Editor’s note: Sacramento Snapshot is a weekly series during the legislative session detailing what Orange County’s representatives in the Assembly and Senate are working on — from committee work to bill passages and more.
Should California cities and counties include homeless-serving housing proposals as part of their zoning plans to meet projected housing needs?
That’s the intent behind legislation from Sen. Catherine Blakespear that cleared a second committee last week. Her bill would mandate cities and counties provide plans for homeless-serving housing as part of the Regional Housing Needs Allocation plans.
The bill also creates funding for local governments to execute these plans for the unhoused, should they be approved by the state.
The goal, Blakespear said, is to eliminate encampments in public spaces, streets, canyons and riverbeds.
“Every city has an unsheltered population. There should be a specific plan to house people,” Blakespear said.
A freshman senator, Blakespear now represents southern Orange County, including Mission Viejo and San Juan Capistrano, in the statehouse. Prior to her 2022 election, she was the mayor of Encinitas where she said it was “clear … there was no obligation for anybody — city, county or state — to eliminate or prevent homelessness.”
“I identify homelessness as the state’s top problem,” Blakespear said. “I don’t look around at our systems right now and believe we are going to reduce homelessness because all of the current systems provide money or help for people but doesn’t have the goal of reducing homelessness to zero.”
Already, the state hands out housing goals to cities throughout California for the number of homes — including mandates at various levels of affordability — they have to plan for over the next decade. This process is called Regional Housing Needs Allocation, or RHNA.
Cities aren’t the builders; they just have to have the local planning in place that would allow developers to build to that capacity.
While most cities got to work identifying in the required local planning where developers could build what the state figured is needed to meet housing needs, pushback in other localities has been quick and loud.
Huntington Beach, for example, is entangled in a legal battle with the state over housing mandates.
Blakespear notes her bill comes with a funding stream, recognizing “cities don’t have money in their general funds to solve homelessness and the state needs to provide help for them to do that.”
And when it comes to homelessness, Blakespear said, “We need to do things differently.”
“Cities and counties need to take ownership of the problem,” she said.
The bill cleared the Senate Governance and Finance Committee last week in a 6-2 vote, with Republicans (including Sen. Kelly Seyarto, whose district includes Yorba Linda) opposed. Earlier in April, it passed the Senate Housing Committee with Seyarto also in opposition.
In other news
• Many OC legislators marked “Denim Day” in the Capitol last week, typically held at the end of April which is Sexual Assault Awareness Month. The campaign is to combat victim blaming — specifically combatting the notion that what a person was wearing could contribute to a sexual assault or somehow imply consent — and educate about sexual violence.
The California Assembly declared April 26 #DenimDay and April #SexualAssaultAwarenessMonth. Wearing denim reminds us that #clothingisnotconsent, and there’s never any excuse for sexual violence. Stand with survivors, raise awareness, and #EndVictimBlaming to #EndSexualViolence. pic.twitter.com/8M65aKHI3v
— Sharon Quirk-Silva (@QuirkSilvaCA) April 26, 2023
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• Sen. Tom Umberg’s bill to require zero-emission vehicle charging and fueling signage to be placed along state highways got a unanimous green light from the Senate Transportation Committee last week.
• Legislation from Assemblymember Tri Ta, R-Westminster, capping electricity rate increases to the rate of inflation, passed the Assembly Utilities and Energy Committee with bipartisan support. It would allow for higher rates, however, if the Public Utilities Commission determines the costs are directly related to safety enhancements or modernization or if a majority of customers OK the increase. Southern California Edison and Pacific Gas & Electric Company are among the opposition.
Source: Orange County Register
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