Recess is over for state legislators, who return to Sacramento today, no doubt brimming with ideas for what issues to tackle in the new year. But aside from whatever unexpected crises arise in 2020, the top of the agenda will surely include homelessness, housing, PG&E and health care costs.
California's severe lack of affordable housing took years to become a crisis and now eludes any simple solution. This week Sen. Scott Wiener (D-San Francisco) will unveil amendments to his signature housing bill, SB 50. The bill, which attempts to jump start construction of taller, denser housing projects, especially near transit corridors, languished in the Senate last year and was pulled out of consideration at the last minute.
SB 50 faces opposition from a myriad of groups — notably local officials who fear the loss of control over developments in their own cities and counties. Even in Wiener's own city, San Francisco, the Board of Supervisors recently passed a resolution opposing the bill in its current form by a 10-1 vote.
In his inaugural state budget last year, Gov. Gavin Newsom included $1 billion for local governments to combat homelessness. As former mayor of San Francisco, Newsom knows first hand how difficult homelessness is to manage, much less solve. Nonetheless, with voters telling their representatives they're tired of seeing so many people living on the streets, the governor is sure to double down on programs to deal with it.
As often happens in politics, the issue that captured more attention than any other last year was one few anticipated: the bankruptcy of PG&E and weeks of planned "public safety power outages" in huge swaths of the state aimed at preventing wildfires. The governor and Legislature — especially the Senate — will continue grappling with issues related to wildfire liability, prevention, "community resilience" and "re-imagining PG&E" as Newsom calls it.