Reading California's Plan for Housing

 Greetings!

If there is one document that contains the most accurate description of what California is trying to do about creating housing, it's the text of Assembly Bill 83, signed by the Governor in June of this year.  I didn't say clearest document, as it's written in the language of legislation.  But it is the law, and it does provide direction to the tens of thousands of government employees and contractors trying to work together.

Since I try to keep up with the hundreds of individual funding sources, and thousands of funded projects, in order to bring the most opportunity to Sonoma County housing activists, understanding the marching orders in AB83 is important.  What led me to take a deep look at it was two recent deadlines:  1) my application for election to the latest version of the governing board of Sonoma County's Homeless Continuum of Care (CoC); and 2) the release of a Notice of Funding Allocation (NOFA) of California's Homeless Housing And Prevention (HHAP) on November 30th for $300 million.  Sonoma County's share of the pie is $3.117 million.

Sonoma applied for and received $6.696 million in Round 1, following closely on $12.1 million from a similar program called Homeless Emergency Aid Program (HEAP) a year earlier.  That $21 million, within $1.45 billion distributed to local government, is funding 68 individual programs for prevention, outreach, shelters, and homeless supportive and permanent housing development awarded by the governing board to which I am aspiring to become elected.

But AB83 is more than  a Plan for Homeless Housing.  Eighteen months in the making, it's authors attempted to describe and authorize how up to $18 billion in National Mortgage Settlement funds can be deposited into a Special Deposit Fund, and drawn down to support almost all of the housing initiatives eventually reimbursed by other federal and state revenues,  As a result, AB83 also contains instructions concerning how the state expects the programs to operate in collaboration, meet expected and reported housing outcomes, and respond to continuous local needs assessments.

So if there is somewhat difficult to read (until you get their approach as - tell you what current laws authorizes, and then what this bill changes) manual for homeless and general housing developers and program operators, this is it.