HAC-Ed Highlight: Homes4Good + Transfer Tax Legislation

We welcomed two groups to give two different sessions: one looking inward at how housing organizations communicate with the people they serve, and one looking outward at a high-stakes policy fight that could reshape the economics of housing development across California. Both raised the same underlying question: are we using the tools available to us as effectively as we could be?

Heath Shatouhy | Patter COMPASS A Better Way to Reach Residents and the Organizations That Serve Them

Heath Shatouhy opened with a demo of Patter COMPASS, the mobile communication platform his company has built specifically for housing organizations – housing authorities, nonprofits, CBOs, and labor unions that need to reach residents and members reliably, securely, and without the noise of general social media.

The core problem Patter COMPASS is solving

Most housing organizations are trying to communicate with residents through a patchwork of tools – email blasts, text messages, website updates, flyers – none of which work particularly well. Email open rates are low. Text messaging has become increasingly unreliable as carriers crack down on spam, and residents change their numbers frequently. Paper notices don't reach people who aren't home. And social media, while widely used, is algorithmically driven, legally risky for organizations that host user comments, and not a trusted channel for sensitive housing information.

Patter COMPASS addresses this with a branded, private mobile app – one that looks like your organization's app, not a generic platform. Research shows residents are significantly more likely to download, trust, and engage with an app branded to an organization they already know. Once downloaded, the app operates entirely within your control: no ads, no algorithms, no third-party data mining, and no public comment threads that create legal liability.

How the platform works

The app is built around three core functions. Push notifications replace text messages as the primary alert mechanism; they're free to the end user, more secure than SMS, and can include rich content like images, documents, and multiple calls to action – not just a link. A curated newsfeed lets organizations publish content targeted by building, interest area, or resident type, so a resident in Building 1 who's opted into financial literacy content sees something different from a staff member following maintenance updates. And a resource center functions like a mobile-accessible filing cabinet – all the static information residents need (service contacts, program information, recertification deadlines) organized and accessible within one or two taps.

The platform also supports a "civic infrastructure" model: partner organizations (other nonprofits, service providers, advocacy groups) can actively contribute content to the app with permission, rather than just appearing as a link. This is a meaningful distinction for HAC members who build or manage housing alongside resident services partners – it means the app becomes a shared channel for the entire support ecosystem around a resident, not just a one-way broadcast from a single organization.

Why it's different from social media

Shatouhy was direct about this: the platform deliberately eliminates liking and commenting. This is a design choice driven by what housing authority clients asked for. Open comment threads create monitoring burdens, legal liability, and narrative risk that most housing nonprofits and authorities simply don't have the capacity to manage. Patter COMPASS is built for structured, organization-controlled communication – trusted information flowing from the organization to its community, without the risk of the message being co-opted.

Setup takes approximately 30 days with no IT lift required on the client side. The backend content management system is built for small organizations – straightforward enough that staff can schedule recurring push notifications, target specific resident groups, and manage content without technical support.

→ Interested in learning more about Patter COMPASS for your organization? Visit pattercompass.com or reach out to Brianna at brianna@housingactioncoalition.org to get connected.

Jesse Zwick + Dave Rand | HAC Southern California + Rand Pastor Nelson Transfer Tax Reform – Where Things Stand and What's at Stake

This session came with a sense of urgency. Jesse Zwick, HAC's Southern California Director, and Dave Rand, a land use attorney who has represented developers in LA for over 20 years, walked through one of the most consequential policy fights currently playing out in California – and one with a deadline of days, not months.

The problem: transfer taxes and what they're doing to housing

Transfer taxes are one-time taxes paid at the point of property sale, typically by the seller. They've become an increasingly popular revenue tool for California cities operating under the constraints of Prop 13, which caps annual property tax increases at 2% and means cities depend heavily on property transactions to reset assessed values and grow their tax base.

The challenge: when transfer taxes are set too high, they suppress the very transactions that cities depend on for property tax revenue. This is a dynamic researchers have described as “robbing Peter to pay Paul”. For housing development specifically, merchant builders who buy land, build, and then sell face the tax at both ends of the transaction. And in Los Angeles, Measure ULA – a 2022 ballot initiative that imposed a 4% tax on property transfers over $5 million and 5.5% on transfers over $10 million – has become, in Rand's words, "the single biggest vexing problem that local government has imposed on developers in terms of making things difficult" in his two decades of practice.

Three tracks toward reform

Zwick laid out the current landscape:

In Los Angeles, HAC has been working with a coalition called Mend It Don't End It – civic, business, pro-housing, and labor groups including the Carpenters Union – to push for a ballot fix. After a January motion to place reform language on the June ballot didn't carry, a council ad hoc committee was created to study the issue, with a potential November ballot measure still in play. The window for placing something on the ballot closes at the end of June.

In San Francisco, Mayor Daniel Lurie and Supervisor Bilal Mahmood put forward a proposal in February to roll transfer taxes back to pre-2020 levels. That effort hit speed bumps, facing the same political headwinds that make it difficult for any city currently running a budget shortfall to cut taxes, even ones with a sound long-term fiscal argument.

In Sacramento, the highest-stakes action is playing out around the Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association's Local Taxpayer Protection Act (TPA), which has qualified for the November ballot. The TPA would do two things: roll back transfer taxes statewide, and overturn the "Upland decision,” a court ruling that allows citizen-initiated special taxes to pass with a simple majority rather than a two-thirds vote. That second piece has made the entire Democratic establishment, organized labor, teachers, and firefighters deeply opposed to the measure, because it would significantly limit the ability of local governments to raise money for essential services through future ballot measures.

That opposition, paradoxically, is also the leverage. Because so many Democratic-aligned constituencies desperately want the TPA off the ballot, there is now real pressure to negotiate a legislative deal that would give the business groups enough of what they want on transfer taxes in exchange for pulling the initiative. Assemblymember Buffy Wicks, Senator Tim Grayson, and Assemblymember Mark Gonzalez have been tapped to lead those negotiations in the state legislature, with the governor's office also very engaged.

The negotiating dynamics

Rand was candid about where things stood. The business groups holding the leverage, primarily large commercial developers who are the primary funders of TPA, are not housers. Their interests and priorities don't map perfectly onto what the housing community needs. And they're driving a hard bargain: their current position is closer to eliminating transfer taxes entirely and significantly curtailing the Upland decision, which is far more aggressive than what the Legislature and Governor's office are willing to accept.

The Legislature's preferred landing zone is something like: transfer taxes capped at 2-3%, a 15-year phase-in exemption for new construction, and preservation of the Upland simple majority threshold. Getting from here to there requires both sides to move significantly and as of June 10, they remain far apart.

Public polling on TPA has not been favorable to the business groups, and Rand was skeptical of the private push-poll data backers cite to claim the measure is popular once explained. The title and summary, drafted by the Attorney General's office, is not favorable and in a statewide ballot campaign, most voters won't get more than that.

What happens if no deal is struck

If the next 10 days don't produce a legislative agreement, the TPA goes to the November ballot. HAC and California YIMBY do not have a formal position on TPA, but both organizations have been messaging that it would be destructive, and that a negotiated deal is strongly preferable. If TPA goes to the ballot and loses, which Rand considers the more likely outcome given the political dynamics, the status quo holds, and ULA and its equivalents stay in place with no near-term path to reform.

That's a scenario nobody in the housing advocacy community wants. As Zwick put it: "When cities get starved for revenue, they come up with other creative ways to try to raise it, and they are often looking at new development as the golden goose."

What you can do right now

The most useful thing HAC members can do in this window is contact their state legislators, wherever they are in California, and make clear that transfer tax reform is urgent, that a deal is preferable to a ballot fight, and that the housing production implications are real and significant. If a deal is struck, it still has to pass both chambers of the state legislature quickly, and not every legislator currently understands the stakes.

→ Questions about HAC's advocacy on this issue? Reach Jesse Zwick at jesse@housingactioncoalition.org. For Southern California-specific updates, keep an eye on HAC's website and member communications.