California Democratic legislators push affordable-housing plan

SACRAMENTO — Saying the state can’t ignore its affordable housing crisis, Democratic lawmakers on Monday announced a statewide proposal to spend more than $1.3 billion to build more units, help low-income residents buy homes and address homelessness.

The money would come from unanticipated revenue the state has collected this fiscal year that Gov. Jerry Brown has proposed putting toward paying down debt and building reserves.

The effort is being led by Bay Area Assembly Democrats David Chiu of San Francisco and Tony Thurmond of Richmond, who held a news conference at the Capitol on Monday along with other lawmakers who support the measure. A dozen Assembly members signed a letter urging support for the proposal, which will be taken up during budget negotiations ahead of a June 15 deadline to pass a budget.

“San Francisco, the Bay Area and California are in the midst of the worst affordability crisis that we’ve seen,” Chiu said. “Since the great recession, we’ve cut close to $2 billion a year the state used to invest in affordable housing when redevelopment agencies were eliminated and housing bond monies dried up.”

Brown’s office declined to comment on the proposal.

The plan calls for:

•$500 million in tax credits for companies that build, buy or fix multifamily rental housing that serves low-income families.

•$200 million for the CalHome Program, which awards money to local governments and nonprofits that help low-income people become or remain homeowners.

•$200 million for local governments to help people buy or rent homes near their workplace in high-cost cities.

•$75 million to help farmworkers and their families with affordable housing.

•$60 million in tax credits for homeowners to pay for seismic retrofits.

•$260 million to build or buy rental housing for homeless people and provide rental assistance.

•$40 million for shelters and housing assistance programs for homeless people.

Priced out

“We’ve known for some time that we would need 150,000 new homes to keep pace with our population growth in California. Clearly, that hasn’t happened,” Thurmond said. “Market forces have expanded at such a high rate that people literally cannot afford to live where they work, and some folks can’t afford to live in any community at all.”

Lawmakers said the median rent in California has increased by more than 20 percent since 2008 at a time when median incomes dropped 8 percent. The rate of homeownership in the state has dropped to 54 percent, a record low, which lawmakers said is the result of skyrocketing housing prices.

Home prices in the Bay Area are now higher than before the recession, according to data by the State Board of Equalization. San Francisco had the state’s highest median price for a single-family detached home: $1.25 million in 2015. The state median price was $473,995.

Renting is no easier in some parts of the state, particularly in the Bay Area, where prices have also soared.

“What we have found is that people can’t rent and they can’t own,” Thurmond said. This proposal “balances the needs of renters programs and some ownership.”

Competing interests

The proposal, however, is likely to have competition from other Democratic plans that call for funding for the state’s transportation needs and funds to expand subsidized child care.

The housing proposal was criticized by some Republicans, who said the state should be making it easier for people to create housing by eliminating complex requirements that delay new building.

Assemblyman Marc Steinorth, R-Rancho Cucamonga (San Bernardino County), said that government should be involved in helping solve homelessness in the state by providing shelter and funding transitional housing, but that the Democratic proposal goes too far by assuming one-time money is the answer to the state’s lack of affordable housing.

“The $1.3 billion as proposed is putting together a whole series of government programs as opposed to eliminating government red tape and bureaucracy,” Steinorth said. “Communities I represent want to build homes. They have many challenges and hurdles and impediments in front of them. We need to roll back Sacramento’s impact on them, not say come to Sacramento for us to give you more money.”

Melody Gutierrez is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: mgutierrez@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @MelodyGutierrez