California Democrats took action and voted to pass generational reforms on housing affordability during this latest two-year session — altering the trajectory of the national housing crisis and pioneering solutions that will increase housing opportunity for residents in all corners of the state.
SACRAMENTO — Over the past two years, California Democrats delivered the most significant housing reforms in a generation — bending the curve on the country’s housing crisis and building a national model for constructing homes faster in every corner of California.
Housing costs are the single biggest financial strain on working families. The fastest way to bring down costs is the one Assembly Democrats chose: cut the red tape and make it easier to build more affordable homes, faster.
Under Speaker Rivas’ leadership, Assembly Democrats developed, introduced, voted for and enacted the most sweeping housing affordability reforms in decades.
These new laws remove longstanding barriers to construction, streamline approvals, provide more clarity for homebuilders and make it easier, faster and less expensive to build homes and apartments across the state.
These generational new laws included the Assembly’s landmark 2025 legislative package to modernize the state’s approval process and remove barriers that have long slowed the construction of new homes, providing greater certainty for builders by freezing new residential building standards through 2031.
And since those historic laws, the Assembly has not slowed its progress on housing affordability — advancing major investments in lower-cost home options, sending an $11.25 billion housing bond to voters and expanding pathways to build homes near jobs and transit.
Assembly Delivers on Housing Affordability
The Assembly has made housing a central pillar of its affordability agenda — pairing major investments with some of the most significant housing reforms in decades.
This two-year session, the Assembly delivered historic progress by:
- Streamlining Housing Development: In June 2025, the Legislature passed once-in-a-generation legislation to fast-track housing construction by reducing regulatory barriers, modernizing CEQA, and cutting red tape and costs — at no fiscal cost to the state.
- Investing in Affordable Housing: The 2026-27 state budget includes $900 million for another round of state homelessness block grant funding while strengthening accountability through new local matching requirements and Prohousing requirements for direct HHAP recipients that are cities with populations over 300,000 and the counties in which those cities are located, encouraging greater local investment and policies that support housing production.
- Providing Multifamily Affordable Housing Resources: The 2026-27 state budget includes $500 million for enhanced state low-income housing tax credits (LIHTC) and $200 million for the Multifamily Housing Program to support the construction and preservation of affordable multifamily housing for low-income Californians.
- Improving Project Approval Time: New legislation empowered homeowners and developers to use licensed third-party professionals for plan checks when local agencies exceed 30-day review windows, speeding up the building process for small-scale housing.
- Holding State Agencies Accountable: Required state departments reviewing post-entitlement housing permits to meet the same deadlines already imposed on local agencies.
- Preventing Cost Increases for Future Housing: Enacted a temporary moratorium (2025–2031) on new state and local residential building standards that could increase construction costs, ensuring more affordability in the development process.
And in June 2026, the Assembly took one of the boldest steps in California history, passing the $11.25 billion Veterans and Affordable Housing Bond Act of 2026 — a generational investment that will fast-track construction and expand homeownership opportunities for veterans, military families, and working Californians.
The Veterans and Affordable Housing Bond Act of 2026 includes:
- $1.25 billion in self-supporting revenue bonds for the CalVet Home Loan Program, expected to help veterans and military families achieve homeownership. These bonds are repaid entirely through mortgage payments and do not rely on taxpayer funding.
- $10 billion in voter-approved general obligation bonds to finance the construction, rehabilitation, acquisition and preservation of affordable housing for lower-income Californians.
- Investments in the Multifamily Housing Program, the state’s flagship affordable housing program.
- Targeted investments to expand affordable housing and homeownership opportunities for Californians with the greatest housing needs, including farmworkers, tribal communities, college students, homeless and at-risk youth, lower-income households and moderate-income first-time homebuyers.
- Tens of thousands of high-paying construction jobs.
The bond is expected to help more than 40,000 Californians purchase a home by providing down payment assistance, affordable mortgage financing and other homeownership support. These investments will help veterans, first-time and lower- to moderate-income homebuyers overcome the upfront costs of purchasing a home and make homeownership more attainable.
And it will support tens of thousands of high-paying construction jobs — while also maximizing taxpayer dollars by leveraging significant outside investment: for every $1 invested by the state, an estimated $4 in federal tax credits, local funding, private financing, and resident rents will help finance these developments, allowing California to build substantially more housing than state dollars alone could support.
It will also support the creation or preservation of tens of thousands of affordable homes for lower-income Californians, including seniors, farmworkers, veterans and people experiencing or at risk of homelessness. Because these homes must remain affordable for at least 55 years, the bond represents a long-term investment that will expand housing opportunities and strengthen California communities for generations to come.
Continuing to Build, Delivering Even More Affordable Housing Reforms
Assembly Democrats are working to advance even more housing legislation to keep the momentum going — accelerating production, expanding access to affordable options and supporting first-time and middle-class homebuyers. These bills include:
- Make building townhomes easier and faster to offer more affordable housing options to middle-class Californians. (AB 1751, Assemblymember Sharon Quirk-Silva)
- Support local governments with housing, infrastructure and other public projects faster by expanding best-value contracting options. (AB 1786, Assemblymember John Harabedian)
- Protect disaster survivors from losing their homes by requiring mortgage forbearance when a declared emergency makes their home uninhabitable. (AB 1842, Assemblymember John Harabedian)
- Lower housing costs by allowing builders to fix problems in newly built homes before costly litigation begins. (AB 1903, Assemblymember Buffy Wicks)
- Speed-up housing construction near major transit hubs and helps lower barriers to building new homes. (AB 2074, Assemblymember Matt Haney)
- Connect affordable housing, health facilities and other community projects to power faster by establishing clearer utility energization timelines. (AB 2518, Assemblymember LaShae Sharp-Collins)
Together, these reforms are expected to stabilize housing costs, increase supply, and help more Californians achieve the dream of homeownership.
Prioritizing Oversight
To truly make progress on affordable housing in California, Speaker Rivas recognizes that it also requires oversight to ensure laws are working as intended.
That’s why he launched the Select Committee on Housing Finance and Affordability — which brought together state agencies, affordable housing advocates and private developers for hearings to explore creative financing solutions to accelerate affordable housing production.
And Speaker Rivas’ Outcomes Review program examined several housing laws that have been enacted to ensure they’re bringing down housing costs and working as intended. Each hearing examined the following laws:
- Accelerating Affordable Housing: Assemblymember Buffy Wicks reviewed implementation of AB 2011, the Affordable Housing and High Road Jobs Act of 2022, enacted to streamline the approval of affordable and mixed-income housing along resource-rich commercial corridors.
- Reducing Costs and Delays in Affordable Housing Finance: Assemblymember Pilar Schiavo reviewed implementation of AB 519 (2023), which created a multi-agency workgroup to streamline and coordinate affordable housing finance by moving multiple state funding programs into a single, consolidated application.
- Supporting Affordable Farmworker Housing in the Central Valley: Assemblymember Esmeralda Soria reviewed outcomes related to AB 457 (2025), which was enacted to support the development of affordable farmworker housing within close proximity to agricultural land in the Central Valley.
- Improving Homeowners’ Access to Insurance: Assemblymember Lisa Calderon reviewed implementation of AB 3012 (2020), which created the Residential FAIR Plan Clearinghouse Program as a tool to move homeowners from the FAIR Plan back into the traditional insurance market.