Thursday, February 25, 2021

Where are Affordable Homes Most At Risk in California?
  
California has already lost 18,043 subsidized affordable rental homes and today, another 6,785 subsidized affordable rental homes are at risk of market rate conversion as soon as next year.
These homes house thousands of low-income seniors, families and individuals and can be found in 35 of California's 55 counties, according to the Affordable Homes At Risk | 2021 Report by the California Housing Partnership
 
By 2030, more than 30,000 affordable homes could lose their affordability if no actions are taken. Forty-three (43) percent of these are home to seniors on fixed incomes and another 43 percent are home to families. (Read the report here to see which counties have the most homes at risk of conversion.) 
 
"At a time when the state is confronting a housing and homelessness crisis of historic proportions and the cost of new development is still high, we must invest in preserving California's precious existing affordable homes," says Matt Schwartz, President and CEO of the California Housing Partnership. 

Recommended actions include: 
  1. Passing legislation to authorize the creation of a new Affordable Housing Preservation Tax Credit -- AB 1516 (Gabriel) -- to incentivize the owners of at-risk properties to sell to affordable housing entities.
  2. Appropriating $500 million from the state budget for the acquisition of at-risk and naturally occurring affordable housing by affordable housing entities.
  3. Making permanent the $500 million annual increase to the California Low-Income Housing Tax Credit Program and allocating an additional $100 million specifically for affordable housing rehabilitation so that buyers of at-risk properties have long term certainty that resources will be available for upkeep.
  4. Aggressively enforcing the State Preservation Notice Law as expanded by AB 1521 in 2017.
To see more details on where the largest concentrations of at-risk homes are and which types are most at risk, view our full statewide assessment:
 

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To learn more about the data contained in this report, please contact Danielle M. Mazzella (dmazzella@chpc.net), Preservation and Data Manager at the California Housing Partnership.
 
To learn more about the policy recommendations contained in this report, contact Mark Stivers (mstivers@chpc.net), Director of Legislative and Regulatory Advocacy at the California Housing Partnership.

About the California Housing Partnership

The California Housing Partnership creates and preserves affordable and sustainable homes for Californians with low incomes by providing expert financial and policy solutions to nonprofit and public partners. Since 1988, the Partnership's on-the-ground technical assistance, applied research, and legislative leadership has leveraged more than $20 billion in private and public financing to preserve and create more than 75,000 affordable homes. | chpc.net

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