HAC (Housing) Holiday Wishlist

For those who celebrate gift-giving during the winter holidays, the start of December is often when you really start to think about what you want to give and receive. Some may want a Daisy Red Ryder or a Turbo Man action figure; others may simply want to reconnect with family. 

At HAC, the number one item on our holiday wish list every year is to alleviate California’s housing crisis. Practically speaking, we recognize that this isn’t exactly an easy wish to fulfill. While the solution is simple, building a diverse range of urban infill housing at all income levels, the path to getting there is more complex. There’s no single frictionless policy or law change that will suddenly change how much housing we’re building. But there are specific political and policy-based changes that will have a tangible positive effect on our effort to solve California’s housing challenges. 

In the spirit of the holidays, the HAC team put together a wish list for the changes we would like to see in regions across California. 

Corey Smith, Executive Director

Wish: A healthier, more policy-driven conversation

Why: While specific policy solutions are critical, our housing crisis is a systemic problem that requires substantive changes in how we approach solving the problem. To that end, I have a more meta item for my housing holiday wish: a healthier, more policy-driven approach to solving our housing crisis.

In California, we’ve reached a point where most elected officials agree that housing is too expensive and we need to do something about it.  

However, our efforts to solve our housing problems are too often driven by politics rather than by what is the most effective policy solution. Important housing decisions are too often determined by who has the most political power versus what’s the best policy solution for the people living in our communities, cities, regions, or state. 

Statewide

Ali Sapirman, Policy & Advocacy Manager

Wish: Strengthen the state’s existing utility shot clocks by attaching mandatory financial penalties when utilities fail to complete design, review, or service installation within the current timelines. 

Why: Homebuilders frequently express frustration with utility companies’ drawn-out and unpredictable timeline for connecting completed housing projects to the power grid. These frustrating delays from utility companies like PG&E force projects to sit dormant and vacant instead of housing the people who need homes. 

California already has defined timelines for utilities to process new service requests, but without enforcement, they function more like guidelines than requirements. A shot clock without consequences is effectively no shot clock at all. 

Enforcing existing shot clocks with real penalties turns them into predictable, reliable timelines that pre-construction teams can actually plan around. Predictability reduces risk, keeps financing stable, and allows homebuilders to operate with confidence in their budget and project plan. 

Wish: Reform California’s condo defect liability laws to reduce excessive litigation risk and make it feasible to build new for-sale multifamily housing again.

Why: California’s condo defect liability laws expose builders to a slew of potential lawsuits, even minor, non-safety problems. That broad and unpredictable risk has made insurers wary, lenders hesitant, and developers far more likely to build rentals instead of much-needed for-sale homes.

The law was designed to protect homeowners, but without clearer standards, it functions more like an open invitation to litigation than a true safety tool. The result is fewer condo projects, higher costs, and a shortage of attainable homeownership options.

We could help make condo development viable again if we…

• Tightened defect standards to focus on real safety hazards.

• Required a fair pre-litigation repair process.

• Offered safe-harbor protections for builders who meet today’s construction and inspection benchmarks.

San Francisco

Brianna Morales, Community Organizer

Wish: Require cities to spend in-lieu fees generated in high-resource neighborhoods in that same geography (or within a tight radius), with a defined share reserved for citywide anti-displacement and deeply affordable housing.

Why: In-lieu fees are meant to help translate market-rate development into affordable housing, but cities often don’t reinvest those dollars into building affordable housing in those same neighborhoods. Without clear geographic rules or timelines, in-lieu fees don’t help make our communities more diverse or equitable.

Tying in-lieu dollars to the neighborhoods that generate them + reserving a share for citywide anti-displacement and deeply affordable housing will help create more integrated communities.

East Bay

Brianna Morales, Community Organizer

Wish: Legalize 4–6 story multifamily housing by-right across the East Bay (especially in high-resource neighborhoods), and allow up to 8 stories by-right in major transit areas. At the same time, adopt a targeted commercial anti-displacement program (including a right-to-return, relocation support, and construction mitigation) for designated legacy small business corridors.

Why: Many East Bay jurisdictions still make it unusually hard to build modest apartment buildings in the neighborhoods with the best access to schools, groceries, transit, parks, and jobs. This forces housing growth into a limited set of corridors and deepens inequities. The barriers show up early in the development process through restrictive zoning (where apartments aren’t allowed), and later through discretionary review that adds uncertainty and delay. At the same time, small businesses in legacy corridors face real risks from redevelopment pressures and construction disruption, and those concerns deserve concrete protections.

A clear by-right pathway for mid-rise apartments would unlock a huge amount of housing capacity in opportunity-rich neighborhoods and transit-served areas, making it more feasible to deliver mixed-income and affordable homes at a meaningful scale. Pairing that with a targeted, well-defined commercial anti-displacement program keeps the policy community-oriented: businesses that are truly at risk are protected (right-to-return options, relocation assistance, and construction-period support), while housing approvals stay objective, predictable, and fast.

South Bay

Ali Sapirman, Advocacy & Policy Manager

Wish: The City of San José updates its building code to allow single-stair apartment buildings up to 6 stories.

Why: In the effort to jumpstart housing production, we need to do everything in our power to make it easier to build urban infill housing. Single-stair reform has become so popular because it has the potential to unlock an entire category of missing-middle housing that is currently infeasible to build. 

Many cities—Paris, Barcelona, Tokyo—build safe, beautiful, single-stair residential buildings as standard practice. By bringing San José’s code in line with global norms, the city can create a new pathway to small-scale apartment construction, enable smaller developers to participate in the market, and reduce construction costs.

Peninsula

Ali Sapirman, Advocacy & Policy Manager

Wish: Establish a statewide “megaproject approval” pathway that gives large housing developments over 1,000 units a predictable, ministerial approval process once they meet clear, objective standards.

Why: With California short by 3.5 million homes by some estimates, we need ambitious homebuilding efforts. Megaprojects like Brisbane Baylands fit that mold. However, we’re not going to meet our housing goals when ambitious projects are stalled for years.

The Brisbane Baylands—one of the Bay Area’s largest infill opportunities and the cornerstone of Brisbane’s lower-income RHNA plan—has languished in a discretionary, opaque local process for over twenty years. Brisbane has repeatedly missed Housing Element milestones, including long delays on its Baylands EIR, all while relying on a little-known “one-EIR-at-a-time” internal policy that throttles progress.

A statewide megaproject approval pathway would prevent cities from slow-walking regionally significant projects that our state needs. 

Southern California

Jesse Zwick, Southern California Director

Wish: Exempt newly constructed multifamily residential and commercial projects from Measure ULA and ensure the tax applies on a marginal basis rather than to the full transaction value.

Why: Real estate transfer taxes directly influence a project’s pro forma. They affect how much a developer can pay for land and determine whether the eventual sale of a completed building will “pencil.” Measure ULA’s steep levy has upended these calculations in Los Angeles, creating a chilling effect on housing investment. Projects that were once financially viable no longer move forward, and LA is now seeing significant drops in land transactions and building permits relative to neighboring cities that did not adopt similar taxes.

Exempting new housing construction from ULA would remove a major local barrier to development while preserving most of the revenue the measure brings in for affordable housing and renter support. A marginal approach ensures the tax remains progressive without punishing the very projects that the city needs to deliver more homes.