It was never as certain or insistent as the state’s housing crisis, but when it finally came this week, the California Legislature’s response was substantial. With lawmakers about to adjourn for the year, an 11th-hour Assembly decision on a new real estate fee — just reaching a two-thirds supermajority around 10:30 p.m. Thursday after an hour of vote-wrangling — cleared the way for final approval of a package of bills to lower barriers to residential development and fund affordable housing.

As even their champions acknowledge, the bills shouldn’t be seen as more than the beginning of an answer to a housing shortage that is making homelessness more pervasive, commutes more crushing, and the state and national economies much less than they could be. But they are a good beginning and an undeniable triumph for housing advocates, including a new breed of pro-development “YIMBYs” — a yes-in-my-backward counterweight to California’s rampant NIMBY-ism — and the legislators who led a years-long campaign for housing legislation, particularly a pair of San Francisco Democrats, Sen. Scott Wiener and Assemblyman David Chiu.

Before Thursday’s crucial vote, Chiu urged his colleagues to consider the victims of a crisis that, according to studies, has left 1 of every 20 children in the state and 1 of every 10 California State University students without a proper home. “Think about the face of your constituents,” Chiu said on the Assembly floor. “Think about a child in your district who is homeless.”

Wiener’s Senate Bill 35, the most promising in the package, expedites local approval of residential construction that meets certain conditions in cities that aren’t meeting housing needs. Echoing a failed proposal by Gov. Jerry Brown last year, it takes on the obstructionism at the heart of the crisis, which has slowed or stopped even smart urban development, building a deficit of more than 2 million housing units that is growing by about 100,000 a year. Two approved measures by Sen. Nancy Skinner, D-Berkeley, are also designed to prevent cities from circumventing housing requirements.

The political fortunes of SB35 were intertwined with those of funding bills that were more popular among the ruling Democrats, but also more difficult to pass because they required supermajorities. That was particularly true of Senate Bill 2, by Sen. Toni Atkins, D-San Diego, which adds a $75 fee to real estate transactions to raise an estimated $250 million a year for affordable-housing programs. Also narrowly passed was SB3, by Sen. Jim Beall, D-San Jose, which asks voters to approve a $4 billion bond issue for affordable-housing programs. While government spending can make only a modest impact on a crisis of this scope, restoring housing subsidies cut during the recession will benefit hundreds of thousands of the state’s most vulnerable residents.

The governor, who had broadly agreed on the package with Assembly Speaker Anthony Rendon and Senate President Pro Tem Kevin de León, is expected to sign the bills into law. He greeted the key votes on Twitter with a sentiment that has become all too visceral for many Californians: “There’s no place like home.”

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