HAC-Ed Highlights | 2026 Legislative Session Debrief: Wins, Losses, and What's Next
The California legislative session closed on Monday, September 12th, and HAC brought together its policy team, its lobbyist team at Brownstein, and Assemblymember Buffy Wicks for a candid, unfiltered debrief on how the year shook out. This was an honest accounting of what passed, what didn't, what got gutted, what HAC fought off, and a peek at what's coming next.
The Wins: Two Bills Heading to the Governor
HAC sponsored eight bills this session. Two are heading to the Governor's desk.
AB 1815 (Wicks) – Factory-Built Housing Building Code Standardization
This bill prohibits local jurisdictions from imposing building standards that exceed the state minimum California Building Code on factory-built housing projects. The problem it solves is straightforward and significant: when local jurisdictions layer on additional or different code requirements – REACH codes, unique local standards – factory manufacturers have to retool their production lines for each jurisdiction. That eliminates the core efficiency advantage of factory-built housing entirely.
When Pacific Companies' Idaho factory gets a California order, "they dread it, because they know they're gonna have to change things up, they're gonna lose the efficiencies, they're gonna have to retrain people." AB 1815 standardizes the rules statewide. The Terner Center has identified this kind of building code reform as a meaningful opportunity to make factory-built housing more viable at scale.
AB 1815 is awaiting the Governor's signature as part of a broader factory-built housing package. Several other bills in the package were vetoed, including a bill establishing a financial backstop for factories (designed to reduce developer risk aversion in light of failures) and a bill on over-road transportation permitting. Those will come back next year.
SB 677 (Weiner) – Closing Loopholes in Entitlement and Affordable Housing Financing
SB 677 addresses two distinct but related barriers:
First, it closes a gap in the Subdivision Map Act. While post-entitlement permits are already protected from frivolous appeals, parcel maps and subdivisions are not. This is a loophole that bad-faith opponents have been using to delay ministerially approved projects, particularly those with grant funding or tax-exempt financing on the clock. The subdivision map appeal that prompted this provision came directly from a Mission Housing project in San Francisco. SB 677 prohibits interested-person appeals of parcel maps for urban infill housing served by public water and sewer, while preserving the ability of public officials, advisory bodies, and the applicant to appeal.
Second, it fixes a TEFRA hearing bottleneck in the tax-exempt bond process. Affordable projects require a local TEFRA hearing before bonds can close. When jurisdictions drag their feet – and some have been deliberately weaponizing this process to exert influence over ministerially approved projects – developers are forced to transfer bond issuance to a different issuer, an expensive and time-consuming workaround that can blow through the financing window entirely. SB 677 lets the state treasurer enter a joint powers authority that can provide TEFRA approval directly, giving developers a reliable backstop.
Stenzler’s read on the Governor's signature: "I'm hearing good things. I think we're gonna get some good news here in the next week."
The Big Loss: AB 1903 and the Condo Defect Fight
AB 1903 was HAC's marquee bill of the session: a broad coalition effort co-sponsored by CBIA, California YIMBY, Bay Area Council, Council of Infill Builders, Habitat for Humanity, and SPUR, aimed at reforming California's broken construction defect litigation system.
The background: California's residential construction defect law was established by SB 800 in 2002 with a clear premise that homeowners identify defects, builders repair them, litigation is a last resort. Over two decades, that system has been turned upside down. Lawsuits now routinely get filed before any repair is attempted. Claims can proceed without actual damage. And builders who complete repairs still face ongoing litigation, eliminating any incentive to actually fix problems. The result is a 75% decline in condominium construction since SB 800 passed. Condos are one of California's most important entry-level homeownership options and typically more affordable than single-family homes and better suited for infill near jobs and transit.
AB 1903 passed both of its committees on the strength of Assemblymember Wicks's relationships and credibility. But it ran into Senate Judiciary Committee Chair Tom Umberg in its final stretch. The negotiations were fundamentally unfair: "Every time we would meet the demands of the chair at a current time, the goalposts would get moved and kept moving until we were pushed really into the last week of session." The bill was literally one of the last voted on, and there wasn't time to get it back across to the Assembly before the session clock ran out.
Asm. Wicks was candid about the bill, considering how close we really were, but she acknowledged and emphasized that the work built a coalition and raised the profile of the issue in ways that didn't exist a year ago.
For those who want to dig into the policy, Steve Wertheim from Asm. Wicks's office recommended looking at the August 21st version of the bill, not the final August 28th version, which had been stripped of key violation standards in last-minute negotiations. That's the version they intend to run back next year.
Assemblymember Buffy Wicks: Reflections on the Session and What's Coming
Asm. Wicks joined for a wide-ranging conversation that covered the session, the political landscape, and her thinking for 2027.
On the session overall: "Some big swings, some big misses, and some important work got done." She was candid that 90% of California's infill housing production is rental, and that she's become dedicated to also focus on homeownership opportunities. Condos, deposits, and the conditions that make for-sale housing pencil are squarely in her sights.
On transfer taxes, another close one. We thought we had a deal but, for a variety of reasons, we didn't, but she remains committed to this issue.
On factory-built housing, Asm. Wicks was enthusiastic about the direction and pragmatic about the Governor's response to the package. She expects him to sign some and veto others based on budget concerns, and intends to go back at the vetoed bills. She also flagged Sweden's performance-based building code model as something worth becoming intimately familiar with.
On 2027 priorities, Asm. Wicks described a framework of three buckets – reducing costs (transfer taxes, impact fees, inclusionary requirements), finishing unfinished business (condos, defect liability), and pursuing new issues that haven't been cracked yet. She's also focused on cultivating new housing leaders in the legislature so the movement can continue beyond her tenure. She's interested in inclusionary zoning reform and is looking at what Oregon has done.
Asm. Wicks closed with an open invitation to the room: she's spending this fall talking to developers, investors, labor, and cities to understand what's needed and what's possible. She wants to hear from capital allocators in particular, so please reach out to her office if you can help connect her.
Bills HAC Opposed and Why Defense is the New Reality
SB 1383 (Arreguin) – This bill would have allowed any jurisdiction with local labor standards to make those standards bulletproof against density bonus concessions, potentially opening the door for NIMBY-friendly districts to pass unsustainable labor requirements that developers couldn't work around. HAC negotiated hard and got the bill limited to projects over 85 feet (consistent with existing labor standards in AB 2011 and similar legislation). That means the vast majority of density bonus projects are unaffected. The bill is still on the Governor's desk.
SB 1090 (Perez) – This bill would have prohibited developers from using SB 9, SB 684, SB 1123, and the Small Home Revitalization Act in Altadena, in the area where the fires burned. Senator Perez framed it as protecting constituents from "vulture capitalists" coming in to develop single-family neighborhoods. HAC and YIMBY Action fought back, bringing in fire survivors who actually needed these tools to rebuild because they were underinsured and couldn't afford to replace a single-family home without the equity of additional units. The result: SB 9 was preserved entirely, and the window for SB 684/1123 applications was extended 180 days to protect the existing pipeline.
Sentiments in the meeting framed the precedent as troubling. The state is prone to disasters, and we're seeing housing tools we fought hard for being framed as a negative thing during disasters rather than a positive tool for people to rebuild. This is something HAC will need to stay ahead of.
HAC also effectively killed a problematic housing element bill in committee, a defensive win that didn't make news but mattered.
What's on the 2027 Agenda
Sapirman laid out the early list of priorities. Importantly, HAC is actively soliciting input from members on where to focus:
Condos and construction defect liability reform (coming back with the August 21st version as the starting point)
Condo deposit reform
DTSC and Cortese list brownfield remediation
Single-stair reform (with a better-organized political strategy and more legislator education)
Elevator reform
Utility reform (investor-owned and municipal utilities)
Building code reform
Housing elements and RHNA
AB 2011 cleanup
Judicial reform
Ministerial clarity for post-entitlement permitting
Coastal zone reform
Transfer taxes
Pro-housing enhanced infrastructure finance districts (SB 1003 will come back with Senator Grayson)
Impact fee caps
Unfunded inclusionary zoning
Have priorities or ideas for 2027? Sapirman and the HAC team want to hear from members – both for potential bill concepts and for longer conversations about where the needle-movers are. Email ali@housingactioncoalition.org.
This was a session with exciting wins and a painful near-miss at its center. AB 1815 and SB 677 are real, tangible improvements to the conditions for housing production in California. AB 1903 was tantalizingly close, and its failure stings, but the groundwork is laid and the coalition is intact for a stronger run next year. The housing advocacy community needs to build its defensive muscle before the political environment gets even harder.
Building housing in California takes more than good intentions. It takes relentless organizing, political savvy, and people in every corner of the ecosystem who understand what's at stake. Stay connected with HAC to keep learning, keep building, and keep moving the needle.
Have ideas for 2027 priorities or want to get more involved in HAC's policy work? Reach Ali at ali@housingactioncoalition.org or Brianna at brianna@housingactioncoalition.org.
