CALIFORNIA COMMUNITY BLOG

Long on interest but short on time? See below for a summary of this newsletter:

Support SB 684 - Building Homeownership Opportunities: Here’s the SB 684 fact sheet. Send in a support letter or sign on to a group support letter to show your support for starter homes and naturally more affordable development.

Support AB 1508 - Planning for Homeownership: Here’s the AB 1508 fact sheet. Send in a support letter or sign on to a group support letter to show your support for including homeownership in the Statewide Housing Plan.

Stay connected to CCB’s legislative efforts: Click here for our 2023 legislative page, which we’ll keep updated throughout the year as our bills move through the legislative process.

Dear Colleagues and Friends,

Happy March! It’s legislative season so — like Destiny's Child in their eternal hit song from 1999 — right now all we can think about is [legislative] bills, bill, bills.[1] In recognition of where our heads are at, this month we're going to do a special edition of our monthly newsletter and focus exclusively on legislation we're sponsoring in 2023.

This year, CCB is excited to sponsor two essential bills that we really (really) hope you'll support! I've included a few sentences on each below, but a more substantial summary on each bill can be found at the bottom of this newsletter as well as on our legislative page.

First, I'm very pleased to share that CCB is co-sponsoring Senator Caballero's SB 684. This important bill will increase homeownership opportunities by making it faster, easier, and less expensive to build lower-cost homes throughout the state, but especially in expensive markets where land is at a premium. Click here to learn more and support SB 684.

Second, CCB is also very proud to co-sponsor Assembly Member Ramos's AB 1508. The bill will require the California Department of Housing and Community Development to include increasing first-time home buyers as a goal in the Statewide Housing Plan. It is our strong belief that as a shared value of communities and of state government, a document as important as the Statewide Housing Plan must include homeownership. Click here to learn more and support AB 1508.

That said, we need your help! While normally we bug you for donations to CCB [2], this month we're bugging you to support CCB’s bills.[3] SB 684 and AB 1508 will need strong community support to pass, so we're asking everyone that believes in more naturally affordable housing production, more homeownership, and more wealth-building for communities of color to click the button below and let us know you're down to learn more and help out. It doesn't matter whether you work for an organization that can sign on, or know an organization that might want to sign on, or you want to help out as an individual, we'll take all the help we can get!

Your support would have us jumpin', jumpin' [4] with very sincere gratitude.

Lastly, and on a related topic, while we adjusted our usual format for this special legislative edition, in honor of International Women's Day earlier this month we hope you'll make a contribution to any (or all!) of these great organizations working to get women elected to political office here in California and around the country: Hispanas Organized for Political Equality (HOPE); Asian American Women's Political Initiative; Higher Heights for America; She Should Run; Emily’s List. [5]

Have a wonderful weekend everyone, look forward to checking in again next month!

Adam Briones

CEO, California Community Builders

PS - You can read the full newsletter that was sent out to our subscribers here!

NOTES

[1] Unfortunately, this will be the last Destiny's Child reference in this newsletter, but for the record CCB's staff still really perks up when we hear, "Can you pay my bills? Can you pay my telephone bills? Do you pay my automo-bills?", even if only 50% of us were born when the song came out.

[2] Quality newsletters like this don't just grow on trees, after all.

[3] Just to be clear though, we never turn down anyone's very generous and greatly appreciated financial contributions.

[4] Ok, that was the last Destiny's Child reference.

[5] Please note, this is by no means an exhaustive list and if you think we missed an organization doing good work to help more women run for office – especially women of color – please shoot us an email and we promise to include them in our next newsletter!