California Lawmakers Push Housing Laws to Boost Affordability

Updated 4:56 p.m. Friday

Several high-profile housing and homelessness bills are moving through key legislative committees this week, as lawmakers act with renewed urgency to address the affordability crisis facing Californians. While the housing shortage has long been a top concern at the Capitol, voters last fall made it clear that the high cost of living was their number one issue.

“The urgency for action and for results on housing in the legislature this year could not be higher,” said Assemblymember Matt Haney, who chairs the Assembly Housing and Community Development Committee and leads the Legislative Renters’ Caucus.

More than 160 housing-related bills have been introduced this year, according to the Terner Center for Housing Innovation. Haney said it’s not just the quantity that’s notable — a new class of diverse lawmakers has come in hungry to take on the state’s greatest challenges.

“We’re seeing more bills introduced that are bolder, that are bigger in terms of their impact than we’ve seen in the state legislature in a long time,” he said.

At the same time, a precarious budget picture will likely hamstring lawmakers’ ability to act. Delayed tax receipts from Southern California residents affected by January’s wildfires and the need to brace against federal budget cuts and tariffs are contributing to fiscal uncertainty.

Affordability: The word of the day

Affordability, especially for renters, is the issue driving many of the most closely watched proposals. “We have seen a major signal from the electorate that affordability is a number one concern,” said Anya Svanoe, communications director at the Alliance of Californians for Community Empowerment.

Susannah Parsons, director of policy and legislation at the policy nonprofit All Home, called it “the word of the day.”

That focus accompanies an increase in renter representation in Sacramento: The Legislative Renters’ Caucus now boasts 10 members, up from three when it launched a few years ago, and both the Senate and Assembly housing committees are chaired by lawmakers who rent.

“This entire institution has not seen enough renters come through it, that’s the reality,” Senator Aisha Wahab, chair of the Senate Housing Committee, said during a Renters’ Caucus press conference Wednesday. “That is why we have the laws we have today. That is, we are still renters.”

On Thursday, the Assembly Housing and Community Development Committee will take up AB 1157, which would amend the 2019 Tenant Protection Act, lowering the state’s annual rent cap to 5%, down from 10%. It would also extend renter protections to single-family homes and make them permanent. The TPA is currently set to expire in 2030.

Tenants’ advocates say lowering the cap is a crucial step to prevent displacement and homelessness, given nearly half of Californians rent and about a third of renters are severely cost-burdened.

However, landlord groups like the California Apartment Association are pushing back.

“It ignores the will of the voters and puts an unfair burden on housing providers,” said Embert Madison, State Advocacy and Compliance Counsel for the California Apartment Association, pointing to the fact that California voters have three times rejected state ballot measures to repeal the Costa-Hawkins Rental Housing Act, which restricts local rent control laws.

The devastating LA wildfires also generated a slate of bills aimed at protecting impacted renters and ensuring a faster and more coordinated response to future disasters.

“There are a lot of pretty dramatic events that have happened that kind of just amplify the urgency of tenant protections on top of the housing crisis that we already have,” said Shanti Singh of advocacy group Tenants Together, noting that the Trump administration’s cost-cutting measures could also threaten vulnerable renters.

Other housing cost-focused bills this year include AB 1248, which would require landlords to include all recurring charges in the advertised rent and ban them from adding new fees during a lease. Renter advocacy groups support the bill, while property owners’ groups don’t. “The focus shouldn’t be on making housing providers’ business more difficult to run,” California Rental Housing Association President Adam Pearce said.

SB 52 would prohibit the use of AI algorithms to set rents, which critics say drives up rents and mimics price fixing. The technology is the subject of a federal antitrust lawsuit and has already been banned in cities including Berkeley, San Francisco and San Diego.

AB 246 would protect seniors from eviction if their Social Security payments are interrupted, and SB 436, authored by Wahab, would extend the window that renters have to pay past-due rent after getting a three-day notice. It would allow tenants to pay the full amount owed or provide proof of approved rental assistance at any point before they’re evicted.

As lawmakers continue to take aim at the supply side of the housing crisis with a sprawling package of over 20 bills designed to cut red tape and speed up housing construction, Wahab cautioned they’re no panacea. “We’ve seen those bills, but has it translated to cost savings to the home buyer or the renter? No. But it has translated to cost savings for the developer,” she said. “This legislature needs to not only focus on production, they also need to start focusing on preservation of housing from multiple different angles, and that also includes protection of renters.”

Other affordability-focused measures include a proposed $10 billion affordable housing bond, AB 736/SB 417, which supporters hope to put before voters in 2026. Matt Schwartz of the California Housing Partnership said it’s key to achieving the state’s housing goals, noting that there are 45,000 shovel-ready affordable homes awaiting funding.

A similar bond failed to make it onto the ballot last year, when education and climate bonds got approved. But Haney and advocates expect the housing bond to get its moment this time around.

Accountability for homeless services

The legislature’s approach to homelessness this year centers on tightening oversight, strengthening local coordination, and rethinking enforcement practices. Lawmakers are advancing bills that aim to improve how funding is tracked, how cities and counties share responsibility for services, and how the state invests in supportive housing, behavioral health, and upstream solutions to prevent homelessness.

A controversial bill, SB 16, which would have required counties to shoulder half the cost of running homeless shelters and interim housing facilities, got a total overhaul Tuesday, removing those cost-sharing terms before it passed out of the Senate Housing Committee. The bill now directs the state to develop a plan for ending unsheltered homelessness within 10 years.

The California State Association of Counties, which strongly opposed the measure as originally written, has now removed its opposition.

Other bills aim to strengthen transparency and oversight. The conversation around homelessness funding is increasingly shaped by skepticism over spending, as audits have raised questions about its efficacy, but Caroline Grinder, a lobbyist for the League of California Cities, said the focus on accountability risks placing unfair blame on cities. “We’re open to increased accountability and transparency,” she said, “Our cities are ready and willing to be partners in that, but we also know that needs to be paired with the investment to actually do the work and have the infrastructure to collect this data in the first place.”

AB 750 would add new oversight to state-funded shelters, requiring annual inspections and clearer complaint processes. AB 1432 would put in place new performance metrics for nonprofits receiving state or local funding for homelessness programs and allow more investment in programs that require sobriety, even if these programs don’t align with the state’s current “Housing First” model.

SB 606, which passed out of the Senate Committee on Human Services on Tuesday, would require local jurisdictions receiving state homelessness funding to submit a financial assessment of what it would take to achieve functional zero for unsheltered homelessness, and to demonstrate how they’re collaborating with small cities in their region.

Alex Visotzky, senior California policy fellow with the National Alliance to End Homelessness, warned that the bill’s focus on unsheltered homelessness, rather than overall homelessness, could inadvertently pull resources away from permanent housing solutions and toward a “permanent state of shelter.”

Some bills also reflect growing interest in connecting housing to health care and recovery. AB 804 would make housing support a Medi-Cal benefit, integrating housing with the state’s health care system. “We see this as a really exciting and important bill,” Parsons said, “because of how many people experiencing homelessness can receive these services and ensure they are in supportive housing, that they have the wraparound support that is needed to stay stably housed.”

AB 255, also heard this week, would create a new supportive recovery housing program for people coming out of substance use treatment. The bill allows abstinence-focused homes as part of a county’s supportive housing mix — capped at 25% — and includes eviction protections for residents who relapse. Visotzky is watching closely and said, “We want to make sure that that intent doesn’t lead to unintended consequences and doesn’t lead to loss of choice for folks for whom that’s not an appropriate intervention.”

Advocacy organizations like the National Alliance to End Homelessness are enthusiastically backing SB 634, which would bar local governments and state agencies from punishing unhoused people for basic survival activities, like sitting or sleeping, in public spaces. Paul Webster, a senior fellow at the Cicero Institute, a conservative leaning think tank, is not a fan.

“When you take enforcement away, you are undercutting one of the great incentives to move people from the street into housing,” he said. Cicero has pushed legislation across the country banning public camping.

The bill is a response to the proliferation of such bans, enacted since the Supreme Court opened the door for cities to enforce them.

Meanwhile, AB 897, which would take California in the opposite direction, making squatting a misdemeanor, failed to pass out of committee Tuesday. And SB 748 would expand the eligible uses of state Encampment Resolution Funding to include towing and disposing of vehicles — a move some advocates say misuses homelessness resources.

“We don’t think it makes sense to spend our valuable homeless program dollars on things like towing and disposing of people’s vehicles,” Visotzky said.

​Advocates have for years been clamoring for an ongoing source of funding to address homelessness and affordable housing, and AB 1165 is the latest legislative effort to do so. It would create the California Housing Justice Fund within the state’s General Fund, mandating ongoing annual allocations to address homelessness and housing unaffordability.

Despite the legislative momentum around housing and homelessness, the state’s fiscal outlook will likely force lawmakers to triage, and bills that require significant new spending aren’t expected to fare well.

“We know we’re going to have a May Revise, and the whole deck is going to be reshuffled,” Webster said, referring to upcoming revisions in the state budget. “Then it’s kind of like, well, what can we actually do?”

As a result, some advocates are prioritizing cost-neutral measures, and advocates and lawmakers say a number of proposals that don’t immediately add to the budget, like the affordable housing bond, could have a better shot than in years past, given the renewed sense of urgency.

“We are in a rubber hits the road moment here,” Haney said. “We haven’t acted with enough boldness and urgency, and so enough is enough.”

Editor’s note: This story was updated to reflect the overhaul of Senate Bill 16.