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 have passed the Legislature.

For more Bay Area housing affordability, home sales and other real estate news

follow us on Flipboard.

With much suspense and arm-twisting, the Assembly on Thursday night 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.

Related Articles Walters: High housing costs keep Californians poor

Affordable housing eyed at San Jose site where hotel was planned near Google village

San Jose, Pittsburg housing projects among first to win coveted state ‘Homekey’ funds

Editorial: Wei, Fruen would help chart a new course for Cupertino

Some Bay Area homeless sweeps continue, despite coronavirus moratorium 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.

Go to our Facebook page for more conversation and news coverage from the Bay Area and beyond.

Both funding bills — SB 2 and SB 3 — passed the Senate with two-thirds votes earlier this year, and won final approval from the Senate on Friday. Next, they go 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.

In all, the Legislature approved 15 housing bills on Friday, the final day of the legislative session.

“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.”

Business leaders and affordable-housing advocates applauded the breakthrough.

“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.”

HOUSING BILLS PASSED THURSDAY

The Assembly passed six housing-related bills late Thursday night, including two that would raise money for the construction of below-market-rate housing. All of the bills now return to the Senate for final approval, as they were amended in the Assembly after the Senate passed them the first time. They then would go to Gov. Jerry Brown, who has until Oct. 15 to sign or veto bills.

Senate Bill 2, by Sen. Toni Atkins, D-San Diego, would create a permanent source of funding for affordable housing, imposing fees of up to $225 on certain real-estate transactions, such as mortgage refinancing. (Home and commercial real estate purchases would not be subject to the fee.) It would collect $1.2 billion over the next five years — and would raise a total of $5.8 billion during that time, including federal, local and private matching funds, according to committee estimates. Passed with a two-thirds vote.

Senate Bill 3, by Sen. Jim Beall, D-Campbell, would place a $4 billion statewide housing bond on a future ballot. Like SB 2, it would pay for existing affordable-housing programs in California that used to be supported by funds from the state’s Redevelopment Agency, a giant source of money that was slashed during the Great Recession and never replaced. If the bond measure passes and is approved by voters, $1 billion of the total would go to extend the CalVet Home Loan Program, which is scheduled to expire in 2018. Passed with a two-thirds vote.

Senate Bill 35, by Sen. Scott Wiener, D-San Francisco, would try to tackle the state’s housing-supply shortage. Currently, cities are told every eight years how many units they need to build to meet their share of regional demand — but they are not required to build them. This bill would make it harder to ignore those goals. It targets cities that fall short, requiring them to approve more housing developments that fit the bill’s criteria until they are back on track.

Senate Bill 166, by Sen. Nancy Skinner, D-Oakland, would push cities and counties to plan for their share of low-income and moderate-income housing needed in the region.

Get top headlines in your inbox every afternoon.

Sign up for the free PM Report newsletter.

Senate Bill 167, also by Skinner, would strengthen the state’s 35-year-old Housing Accountability Act, known colloquially as the “anti-NIMBY (Not In My Backyard) Act.” Cities that don’t comply with a court order to allow development would be hit with automatic fines of $10,000 per housing unit.

Senate Bill 540, by Sen. Richard Roth, D-Riverside, allows cities to determine where housing needs to be built and to create a specific plan for development in that zone, including public hearings and environmental reviews. This is intended to speed up the approval and construction process.