Hurricane-strength winds that battered the area this week fuelled an explosion in the Mountain Fire near Camarillo, which grew rapidly to over 20,000 acres (8,000 hectares).

Thousands of people in the path of the inferno were forced to flee, some describing how they had only minutes to gather crucial possessions and pets as unpredictable flames leapt from home to home.

Linda Fefferman said she knew she had to go when she smelled smoke.

“I’m trying to load the car with animals and important papers, my oxygen concentrator, and when it got too smoky for me, I knew I had to get out,” she told a local broadcaster.

A neighbor with a chainsaw helped remove a fallen tree that was blocking her path, and Fefferman was able to flee.

“I went down to the Goodwill parking lot, watched the smoke, you know, probably our own house burning.

“Nothing is left. It’s gone,” she said. “It’s all gone.”

Fefferman said she thought 14 or 15 houses on her street alone had been destroyed by the flames.

Authorities said Thursday that initial inspections revealed at least 132 homes had been lost, with 88 more damaged.

The blaze erupted on Wednesday morning and spread rapidly, fanned by fierce seasonal Santa Ana winds from California’s desert interior.

Gusts up to 80 miles (130 kilometers) an hour pushed smoke and flames sideways, with terrifying footage showing fire engulfing brush, orchards and properties.

Those winds dropped Friday, with meteorologists saying they did not expect them to return for at least a few days.

That was welcome news for firefighters, some of whom had been on the frontlines for 36 hours straight, said Ventura County Fire Chief Dustin Gardner.

Nevertheless, the blaze remained only seven percent contained, and the area — home to 30,000 people — was not out of danger.

“The fire is burning in steep, rugged terrain, with dry and receptive fuels, which have challenged containment efforts,” said an update from Cal Fire.

“The fire remains a threat to critical infrastructure. Islands of unburned fuel will continue to burn within the fire footprint.”

California Governor Gavin Newsom visited the area Thursday, and declared a state of emergency, which should free up resources.

More than 2,500 personnel were engaged in the fight.

Crews on the ground have been defending homes with hose lines and working alongside bulldozers trying to remove fuel.

Aircraft on Friday dropped water and retardant in an effort to stem the blaze.

Utility companies have shut off electricity to thousands of customers in the area — a common practice during high winds in California where toppled power lines are often the cause of wildfires.

Two relatively wet years have left California’s countryside flush with vegetation that is now dry and exceedingly flammable after a long, hot summer.

While fires, drought and strong winds are all natural features of the local environment, scientists say human-caused climate change is affecting weather patterns and increasing the likelihood of catastrophic events.

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The US authorities said the first quake struck on Monday, hitting northwest of El Centro – a city in the southern border region. The United States Geological Survey (USGS) said the quake recorded a 4.8 magnitude and reportedly shook much of San Diego County.

The area was hit with a 4.5 aftershock just six minutes later, which was then followed by a series of smaller aftershocks, originating west of the Salton Sea, the USGS said.

The quakes appear to have been caused by the San Jacinto fault system, meteorologists have said. It is one of the most active faults in southern California.

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The first quake struck at 12.36am on Monday. The epicenter of the main shock was 11.7 miles deep, the USGS revealed. The quake, which was followed by twelve other quakes, triggered a USGS shake alert.

The post In 25 Minutes, 13 Earthquakes Hit California appeared first on Housing TV Africa.

In 2017, California lawmakers broke through a longstanding logjam of anti-housing sentiment, unleashing 15 landmark bills that sought to boost new construction across the state. Six years later, the 2023 legislative session saw 56 housing bills signed into law, evidence the tide has yet to turn on efforts to increase home affordability in the state.

Unlike the controversial 2017 session — and the years of big housing battles that followed — 2023 was largely free of contentious fights over blockbuster bills, replaced with the steady shearing of restrictions on new housing and shoring up of protections designed to keep renters in their homes.

Matthew Lewis, spokesman for California YIMBY, which advocates for building more housing, said the lack of controversy has a simple explanation: There were more legislators from all the parts of the state carrying housing bills.‘We do not have to accept the status quo of the intensifying housing and homelessness crisis that our communities are experiencing across the state.’Amie Fishman, executive director, Non-Profit Housing Association of Northern California

“The legislature is essentially now pro-housing,” he said. “Pretty unequivocally and objectively, you can say that the legislature wants to solve the housing crisis.”

READ ALSO: AG Mortgage Bank’s Drive to Alleviate Nationwide Housing Shortage Through Funding Initiative

The coming year appears poised to continue the trend of incremental legislative change, in part because of how many bills have already been approved. More than 100 housing production laws have gone into effect since 2017, and new construction has indeed increased, with nearly 114,000 homes and apartment units permitted, on average, since 2018, up roughly 17% compared to the five-year average between 2013–2017, according to the Construction Industry Research Board (PDF).

Laws to increase granny flats and backyard cottages have been particularly successful, with accessory dwelling units now accounting for more than 10% of all housing units built since 2018 and 18% of all completed units in 2022.

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But despite this success, it hasn’t been enough to move the needle on affordability, which remains at historic lows. According to the California Association of Realtors, just 15% of Californians could afford the median-priced single-family home in 2023, down from 27% in 2018. And more than half of all tenants spent over a third of their income on rent, indicating housing insecurity.

Meanwhile, homelessness increased — up nearly 40% since 2018, compared to an 18% rise nationally, according to the federal Department of Housing and Urban Development (PDF). And while California more than tripled the number of homes built (PDF) for low-income renters between 2019 and 2022, it is still building only around 20% of its goals, according to the California Housing Partnership.

As the state stares down a projected $68 billion budget deficit, securing additional funding will be especially critical in 2024, said Amie Fishman, executive director of the Non-Profit Housing Association of Northern California. Her organization is currently working to put a $10 billion regional housing bond for the Bay Area on the ballot, which might coincide with another proposed $10 billion statewide housing bond.

Already on the March 2024 ballot is Prop 1, a $6.38 billion bond championed by Gov. Gavin Newsom to build new housing and treatment centers for people undergoing behavioral and mental health treatment.

READ ALSO: Nigerian Housing Market Outlook For 2024

“The forward motion [last] year was a reinforcement that we can make forward progress, that there are solutions, that we can make a difference,” she said. “We do not have to accept the status quo of the intensifying housing and homelessness crisis that our communities are experiencing across the state.”

The proposed funding comes amid a tough environment for builders, renters and home buyers alike as high interest rates and the struggling insurance market continue to drive up housing costs.
Home prices are expected to continue to grow at a roughly 6% pace in 2024, said Sanjay Wagle, head of government affairs for the California Association of Realtors. He said the supply of homes for sale will likely improve, but not enough to offset the corresponding increase in demand that is expected to be further boosted by decreasing mortgage rates.

Joshua Howard, with the California Apartment Association, said uncertainty in the job market could lead to uncertainty in the rental market. But, with mortgage rates still higher than they had been in the past, some would-be homebuyers will choose to continue renting.

“So, it’ll be an interesting 2024,” he said.

Here are some of the housing bills going into effect in 2024:

Housing Production

SB 4 (Wiener): The third year was the charm for the so-called “Yes in God’s Backyard” law. It allows 100% affordable housing developments to be built on land owned by religious institutions and nonprofit colleges or universities. It also exempts those projects from the California Environmental Quality Act and requires construction workers to be paid the prevailing wage. The Terner Center for Housing Innovation at UC Berkeley estimates 171,000 acres of developable land would be eligible to take advantage of the new law, which goes into effect on Jan. 1.

SB 423 (Wiener): In 2017, lawmakers passed SB 35 as one of more than a dozen landmark housing bills. The law, which was set to sunset in 2026, requires cities to approve certain housing projects that meet minimum affordable housing requirements if the city has not met its state-mandated housing targets. Another Terner Center report (PDF) credited the bill with adding some 18,000 housing units between 2018 and 2021. SB 423 extends the provisions of SB 35 through 2036.

SB 684 (Caballero): The law streamlines the approval process for small, infill apartment buildings with up to 10 units on vacant lots in neighborhoods where apartments are already allowed. It also includes protections against demolishing existing rent-controlled or affordable housing. The bill initially included single-family neighborhoods, which tend to be wealthier and whiter than neighborhoods with existing apartment buildings, but that provision was later removed. Adam Briones, CEO of California Community Builders, said the move “reinforces an unfortunate message that many people of color still feel is true: Our neighborhoods matter less to those in power than wealthy, white neighborhoods. This echo of California’s discriminatory past will unfortunately make it harder to build support for housing production in communities of color.” Matthew Lewis from California YIMBY said his organization would be lobbying for a new bill in 2024 to allow small apartment buildings in single-family neighborhoods.

Tenants’ Rights

AB 12 (Haney): Landlords in California have been allowed to charge two months’ rent as a security deposit for unfurnished apartments or homes and up to three months’ rent for furnished ones. AB 12 limits security deposits to one month’s rent, regardless of whether the residential property is furnished or unfurnished. It goes into effect on July 1, 2024.

SB 567 (Durazo): In 2019, California lawmakers passed the Tenant Protection Act, which was hailed at the time as one of the strongest laws of its kind in the nation. It capped rent increases at 10% in most rental properties that were built at least 15 years ago and imposed new eviction protections. Many tenant activists, however, felt it didn’t go far enough. SB 567 sought to strengthen the eviction protections in the 2019 law by limiting so-called “renovictions,” where landlords evict tenants to complete major repairs on the property. It also heightens the penalties for landlords who claim they are taking the property off the rental market only to re-rent the units, among other provisions. It goes into effect on April 1, 2024.

AB 1418 (McKinnor): The law aims for “crime-free housing” policies, which often require landlords to evict or otherwise penalize tenants if they have been arrested or had a criminal conviction or refuse to rent to them in the first place. The policies have been shown to impact people of color disproportionately. The new law does not stop landlords from performing background checks, only city policies that require them.

Environmental Restrictions Removed

AB 1449 (Alvarez): This law exempts 100% affordable housing projects from the California Environmental Quality Act, which can delay projects for years. Christopher Martin, policy director for Housing California, described it as one of the most impactful bills of the year. “It’s going to open up a lot more affordable housing,” he said. The law is scheduled to sunset in Jan. 2033.

SB 1307 (Wicks): The law makes clear that noise from students in university housing does not fall under the purview of the California Environmental Quality Act. It resulted from a California appeals court ruling in February that ruled it could. The case arose after a neighborhood group brought suit over UC Berkeley’s plan to construct housing for 1,100 students and more than 100 homeless residents at People’s Park.

AB 1633 (Ting): In 2021, the San Francisco Board of Supervisors failed to approve a 500-unit housing project atop a parking lot, claiming the project needed “further environmental study,” though it did not specify a clear direction for how to bring the project into compliance. AB 1633 clarifies that withholding clearance of a housing development that otherwise meets the requirements of the California Environmental Quality Act is a violation of state housing law.

ADUs

AB 976 (Ting): When accessory dwelling units, also known as casitas, granny flats or in-law units, were first legalized, many local governments required they only be built on properties where the owner also lived, a rule that stymied construction. A 2019 bill, AB 881, made it illegal to require owners to live on-site. That was set to sunset in 2025, but AB 976 makes it permanent.

AB 1033 (Ting): Under this new law, local governments can allow property owners to sell an accessory dwelling unit separately from the primary residence, essentially turning that casita into a condominium.

Other

ACA 1 (Aguiar-Curry): If voters approve this constitutional amendment in November, it would lower the threshold to approve bonds and special taxes for affordable housing and public infrastructure projects from a two-thirds supermajority to 55%. If it passes, any bonds on the same ballot would be approved under the new threshold.

AB 1532 (Haney): Faced with an office vacancy rate of nearly 34% in San Francisco and more than 15% in Los Angeles, the bill would legalize conversions of office spaces to housing across the state. It also modernizes state building codes to make bringing older buildings up to code easier.

Source: kqed

The post These New California Housing Laws Are Going Into Effect in 2024 appeared first on Housing TV Africa.

Yet despite billions in annual federal and state subsidies, California and Hawaii, among many other states, face severe shortages of affordable housing. As a result, the 2023 median single-family home prices in our respective districts in California and Hawaii are $1,340,000 (Milpitas, California) and $631,000 (Honolulu, Hawaii).

Last year, we traveled to Vienna to explore solutions to our respective housing shortages. Here are some of the key lessons we learned.

Government Bears Responsibility for Tenants’ Rights to Rental Housing

The United States housing system is organized around the private sector. The largest housing subsidy is the mortgage interest deduction, which benefits private developers, private mortgage lenders, and private homebuyers. In rental housing, the Low Income Housing Tax Credit (LIHTC) is granted to private developers, and Section 8 Housing Choice Vouchers are paid to private landlords.

About 160,000 California households confront court-ordered eviction every year. In Hawaii, it’s unlawful for a landlord to evict a tenant without a valid reason, ranging from delayed rent payments and overstaying the lease agreement to engaging in unlawful activities. But California tenants don’t have the same protection.

In Vienna, the public sector takes direct responsibility for housing the population. The city of Vienna is the landlord for 220,000 housing units, about one-fourth of the city’s housing stock, and oversees a further 200,000 housing units managed by the private sector.

Housing Finance: Recycling Funds Versus One-Time Use

LIHTC has been the backbone of new affordable housing construction in this country since its creation in 1986. LIHTC is not a loan, nor does it buy ownership in housing. It is a grant: free money to the developer. For projects that receive the 9 percent tax credit, the government pays for 70 percent of the project, but owns zero. The developer pays zero—the remaining 30 percent comes from a bank loan repaid by the rents collected from tenants. LIHTC funds disappear into the developer’s pockets every time a new building is built. As a result, capitalist America puts more taxpayer money into LIHTC every year, but falls further and further behind in its housing shortage.

It wasn’t until we visited Vienna that we realized just how much this legalized theft of government assets has hurt America’s housing production. Because of housing programs created in the first half of the 20th century, the city uses minimal new taxpayer funds to subsidize housing construction. Vienna’s housing fund was seeded long ago, and it is self-sustaining because it gives loans, not grants, that get repaid and are recycled to produce new housing. In addition, “limited profit housing associations” (LPHAs), which must use their profits to build more housing, control half of the city’s social housing.

READ ALSO:How should we regulate the real estate industry?

In the U.S., working within existing federal regulations, the simplest way to fix LIHTC would be for states to prioritize funding projects that give the equity either to the government or to nonprofits, who are then obligated to use their profits to produce more housing. Such a change would not even require a legislative action, but only administrative changes to the prioritization of LIHTC applications, known as the Qualified Allocation Plan (QAP).

Even so, some agencies are reluctant to embrace this change. To address this issue, Sen. Chang introduced SB 858 (2023) and SB 859 (2023) to amend Hawaii’s QAP to prioritize LIHTC applications for state-owned projects, LPHAs, and projects with early loan repayment. If enacted, these bills will ensure that taxpayer dollars will be used for publicly owned projects and private projects that recycle taxpayer funding, rather than projects owned by private entities for their own benefit.

Housing for All Rather Than Only the Poorest

A perhaps even more important lesson is Vienna’s focus on the middle class. In America, government-subsidized housing targets the very poor: public housing requires tenants to make less than 80 percent of the area median income (AMI) and Section 8 rental vouchers cap income at 50 percent of AMI, while LIHTC caps fall between these limits. Because many of these tenants are too poor to pay rents that would cover the construction, operation, and maintenance costs of a building, the government must subsidize the large gap. In California coastal urban regions, constructing housing for low-income households costs at least $165,000 per unit in subsidies, and likely higher.

In Vienna, the housing agencies don’t build housing just for the poorest. The rents of each new project must cover its development and ongoing expenses, so most tenants must have the capacity to pay those rents. Those with low incomes may receive rent subsidies. In return, tenants have the right to live there as long as they live, and may even pass their apartment down to their children.

READ ALSO: Middle-Income Earners Face Challenges in Acquiring Homes Amidst Surging Housing Costs

Vienna does impose an income limit on new tenants of social housing, but it is inclusive, allowing 75 percent of the population to qualify, and it applies only at the beginning of their tenancy. By focusing on housing for all rather than prescribing specific income ranges, each unit requires only a modest subsidy in the form of a low-interest, long-term government loan, which means the program is scalable to actually produce enough housing to meet demand.

Public Lands for Public Housing

Some recent or proposed uses for surplus state lands in the urban core in our states include office space for state workers and a hotel and luxury condo development. These plans show that our states aren’t serious about ending the housing shortage. By contrast, Vienna converted disused rail yards near its main station into an urban neighborhood with 5,500 apartments for 13,000 residents, a park, and work space for 20,000. Vienna is also redeveloping a 800-acre former airfield into a mixed-use urban center with housing for 25,000 residents. In both instances, social housing forms the core of the development.

Services and Amenities Integrated into Housing

While 20th-century American public housing projects prioritized keeping construction costs as low as possible, without additional services, Vienna has a long history of integrating services like medical offices, kindergartens, retail stores, and access to public transportation into housing projects. This tradition originated to address the overcrowded, substandard housing of the early 20th century. Today, the scale of the large government parcels enables a truly lavish array of amenities, like an artificial lake, rooftop pools, a theater for plays and concerts, and schools and libraries. Indeed, Vienna’s government told us that social housing is actually higher quality than private housing. By contrast, public housing in the U.S. is notoriously underfunded, poorly maintained, and far from lavish.

Legislative Takeaways

We are now working on legislation to adapt Vienna’s housing model to address the severe housing shortages in our states. In California, Assembly member Alex Lee introduced AB 309 (2023), which creates California’s own social housing authority to build up to three mixed income social housing projects on state owned land. In evaluating bids for these projects the housing authority will prioritize revenue neutrality and utilize both rental and ownership approaches. The bill prohibits cities or counties from rejecting approved social housing projects but permits them to suggest design standards and safety modifications.

Elsewhere in California, school districts are converting excess properties into teacher housing, transit authorities are developing affordable housing on disused parking lots near transit stations, and an increasing number of public entities are acting as land banks and public developers. Through these initiatives, the state of California will assume a far greater role—and therefore responsibility—in providing the housing needed to meet its citizens’ demand.

Hawaii State Sen. Stanley Chang has introduced three bills modeled on Viennese social housing. He introduced SB 1462 (2023) to form a working group to establish LPHAs, modeled after Vienna’s, to build subsidized housing and recycle their profits to build more. These LPHAs would receive priority in allocation of LIHTC and state Rental Housing Revolving Fund subsidies. Sen. Chang’s ALOHA (Affordable, Locally Owned Homes for All) Homes program was also recently signed into law. SB 865 (2023) creates a pilot program to build owner-occupied housing. Key components of the program, including income blindness and revenue neutrality, are based on Vienna’s social housing model.

If our states adopt these measures and adjust existing housing subsidy programs to prioritize income-blind, revenue-neutral housing like the Viennese model, Hawaii and California can fill a critical missing piece of our social contract: housing for all.

Source: Shelterforce

The post How We Can Bring Vienna’s Housing Model to the U.S. appeared first on Housing TV Africa.