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The Torrance City Council on Tuesday, May 15, kicked off the creation of a seismic-retrofit ordinance for the city’s building stock. The ordinance would include soft-story construction prior to 1997, including multifamily buildings. A staff report is available here.

Tagged: Long BeachLos Angeles

A state lawmaker this year is again trying to make it easier and cheaper for homeowners to build accessory dwelling units. The building of accessory dwelling units — also known as granny flats or in-law units — is increasingly considered one of the more sensible ways to address California’s housing shortage. And while this housing type is cheaper and quicker to build than a single-family home, the excessive fees and regulatory hurdles associated with granny flats remains a serious deterrent to construction.

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The Santa Cruz City Council next week is poised to consider rent control as a possible way to address the city’s housing crisis. Rent control is included as a policy option in a staff report called “Santa Cruz Voices on Housing: Fall 2017 Community Engagement Report,” and on Tuesday, the council is scheduled to discuss the document.

Tagged: Tri-County

After a month-long summer recess, California lawmakers are back in Sacramento and working with Gov. Jerry Brown on a package of bills intended to help fix the state’s housing crisis.

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Lawmakers this year introduced more than a dozen bills that the California Apartment Association deemed threatening to the rental housing industry. Below you’ll find summaries of some of the worst housing legislation of 2017 and the status of each bill in the legislative process. Bill seeks to repeal Costa-Hawkins, the law that protects owners from extreme forms of rent control

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A record number of Californians are getting earthquake insurance, and more and more cities throughout the state are passing laws to make buildings safer in a quake. In 2016, the number of people signing up for an earthquake policy jumped more than seven-fold compared to previous years, the California Earthquake Authority just reported.

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Amid fierce opposition from CAA, lawmakers have once again fallen short in their efforts to weaken California’s Ellis Act – the 1985 law that protects a property owner’s right to exit the rental housing business. Since 1985, the Ellis Act has provided an important safety valve for landlords operating in rent controlled jurisdictions, guaranteeing they can walk away from the business when rent control becomes too burdensome.

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The Legislature has scheduled hearings this month on a pair of bills that target the Ellis Act, landmark legislation that protects a property owner’s right to exit the rental housing business. The Ellis Act, passed in 1985, provides an important safety valve for landlords operating in rent controlled jurisdictions.

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There’s a growing effort underway to make California communities safer, as cities throughout the state adopt new laws requiring seismic retrofits of buildings proven to be vulnerable to damage in an earthquake. San Francisco, Berkeley and other Bay Area cities were among the first to mandate earthquake retrofits for wood-framed, soft-story buildings – structures with open parking on the ground floor and apartment units built on the stories above. Los Angeles sparked the trend in Southern California with the nation’s most sweeping seismic retrofit law, adopted in 2015.

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If you need to seismically retrofit your apartment building, chances are good you’ll need to borrow money to do so. But what if you’re having trouble getting approved for a loan? That’s where the new California Seismic Safety Capital Access Loan Program comes in. The program itself doesn’t loan money, but it lessens the financial risk for participating banks, making them more likely to offer loans to small-business owners, like mom-and-pop landlords. The state’s Pollution Control Financing Authority received $10 million from the Legislature last year to administer the program, which went live last month. Representatives are seeking banks to… Read More

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