California’s housing shortage continues to squeeze renters, aspiring homeowners and people experiencing homelessness, with the burden falling particularly heavily on low-income households and communities of color. Proposition 1, appearing on the Nov. 3 ballot, asks voters whether the state should borrow $11.25 billion for affordable housing and veterans’ programs.
The money would support rental housing, homeownership assistance, permanent supportive housing, farmworker and tribal housing, preservation of existing affordable homes and other programs. Supporters argue the measure could move thousands of projects forward, while acknowledging that a bond of this size would address only a portion of California’s broader housing shortage. Voter Information Guide
In a media briefing on October 13 hosted by American Community Media, a panel of experts discussed Proposition 1 and how its proposed investments could affect affordable housing construction, homelessness, renters, homeownership and communities facing particularly severe housing burdens.
California’s official voter guide says Prop 1 would authorize $11.25 billion in general obligation bonds, including $10 billion for state housing programs and $1.25 billion for the CalVet home loan program. The state estimates the housing portion would cost the General Fund roughly $500 million to $600 million annually for about 25 years to repay. Voter Information Guide
Speakers:
• Chione Lucina Muñoz Flegal, Executive Director, Housing California
• Dr. Ryan J. Smith, President and CEO, St. Joseph Center
• Jessica Hitchcock, Managing Director, Research, California Housing Partnership
• Francisco Dueñas, Executive Director, Housing Now!
A bond aimed at California’s housing pipeline
California’s affordability crisis stretches across income levels, but Chione Lucina Muñoz Flegal said the greatest pressure continues to fall on lower-income households and communities of color.
Working families are being pushed farther from their jobs, young people struggle to remain in the communities where they grew up and seniors on fixed incomes face increasingly difficult monthly budgets, she said.
“I am not going to make the case that Prop 1 solves all of our housing problems,” Muñoz Flegal said. “This is a tremendous problem that is going to need many, many solutions.”
The argument for the bond, she said, is that California has already changed laws to make affordable housing projects easier to approve, but many approved developments still lack the financing needed to begin construction.
“Today they can get projects approved and entitled in jurisdictions and in places that they couldn’t have dreamt of 10 years ago,” she said. “They still can’t build those projects because there’s no money to actually close the deal and move them into construction.”
Muñoz Flegal said roughly 40,000 affordable homes are already in the development pipeline and could move forward with additional financing.
Proposition 1 would direct $5.1 billion toward building and rehabilitating multifamily rental housing, while other allocations would support affordable housing preservation, supportive housing, veterans’ mortgages, homeownership assistance, farmworker and tribal housing, student housing and infrastructure. Voter Information Guide
The measure is a bond rather than a new dedicated tax. The state would borrow the money and repay the housing portion, with interest, from the General Fund over time. The $1.25 billion CalVet portion would be repaid through veterans’ home-loan payments. Voter Information Guide
“The bond is not a new tax,” Muñoz Flegal said. “It does have to get repaid with interest through our general fund.”
She compared housing to other long-lived infrastructure financed through borrowing, arguing that affordable developments built today could serve successive households for decades.
Housing as part of the homelessness response
For Californians already living without shelter, Ryan Smith said services alone cannot substitute for a permanent place to live.
St. Joseph Center serves thousands of people in Los Angeles County through housing outreach, mental health services, workforce development and other programs. Smith said outreach workers can build relationships, connect people to benefits and prepare them to enter housing, but those efforts reach a bottleneck when affordable units are unavailable.
“We know that permanent housing combined with supportive services works,” Smith said.
Permanent supportive housing pairs an affordable home with services such as case management, mental healthcare and substance-use treatment. Smith described the approach as “housing first, but not housing only.”
“There are a lot of services that are needed to sustain people in housing,” he said.
Those services can include help navigating public benefits, connections to healthcare and community resources, social programming and workforce development intended to help residents stabilize their lives after experiencing homelessness.
But the availability of housing remains decisive.
“Our outreach teams can build relationships with people who are experiencing homelessness,” Smith said. “We can connect them to services and help them attain benefits and prepare them for housing, but too often there’s nowhere affordable for our folks to go.”
Smith also emphasized prevention. Increasing affordable housing, he said, could help households remain housed before financial instability becomes homelessness.
“The solution to homelessness is housing,” Smith said. “And unfortunately, even as we provide services and mental health supports on the ground, there is not enough affordable housing, there’s not enough permanent supportive housing.”
Protecting affordable homes that already exist
New construction represents only one part of the measure.
Francisco Dueñas said another important piece involves preserving existing affordable housing and acquiring market-rate properties before rising rents displace their residents.
California’s renters include households from nearly every demographic group, but housing instability can take different forms. Dueñas pointed to overcrowding among some Asian American, Pacific Islander and immigrant households, severe rent burdens among undocumented residents and increasing affordability pressures for seniors living on fixed incomes.
Those pressures can spill into other parts of community life.
When households devote more of their income to rent, Dueñas said, they have less available for healthcare, education, transportation or starting businesses.
Housing instability also affects farmworkers, particularly in expensive agricultural regions such as California’s Central Coast. Proposition 1 would fund the Joe Serna Jr. Farmworker Housing Grant Program, alongside other housing programs serving rural and tribal communities. The official state allocation dedicates $1 billion collectively to farmworker, tribal and student housing. Voter Information Guide
Dueñas said preservation programs offer another advantage: acquiring an existing property and maintaining its affordability may cost less than constructing a new development.
“It’s cheaper, as many folks can understand, to acquire an existing property and keep it affordable than to build a new property,” he said.
That approach could also allow community organizations or community land trusts to purchase existing housing and protect tenants from future displacement.
Who would benefit?
Jessica Hitchcock broke the measure into several categories of investment and said its benefits would extend from extremely low-income renters to veterans and some first-time homebuyers.
The Multifamily Housing Program would receive $5.1 billion. Hitchcock said at least 10% of those funds would be directed toward extremely low-income residents, including workers such as childcare providers and home health aides, along with seniors and people living on fixed incomes.
“These are people who make our communities function,” Hitchcock said.
Homeownership programs would provide another avenue of assistance. The official voter guide allocates $1.25 billion for state-funded mortgages for eligible veterans and $1.1 billion for homeownership and down-payment assistance. Voter Information Guide
Hitchcock pointed to CalHome as an example. Organizations such as Habitat for Humanity can use the program to produce homes at prices lower-income purchasers can realistically afford.
She offered Fresno County as an illustration: a four-person household earning $80,000 might be able to afford a home worth roughly $240,000 at current borrowing costs, she said, while prevailing market prices could be considerably higher. Programs such as CalHome are designed to help close that affordability gap.
Preservation funding would likewise target existing properties, while another $500 million would finance infrastructure such as streets and utilities needed for housing development. An additional $200 million would support local housing programs. Voter Information Guide
A large investment, but not a complete solution
The speakers repeatedly cautioned against treating Proposition 1 as a standalone answer to California’s housing crisis.
Muñoz Flegal said solving a shortage built over decades would require sustained funding as well as policies affecting rents, construction costs, development and long-term housing supply.
“The reality is that we have a scale problem in California,” she said.
California has “decades of time to make up for,” she added, arguing that the state needs both immediate investments and longer-term structural changes.
Dueñas similarly described housing as infrastructure that California has failed to expand fast enough to meet its population’s needs.
Smith said the measure’s significance for homelessness lies in creating more destinations for people whom service providers are already trying to move indoors.
Hitchcock said California Housing Partnership estimates that the investments could fast-track roughly 40,000 shovel-ready affordable rental homes and help about 20,000 households access affordable homeownership. Over the lifespan of the housing, she said, the organization projects that more than half a million households could eventually benefit. Those figures are estimates presented by supporters rather than the state’s official fiscal analysis.
For voters, Proposition 1 ultimately presents a fiscal and policy choice about whether long-term state borrowing should be used to expand California’s affordable housing infrastructure. A “yes” vote would authorize $11.25 billion in bonds for veterans and affordable housing programs; a “no” vote would prevent the state from borrowing those funds. California Quick Guide to Props
All images courtesy of American Community Media