republican Sen. Jim Nielsen said.

Several bills in the package aim to streamline regulations, a move Brown has long deemed necessary to address the crisis. A bill by Democratic Sen. Scott Wiener of San Francisco will waive some regulations for apartment builders in communities that aren’t meeting their housing production targets.

It would require developers to pay workers a prevailing wage that is standard in the industry and backed by labor unions.</s>SACRAMENTO — It’s getting down to the wire for California lawmakers.

Friday is the last day for legislators to pass bills during this session.

The Senate adjourned about 6:10 p.m. after, according to President Pro Tempore Kevin De Leon, addressing nearly 70 proposed laws.

De Leon said the Senate has about 120 bills to address Friday.

As of 7 p.m. Thursday, the Assembly was in recess, holding committee meetings and expected to return to the floor Thursday evening.

Several hot topics such as housing legislation and SB54, the so-called “Sanctuary State” bill, are awaiting Assembly action.

Governor Jerry Brown has until October 15 to sign or veto bills passed by the legislature.</s>California lawmakers advanced key housing legislation late Thursday, clearing the most substantial hurdle for a package of bills aimed at addressing the state’s housing affordability crisis.

Legislators in the Assembly passed Senate Bill 2, a $75 fee on mortgage refinances and other real estate transactions except for home and commercial property sales. The measure is expected to raise $250 million a year to help finance new and rehabilitated developments for low-income residents — a key step, lawmakers said, in beginning to get housing costs under control.

“We are living during the worst housing crisis our state has ever experienced,” said Assemblyman David Chiu (D-San Francisco).

The bill required two-thirds support from Assembly members, a threshold that the bill’s author, Sen. Toni Atkins (D-San Diego), and legislative leaders had been struggling to meet. Assembly Democrats, who hold exactly a supermajority, have been wary of backing a measure that would increase fees. The lack of a decision on SB 2 had been holding up votes on potentially more than a dozen housing bills in the Legislature.

Thursday night, that struggle became clear. Assembly Speaker Anthony Rendon (D-Paramount) held the roll call vote open for nearly an hour, two votes shy of the 54 it needed to pass. Three Democrats were holdouts: Assemblywoman Sabrina Cervantes of Riverside, Assemblyman Marc Levine of San Rafael and Assemblyman Adrin Nazarian of North Hollywood.

Cervantes, who is one of the Democrats most at risk of losing her seat in the 2018 elections, stood calmly by her desk while Rendon and other legislators lobbied Levine and Nazarian.

One of the three was able to hold off supporting the bill because Republican Assemblyman Brian Maienschien of San Diego voted in favor. His support allowed Cervantes to vote no.

In his speech on the floor, Maienschien cited growing homelessness concerns in his city and his history working for a nonprofit on homelessness issues.

“To do nothing, to me, isn’t an option,” Maienschien said.

Alongside SB 2, the Assembly passed five other housing bills Thursday night, including two others considered the primary parts of the package of housing bills. Senate Bill 3 would place a $4-billion bond on the 2018 statewide ballot to finance low-income home building and provide home loans for military veterans. Senate Bill 35 would ease some local development restrictions in an effort to spur more home building.

SB 3 also required a two-thirds vote and received exactly that, with Maienschien and Republican Assemblywoman Catharine Baker of Dublin in favor, and Nazarian and Democrat Adam Gray of Merced holding out.

All measures that passed Thursday night face votes in the Senate before lawmakers adjourn for the year on Friday. But similar versions of the bills have passed the Senate previously, and Thursday’s decisions were considered the most difficult.

Gov. Jerry Brown has said he supports SB 2, 3 and 35, and has indicated his broader backing for other housing legislation still pending in both chambers.

State Senate bills aim to make homes more affordable, but they won't spur nearly enough construction

California lawmakers have tried for 50 years to fix the state's housing crisis. Here's why they've failed
Key housing bills pass in California, the U.S. state with the highest number of people suffering from homelessness and poverty.