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View Winners → Top Posts Jul 19, 2021
|Photo courtesy of Gavin Newsom
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Governor Gavin Newsom signed the largest funding package in California history for housing and homelessness as part of the $100 billion California Comeback Plan. Newsom signed the bill at a Homekey site in Sebastopol Monday.
The bill signed today, AB 140, includes $2 billion in aid to counties, large cities and Continuums of Care through the Homeless Housing, Assistance and Prevention grant program. Recipients must follow strict accountability measures and submit a local homelessness action plan in order to qualify.
“I don’t think homelessness can be solved – I know homelessness can be solved,” said Newsom. “We are going all-in with innovative solutions that we know work – with a focus on creating housing to support people with severe mental health challenges, and with more money than ever to move people out of encampments and into safer situations.”
The $10.3 billion affordable housing package allocates $850 million that will incentivize infill development and smart growth, $800 million to preserve the state’s affordable housing stock, $100 million to promote affordable homeownership, and additional funding to increase the state’s efforts to create more Accessory Dwelling Units, build more housing on state-owned excess land, and invest in farmworker housing.
The $12 billion over two years to tackle the homelessness crisis will allocate $5.8 billion to add 42,000 housing units through project Homekey, $2 billion in Homeless Housing, Assistance and Prevention grants over two years with accountability requirements for local governments, $1.75 billion to unlock up to 7,200 units of housing in the pipeline, $150 million to stabilize participants in Project Roomkey hotels, $50.6 million for encampment resolution efforts, and $45 million for services and housing for homeless veterans.
The California Comeback Plan also includes $1.1 billion allocated to clean up the streets of California. The program is expected to create up to 11,000 jobs over the course of three years.
