For decades, local control ruled in California. Cities decided where to build housing – or not, in many cases, which has left the state in a housing shortage and affordability crisis.
But a new wave of state officials, including Gov. Gavin Newsom, San Francisco’s Scott Wiener, and Berkeley’s Buffy Wicks, have realigned housing politics. Regulators in Sacramento, not city officials, now set goals and may override local laws they deem hostile to new housing. Those yearning for a return of local control have been all but shut out in the capital, as the new legislative session shows.
An attempt to bring the issue directly to voters via ballot measure has failed twice, but its backers are giving it another go. Helmed by a couple East Bay officials, the initiative Our Neighborhood Voices would amend California’s constitution to enshrine local control.
They couldn’t collect enough signatures to get onto the 2022 ballot. For 2024, they withdrew before gathering signatures because they objected to the language Attorney General Rob Bonta’s office used to summarize the proposal. “The title and summary provided by Bonta’s office falsely claims that the measure ‘automatically’ overrides the state’s affordable housing laws. It does no such thing,” ONV principals wrote in a 2023 complaint. Bonta’s office has said the summary was appropriate.
Bonta is cracking down on cities for shirking housing duties codified in blueprints known as Housing Elements. (Every California city had to update its element in 2023.) San Francisco is also on blast for its slowest-in-the-state approval process; state watchdogs have forced the city into an unprecedented annual review.
While SF has agreed to make room for 82,000 new homes this decade, a foe of the plan, Sup. Aaron Peskin, is running for mayor and likely to make resistance central to his campaign.
That gives a morale boost to the Our Neighborhood Voices camp, which believes not just that a voter backlash against development is coming, but that SF will pave the way for a statewide reset.
The Frisc reached out to ONV architect Susan Candell, also mayor of the East Bay town of Lafayette, to discuss the group’s aspirations, California housing wars, the upcoming election, and more.
This conversation has been edited for length and clarity.
The Frisc: Let’s talk about the 2024 ballot attempt. You didn’t like the title and the summary that the attorney general provided for your amendment. Wasn’t there time to get it changed before gathering signatures?
Susan Candell: The only way to get the AG to change it is to sue. So you have to get them to change it and then go out and take signatures, and on that timeline it was impossible. You saw [Bonta] put a poison pill in there, he says it repeals all of the state’s affordable housing laws, which it does not do.
[The Frisc asked the attorney general’s office about the ballot language and the need to sue. We received this reply via email: “Under California law, the Attorney General’s Office is responsible for issuing official titles and summaries describing the chief purpose and points of every proposed initiative submitted in compliance with procedural requirements. We take this responsibility seriously for each and every title and summary. With regard to your other questions, we are unable to provide legal advice or analysis.”]
You objected to the use of the word “automatically.” Why did you feel that undermined your campaign?
We are 100 percent committed to more affordable housing. And actually, we added language that would allow streamlining of 100 percent affordable projects, along with the repeal of Article 34. We are not getting enough affordable housing, we have to stop and regroup and change the laws.
[Article 34 of the state constitution, added in 1950, requires local approval of any public “low-rent housing project.”]
The idea is that local law shall prevail over state measures. What is not automatic about that? Section 5.5 of your initiative reads: “In the event of a conflict between a local law and a land use planning and zoning statute, the local law shall be deemed a municipal affair, and the meaning of Section Five and shall prevail over the conflicting land use planning and zoning statute.”
Cities have adopted their own ordinances to align with state law, and [the state housing regulator] makes them do that. So what you say is true, but none of that would get repealed, because they’ve been forcing us to adopt the state’s language. So we would have to take action.
If your measure passes, cities could write laws that override state laws, which presumably many would do?
You get to work with your community and figure out which of the state laws are actually working. The ADU laws in my town are going like gangbusters, we love them. And so we will be going okay, do we actually even want to change any of these? Do we want to enhance them?
So this amendment would automatically override state law, but that’s not necessarily the same thing as overriding all affordable housing laws, as you put it, because many are local?
Yes.
You’re now aiming for 2026. Folks who favor local control seem to be having trouble getting their message across. Why?
This year is going to be different. Because so many cities have had to go through their Housing Elements, people are getting educated on these laws and what is happening in their own cities. You get new and bigger projects, and people are starting to wake up. And exciting news in San Francisco, I’m sure you heard.
Yes.
Aaron Peskin has the record that shows how dedicated he is to affordable housing. He is in complete opposition [to] Sen. Wiener and Mayor Breed. [The race will be] a national stage for wonky housing policies and whether all this is the right direction, because so many of us do not believe it’s the right direction.
YIMBY types say local control and low density have been the status quo for decades. Skeptics of density say development and gentrification have held sway. Both sides feel like the disenfranchised underdog. Why does it feel like everyone is looking at a completely different world?
I look at this as we have an affordable housing crisis. A little city like Lafayette would need $660 million to build the affordable housing in the very low and low income categories that RHNA [the state’s housing quota system] requires. We have a $25 million budget every year. And cities don’t build housing. We used to with state redevelopment funds, but those were cut off. And so it’s decades of bad policies from Sacramento that have put us into the situation.
In San Francisco, it will cost tens of billion dollars to meet its affordable housing quota. Much of it is supposed to come from “inclusionary” fees generated by market-rate development, and the state has loosened rules to allow more height and density for projects with a certain amount of affordable housing. So if we don’t build market-rate housing, we lose a key source of affordable funding.
All we’re getting is market-rate housing, [and] some moderate [income]. We can’t tell [developers] which type to include. And San Francisco can’t tell the developer, can you switch from moderate and make them very low [income]?
[Editor’s note: Many market-rate projects choose to pay into an affordable housing fund instead of including below-market units in their projects. The fund pays for 100 percent affordable housing. Several projects are in the works. See our explainer of inclusionary housing here.]
People who oppose local control will say this is the problem: People in a neighborhood and their representatives have been able to block 100 percent affordable housing near them.
People leading cities in California right now are very different than 10 to 20 years ago. We are electing people that don’t fall into those traps anymore. You’d be hard-pressed to find any city council these days that would fight back against [affordable housing], unless they were just crazy.
If we do this with 100 percent affordable housing, the tens of thousands of RHNA units –
[Candell scoffs]
– okay, maybe you don’t agree with the RHNA numbers, but when people say we should build only affordable housing, where should funding come from, if not from market rate developers?
Governments are not investing in housing like they should be, and that’s the one governments do best. We’ve totally diverted away from that role at the state and the federal level right now.
What’s something specific governments should be doing?
Special loans for affordable housing developers, so Habitat For Humanity can get really cheap loans, say. We used to do that, that was the GI Bill after the war that caused so much housing to be built in our country. Granted, it had issues, it was not offered, I guess, to Black soldiers coming back, which was terrible. These are things government could do. If Biden and Harris got elected again, I could see Biden go forward on some of these things, and I hope he does.
So the federal government should have a hand in housing production at a local level?
Oh, yeah. There’s no reason not to take that history and do it well.
This particular election, it’s going to be wild.
You talk about the state making loans to affordable housing developers, but the state has only so many funds to commit. Something else has to fill the gap.
I think housing bonds are good. They’re not quite big enough. Bonds are good though.
[Editor’s note: San Francisco voters just approved a $300 million affordable housing bond that backers say will cover the cost of 1,500 new units. There is also talk of a $10 billion state affordable housing bond.]
What we’re trying right now is relying on the market, and it’s failing. Relying on the free market and deregulation, when does that ever solve a real social problem? It’s foolish.
You blame the free market, but local governments have been making housing decisions in California since forever. Didn’t that lead us to a housing crisis?
We did a big poll, and our initiative came up at around 65 percent approval. It is a vocal minority that is not for local control. The vocal minority has the voice in Sacramento right now and is swinging above their weight. But everyday people trust the local politician to work on this and work with their communities.
In 2019, SF voters reelected London Breed, who advocated in her 2018 inauguration for more housing of all kinds. SF has also voted in large majorities for Scott Wiener and Matt Haney, running on pro-housing platforms, to represent them in Sacramento —
People of San Francisco don’t know Sen. Wiener is behind all this in Sacramento.
He’s been very loud about his housing record.
They don’t know that he’s behind all these housing laws. And when we tell them that he is, they’re shocked.
Really?
Oh yeah, he doesn’t talk about it. I was at a forum where he was speaking, he lied about how, ‘oh, it must not have been my housing laws that allowed the Sloat tower’ – but yeah, it was.
[Editor’s note: The developer behind the 2700 Sloat proposal cited Wiener legislation in his application, but the city rejected his reading of the law. Wiener himself called the project a waste of time.]
What forum was that?
I think this particular election, it’s going to be wild. With Aaron in the race, wonky housing debate is going to have a national stage, all of the policy and the nuances, it’s going to come to the forefront.
Your initiative is not a part of this election, but –
Oh, it’s going to be a part of this election. Aaron Peskin is a huge supporter. I was on a call with him last night where we spoke to elected officials and Aaron openly admitted that the initiative is the only thing to help us get out of this problem.
So this is the housing reckoning year?
People are educated about these topics, the right candidates are on the ballot, we’re going to see what people really think.