Housing Bills Coming Fast & Furious in 2023

Community development staff at public agencies throughout California have had the rug pulled out from under them repeatedly over the last few years. Long standing norms and laws are now subject to constant changes - from small tweaks to sweeping reforms. Just as cities were settling in to the latest standards and requirements, our legislators in Sacramento are once again changing the rules of the game.

This post addresses only a handful of new bills - it is not exhaustive by any means. Through these bills, the legislature wants to prohibit local agencies from allowing owner-occupancy requirements for ADUs, shorten the time period a local agency has to approve or deny a JADU, and require property owners to give a right of first refusal to residential tenants (among other things).

1) AB-976 02/14/2023 -- Introduced : Accessory dwelling units: owner-occupancy requirements. Existing law, beginning January 1, 2025, authorizes a local agency to impose an owner-occupancy requirement on an accessory dwelling unit, provided that the accessory dwelling unit was not permitted between January 1, 2020, and January 1, 2025.

This bill would instead prohibit a local agency from imposing an owner-occupancy requirement on any accessory dwelling unit.

2) AB-919 02/14/2023 -- Introduced : Residential real property: sale of rental properties: right of first offer. This bill would require property owners to provide a right of first refusal to tenants before selling the property.

One section that stood out to me was: "If a property owner receives an offer from both a qualified entity that is not a resident organization and a tenant of a single-family residential real property or a resident organization in a multifamily residential real property, and the property owner decides to accept any of these offers, the property owner shall accept the tenant’s or the resident organization’s offer.” There is no regard to the difference in offer - what if the qualified entity’s offer is five times greater and all cash? The property owner cannot accept it and must go with the lower offer?

The bill would also prohibit the property from being re-sold by a qualified entity purchaser for “more than an affordable resale price.”

“Affordable resale price” means “the purchase price paid by the qualified entity to acquire the residential real property pursuant to this article adjusted for both of the following:

(A) Inflation as measured by the regional Consumer Price Index.

(B) Capital improvements made by the qualified entity, but no more than 25 percent of the appreciated value as determined by the difference between the appraised value at the time of purchase by the qualified entity and the appraised value at the time of resale.”

This one seems pretty far-fetched and in need of amendment. But, I won’t say that its passage would surprise me, because we are talking about California…

3) AB-932 02/14/2023 -- Introduced : Planning and zoning: junior accessory dwelling units: application approval time period. This bill would shorten the time a public agency to approve or deny a JADU from 60 days to 45.

4) SB-477 02/14/2023 -- Introduced : Accessory dwelling units. Cleans up ADU & JADU statutes.