Temporary housing for homeless Californians could get easier to build under Bay Area lawmaker's bill

The design solution for California's homeless crisis may come in the form of steel, Lego-like modular units with electricity, showers and key-pad locks — temporary communities assembled by forklift on public land.

That is the vision of state Sen. Josh Becker, a Democrat from Menlo Park who promoted his Senate Bill 1395 on Thursday morning in Sacramento. He was joined by co-authors Assemblymember Gregg Hart of Santa Barbara and state Sen. Catherine Blakespear of Encinitas, Democrats who both called for local governments to allow the units to be built on public land.

"This is a California problem," Becker said. "Everybody knows we have a large homeless population. What everybody doesn't know is that 67% of our homeless population is unsheltered. Nationally, that's 20%. In New York it's 5%."

Becker added that "people on the street are suffering much worse outcomes." 

"They're dying on the street, they're being assaulted on the street, they are becoming addicted to drugs on the street," he said.

The Bay Area has seen a range of creative and contested solutions to the housing crisis. 

This week, San Mateo County's Jefferson Elementary School District opened a housing development in Daly City for their K-8 teaching faculty and staff. It was locally funded by a public measure passed in 2018. Nearby, voters in Millbrae officially recalled two of their councilmembers July 23. They were angry because the councilmembers supported the conversion of a La Quinta Inn into permanent supportive housing. That project, which includes two buildings purchased by the county, is moving ahead despite the recall.

At Thursday's event, Becker referenced Gov. Gavin Newsom's June 28 executive order on homelessness directing state agencies to remove encampments in a respectful manner. It was issued the same day the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that local government ordinances with civil and criminal penalties for camping on public land do not constitute cruel and unusual punishment of homeless people.

Becker's bill, which was approved by the state Senate on May 31 and is expected to move for an Assembly vote before the legislative session ends Aug. 31, would streamline zoning and permitting for rapid shelter communities. Interim housing units don't need to be built with permanent foundations. They can be modular and relocatable. 

The legislation would extend until 2027, when a 2017 law that lessened building standards for emergency housing will sunset. 

It also extends the sunset date of the Shelter Crisis Act from 2026 to Jan. 1, 2036, allowing local jurisdictions to declare a shelter crisis and offer emergency housing. Under the SCA, local jurisdictions may allow people without homes to occupy designated public facilities for the duration of the crisis.

The bill would also provide an exemption under the California Environmental Quality Act for new shelters, providing streamlined, ministerial approval, and would free up more state funding for interim housing.

"The practical solutions are right here behind us," Blakespear said, speaking in front of two sample interim units. "We also need to have the will. We need local governments to say yes to siting these and we need to recognize that there is a continuum. Where is somebody sleeping tonight? Where are they in six months? Where are they in two years and how is it that we are actually owning the problem and then solving the problem. I firmly believe that our public spaces should be available for the public to use as intended, and people deserve to live inside."

One of the interim housing units on display was created by design firm BOSS Cubez, or Built on Site Systems, one of the companies awarded a California Department of General Services statewide contract for emergency sleeping cabins. The units have already gone through the Request for Proposal process so local agencies can skip those steps, which typically require months of effort, and purchase from an awarded vendor such as BOSS.

According to the Assembly bill analysis, California has the largest homeless population in the nation with 181,399 people experiencing homelessness on any given night. Nearly half of all unsheltered people in the country were in California during the 2023 point in time count. Of the 6 million renter households in the state, 1.7 million are paying more than 50% of their income toward rent.

"It was during the pandemic we couldn't have folks congregating outside," said Hart, the assemblymember from Santa Barbara.

He visited an interim housing project in San Francisco organized by the nonprofit DignityMoves and returned to build a similar project in downtown Santa Barbara, the most historic district in the city.

"There was great consternation, but we assured everybody that we had the proper services that we're going to go with this facility and working directly with the neighbors for a long period of time," Hart said. "Six months later, the neighbors that lived immediately adjacent to this project were some of the strongest advocates for the program and were supporters at future public hearings, urging neighborhoods across the entire county to embrace this strategy because it was so well operated."

"Santa Barbara was the first to do that. You know what happens is the private sector shows up," said DignityMoves founder and CEO Elizabeth Funk. "All those people have donor fatigue, donating to this shelter and that shelter, you've got a lot of philanthropy out there with a very real vested interest in seeing this problem solved."

In:
• Homelessness
• Housing Crisis