10/10/2025 | Press release | Distributed by Public on 10/10/2025 11:09
What you need to know: Governor Newsom signed legislation to help boost housing affordability for California families, continuing the momentum of the state's monumental housing progress.
LOS ANGELES - Building on the historic housing legislation signed earlier this year, Governor Gavin Newsom today signed Senate Bill 79 (Wiener) and additional bills to make it easier and faster to build more homes - expanding inventory and access across California. These measures cut red tape and hold local governments accountable, so families don't have to wait years for housing to be approved and built in their communities.
The legislation is intended to meet the needs of Californians across our state - from providing farmworkers with safe and affordable homes, to converting empty office buildings into housing, and creating more housing near public transportation. Together, these efforts are about making sure Californians have more housing choices and access to opportunity.
Governor Gavin Newsom
The bills signed today will help California meet its housing goals by:
✅ Accelerating permitting by speeding up the housing permitting and inspection process at every step - making approvals faster, more predictable, and easier to navigate.
✅ Streamlining production by advancing housing reforms that respond to the diverse needs of Californian communities and expand affordable, climate-smart housing so families, workers, and students can live closer to jobs, schools, and opportunity.
✅ Strengthening enforcement by reinforcing and strengthening housing laws with stronger tools to provide real accountability.
✅ Pairing housing with commonsense climate measures by lowering costs for transit-oriented housing and removing barriers to installing EV charging stations in condominium and apartment buildings.
"SB 79 is a historic step toward tackling the root cause of California's affordability crisis - our profound shortage of homes and too few people having access to transit," said Senator Scott Wiener. "In California, we talk a lot about where we don't want to build homes, but rarely about where we do - until now. It's been a long road to tackle these decades-old problems, but thanks to Governor Newsom's leadership, today marks a new day for affordable housing and public transportation in California."
The full list of the signed bills include:
Since day one of the Newsom Administration, the Governor - in partnership with California's legislature - has worked tirelessly to confront America's decades-in-the-making housing and homelessness crisis with urgency and innovation. This effort is reversing decades of inaction and building a lasting model for the nation:
✅ Addressing mental health and its impact on homelessness: Ending a long-standing 7,000 behavioral health bed shortfall in California by rapidly expanding community treatment centers and permanent supportive housing units. In 2024, voters approved Governor Newsom's Proposition 1 which is transforming California's mental health systems with a $6.4 billion Behavioral Health Bond for treatment settings and housing with services for veterans and people experiencing homelessness, and reforming the Behavioral Health Services Act to focus on people with the most serious illnesses, provide care to people with substance disorders, and support their housing needs.
✅ Creating new pathways for those who need the most help: Updating conservatorship laws for the first time in 50 years to include people who are unable to provide for their personal safety or necessary medical care, in addition to food, clothing, or shelter, due to either severe substance use disorder or serious mental health illness. Creating a new CARE court system that creates court-ordered plans for up to 24 months for people struggling with untreated mental illness, and often substance use challenges.
✅ Streamlining and prioritizing building of new housing: Governor Newsom made creating more housing a state priority for the first time in history. He has signed into law groundbreaking reforms to break down systemic barriers that have stood in the way of building the housing Californians need, including broad CEQA reforms.
✅ Creating shelter and support: Providing funding and programs for local governments, coupled with strong accountability measures to ensure that each local government is doing its share to build housing, and create shelter and support, so that people rescued from encampments have a safe place to go.
✅ Removing dangerous encampments: Governor Newsom has set a strong expectation for all local governments to address encampments in their communities and help connect people with support. In 2024, Governor Newsom filed an amicus brief with the Supreme Court defending communities' authority to clear encampments. After the Supreme Court affirmed that authority, Governor Newsom issued an executive order directing state entities and urging local governments to clear encampments and connect people with support, using a state-tested model that helps ensure encampments are addressed humanely and people are given adequate notice and support.
Between 2014 and 2019 - before Governor Newsom took office - unsheltered homelessness in California rose by approximately 37,000 people. Since then, under this Administration, California has significantly slowed that growth, even as many other states have seen worsening trends.
In 2024, while homelessness increased nationally by over 18%, California limited its overall increase to just 3% - a lower rate than in 40 other states. The state also held the growth of unsheltered homelessness to just 0.45%, compared to a national increase of nearly 7%. States like Florida, Texas, New York, and Illinois saw larger increases both in percentage and absolute numbers. California also achieved the nation's largest reduction in veteran homelessness and made meaningful progress in reducing youth homelessness.
This year, California's largest communities are reporting substantial decreases in homelessness - indicating that California's comprehensive and strategic approach to reversing this national crisis and getting people out of encampments is working.