California legislators are weighing nearly 1,000 bills in the final two weeks of the legislative session. Here are the actions taken by the California legislature on Thursday:
Affordable Housing on Church Grounds
California religious institutions and nonprofit colleges may soon convert parking lots and other properties to low-income housing in response to the ongoing homeless crisis, lawmakers voted Thursday. did.
The bill would change the plots of land owned by non-profit universities, churches, mosques, synagogues and other religious institutions to make them affordable housing. They will be able to bypass most local permits and environmental review regulations, which can be costly and time consuming.
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California is home to 171,000 homeless people, which is about 30% of all homeless people in the United States An inter-religious movement called , and the number is the number of projects already underway.
However, churches and universities often face significant hurdles in converting surplus land and underutilized parking lots into housing because the land is not zoned for housing. An affordable housing project at a church in San Jose required him to go through a rezoning process that would take him more than two years before construction began in 2021.
The bill’s author, Democratic Senator Scott Weiner, said the bill’s purpose was to pave the way for easier construction of much-needed housing in the state.
The legislative-approved bill requires final approval in the state Senate before it can be submitted to the desk of Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom, who will decide whether to sign the bill.
The law applies only to affordable housing projects and is scheduled to be repealed in 2036.
Democratic Rep. Sharon Quark Silva, who represents Orange County, said the county, which has hundreds of faith-based groups and several community colleges, will use the bill as a tool to promote affordable housing projects. said it could be done.
“If only a few of them chose to build a very small number of units, we could start taking this issue one church at a time, one institution at a time. ‘ she said on Thursday.
Supporters of the bill said it could help add hundreds of thousands of affordable housing units to the state’s housing stock. A recent study by the Turner Center for Housing Innovation at the University of California, Berkeley estimated that religious and higher education campuses in California have more than 170,000 acres of land covered by the bill.
However, several cities opposed the bill, saying it would take away local control over housing developments. Environmental groups are also concerned that the bill will not have enough guardrails and will result in low-income housing being built near polluted areas such as highways, industrial facilities and oil and gas plants.
Lawmakers have until Sept. 14 to act on this and other bills. After the lawmakers’ proposals are finished, Mr. Newsom will have a month to decide whether to sign lawmakers into law.
California Senator Scott Weiner speaks about student housing during a press conference at San Francisco State University on February 22, 2022. California lawmakers on Thursday voted to build low-income housing on surplus land owned by universities and religious institutions. (AP Photo/Jannie Herr, File)
Diverse school textbooks
Congress has passed legislation to ensure that school curricula reflect the cultural and racial diversity of California and the United States.
The bill would also require school boards to approve educational materials that contain accurate depictions of LGBTQ+ people and their contributions. This would prohibit school boards from rejecting textbooks that refer to the contributions of people of a particular racial background or sexual orientation.
This is a problem in many states. The issue came after Southern California’s Temecula Valley Unified School Board rejected an elementary social studies curriculum containing material that referred to Harvey Milk, a former San Francisco politician and gay rights advocate. garnered new attention. Newsom threatened the school board with a $1.5 million fine. The board then changed course.
State senators fiercely debated the bill. After Democratic Sen. Susan Talamantes-Eggman, chair of the California Legislative LGBTQ Caucus, said Republican Sen. Rosilyse Ochoa Bogue’s comments on the bill were off the mark, they called a “timeout.” ” was taken. Republican lawmakers and Democratic Senator Marie Alvarad Gil voted against.
Ochoa Bogue said the bill would not ensure that school materials are age-appropriate for students. But Democratic Senator Lena Gonzalez said school boards can still make such decisions.
Later that day, the legislature gave final approval to the bill and sent it to Newsom’s desk.
Democratic Rep. Corey Jackson, who introduced the proposal, touted it as an opportunity to show the nation that California would be on the “right side of history.”
“A yes vote means we are not watching these political class wars being declared and students and children being used as pawns,” Jackson said.
But Republican Majority Leader James Gallagher said the bill would overstep local school boards’ authority to approve class materials.
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Streamlining the home permit process
The state legislature has passed legislation to extend the life of a landmark law that streamlines rules for housing projects in cities that are not meeting state-mandated affordable housing targets. The bill is one of the most controversial housing bills of the year.
Since the original bill took effect in 2018, it has contributed to the early construction of 18,000 homes, about 75% of which are affordable, according to the bill’s author, Democratic Senator Scott Weiner. They say it’s a house.
The new bill removes the requirement to employ “skilled and trained workers”, a provision usually pursued by powerful construction trade unions, and instead gives workers the prevailing wages (domestic workers, labor (average wages paid to mechanics). specific region.
The bill, which removes the exemption for streamlined housing development in coastal areas, faced strong opposition in July from the State Coastal Commission and environmental groups. Opponents feared the bill would place housing in areas prone to rising sea levels and wildfires, making way for luxury apartments along the coastline instead of affordable housing.
Democrat Rep. Buffy Wicks, a co-author of the bill, said the bill would only apply to coastal areas zoned for multifamily housing and that the city of Wiener would work with the commission to address the concerns of critics. said it does. The Coast Commission no longer opposes the bill.
“I’m not afraid because we’re going to extend the current law,” Wicks said Thursday. “That’s right. We know this program works.”
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gender neutral bathroom
The state legislature on Thursday approved a bill that would require schools in grades 1 through 12 to have at least one gender-neutral restroom for students by 2026.
The law will apply to schools with multiple girls’ and boys’ toilets. The bill comes amid debates in California and elsewhere about the rights of transgender and nonbinary students, including whether teachers should notify parents when a child changes pronouns in school.
