CBIA Legislative Program for 2009
Housing Recovery Underlies CBIA Legislative Program for 2009
Reviving California’s housing sector is the principal aim of CBIA’s legislative program this year. While greenbuilding, water conservation and water quality remain high public policy priorities, CBIA is seeking new initiatives as well as changes to existing law designed to help bring about recovery of the state’s beleaguered housing industry. The following is a summary of CBIA’s sponsored recovery bills.
AB 333 (Fuentes) – Map extensions. To ensure a steady, seamless housing recovery, AB 333 proposes to extend expiring subdivision maps a full five years. Without this extension, many viable housing projects would have to return to square one of entitlement processing. Map extensions have been granted several times in the past 16 years.
AB 1084 (Adams) – Fee reform. Runaway development impact fees are imposing increasing burdens not only on the affordability of new homes but on the viability of starting new projects. AB 1084 seeks to tighten up the state’s existing Mitigation Fee Act to ensure that homebuilders are being charged a fair amount for their projects’ impacts.
AB 1432 (Mendoza) – Construction financing. The current credit crunch is making it hard for California homebuilders to get construction financing from institutional lenders. AB 1432 would give the state bank – California Housing Finance Agency (Cal HFA) – authorization to help close those gaps through a construction finance program.
AB 1529 (Salas) – Foreclosure sales. To help reduce the inventory of unsold, bank-owned homes, AB 1529 proposes that Cal HFA provide funding to purchase these homes. The AB 1529 program should be coupled with other state and federal programs, like the Neighborhood Stabilization Program, to repair and rehabilitate these homes.
SB 143 (Cedillo) – Infill incentives. In 2004, the Legislature approved AB 389, a bill designed to establish fair liability rules associated with the clean-up and improvement of so-called brownfields. Before AB 389, homebuilders making the improvements were held liable for a previous owner’s mistakes. SB 143 removes the AB 389 sunset date.
In addition to these recovery bills, CBIA is sponsoring the following “smart housing” and “affordable housing” measures:
AB 210 (Hayashi) – Greenbuilding. To promote consistency in the use by localities of so-called “greenbuilding” standards, AB 210 will make it clear the procedures to be followed for exceeding those standards created by the state.
AB 300 (Caballero) – Water conservation. AB 300 is designed to promote even greater water conservation in new subdivisions by giving homebuilders full credit for saving water. AB 300 is identical to AB 2219 (Parra) of last year.
AB 927 (Calderon) – Construction lawsuits. Before the enactment of SB 800’s repair approach to construction dispute resolution, state law established pre-litigation procedures to follow. AB 927 removes that law’s sunset date.
SB 310 (Ducheny) – Water quality. California’s system of regulating stormwater quality is broken. SB 310 seeks to change the program to allow watershed-based runoff management strategies and eliminate project-based regulation.
SB 616 (Harman) – Anti-deficiency. State laws may be adding insult to injury when it comes to actions taken by banks against homebuilders to recover on troubled loans. SB 616 is aimed at resolving these equity problems.
SB 793 (Dutton) – Affordable housing. California lacks a reliable source of funding for low and moderate-income housing. SB 793 is the homebuilding industry’s proposal to create a permanent source through redevelopment funds.
