Sponsored and Supported Bills (So Far) Housing California is officially sponsoring the following bills. Note: We are monitoring several other new bills and may add to this list at a later date. We'll update you in March with the fact sheets and requests for support letters. SB 329 (Mitchell) Source of Income Discrimination: It often takes several years for an applicant to obtain a Housing Choice Voucher (Section 8). After waiting all of those years, voucher holders often find that it is impossible to use the voucher because many landlords openly refuse to allow the voucher as a form of rent payment. This bill would prohibit discrimination against voucher holders by adding them to the list of sources of income that cannot be denied. AB 10 (Chiu) Expanding the California Low-Income Housing Tax Credit Program: This bill meets the needs of affordable, supportive, and farmworker housing developers who need additional funding to develop and rehabilitate rental homes for extremely low-, very low-, and low-income Californians, by increasing state Low-Income Housing Tax Credit Program funding beginning in 2020 by an additional $500 million. AB 816 (Quirk-Silva) Flexible Housing Program: Practitioners around the state who work to end and prevent homelessness expressed the need for an ongoing flexible source of funding with a streamlined and centralized application process. To satisfy this need, we are proposing a systems change in which the state combine existing and new programs to create a Flexible Housing Program administered by HCD. This program would provide rental assistance, operating subsidies, services, systems funding, and interim housing (capped at 20%) to cities, counties, and CoCs. Watch our press conference for AB 816. SB 282 (Beall) Supportive Housing for People on Parole Experiencing Homelessness: Housing California and CSH are seeking to create a grant program for counties to provide supportive housing for people on parole. The county would commit to providing Medi-Cal mental health treatment. This way, counties would apply and commit to providing housing and services to this population long term, while drawing in federal resources. SB 361 (Mitchell) Health Home Program Clean-Up: In 2013, Governor Brown signed AB 361 (Mitchell), which authorized the state to take advantage of an Affordable Care Act optional Medi-Cal benefit, now referred to as the Health Home Program (HHP). This clean-up legislation would remove language around restricting state funding and also require health plans to implement benefits in ways that would make the program more meaningful. AB 307 (Reyes) Homeless Youth Grant Program: The 2018 sponsors of SB 918 - The Homeless Youth Act (Housing CA, California Coalition for Youth, John Burton Advocates for Youth, CSH, Tipping Point, and Equality California) are pursuing a grant program for youth experiencing homelessness. In our budget request, we are including $100 million in ongoing funding for this program. The grant program would be administered by the Homeless Coordinating and Financing Council. Supported Bills: SCA 1 (Allen) Repeal Article 34: The California Constitution prohibits the development, construction, or acquisition of an affordable housing development in any manner by any state public body until a majority of the qualified electors of the jurisdiction where the housing development is proposed approve the project by voting in favor at an election. This bill would put a repeal of Article 34 on the statewide ballot in 2020.
ACA 1 (Aguiar-Curry) Affordable Housing and Public Infrastructure Voter Approval: This bill would reduce the local vote threshold for approval of bond and special tax measures to fund the construction, reconstruction, rehabilitation, or replacement of public infrastructure or affordable housing from a two-thirds vote to a 55-percent majority. This is the same vote threshold that currently applies to all local school district measures. AB 58 (Rivas) Homeless Coordinating and Financing Council: This bill would add a representative from the Department of Education to the Homeless Coordinating and Financing Council. Learn more and watch for updates, bill numbers, fact sheets, and support letter templates in the coming weeks and on our website. | 
