Housing Is A Human Right, the housing advocacy division of AIDS Healthcare Foundation (AHF), issued the following statement in response to the failure of the California State Assembly Housing and Community Development Committee to move AB 1506, a bill to repeal the Costa-Hawkins Rental Housing Act, out of committee:
“We are extremely disappointed that despite a 5-2 majority in the Assembly Housing Committee, Democrats voted to kill a bill that would have simply given local governments the power to address the state’s dire affordable housing crisis.
“We expect Republicans to do the bidding of Wall Street landlords like Blackstone that are evicting senior citizens and families onto the street. But with today’s vote, Democrats Ed Chau and Jim Wood proved to be no better than their Republican counterparts.
“As the world’s largest provider of medical care to HIV/AIDS patients and headquartered in Los Angeles, AHF has seen how housing insecurity worsens health outcomes. We may have lost the vote in the Assembly today, but the fight to meaningfully address California’s affordable housing crisis, which is also a public health crisis, will continue.”
AHF encouraged Assemblymember Richard Bloom (D-Santa Monica) to introduce AB 1506, but it failed to get a single hearing in 2017. It wasn’t until AHF, the Eviction Defense Network, and Alliance of Californians for Community Empowerment (ACCE) filed language for a possible November ballot initiative to repeal Costa-Hawkins (the “Affordable Housing Act”) that the bill was revived this year.
The repeal bill, which needed four votes to get out of the committee, only received “yes” votes from co-authors David Chiu (D-San Francisco) and Rob Bonta (D-Alameda), and Mark Stone (D-Scotts Valley). Assemblymembers Ed Chau (D-Monterey Park) and Jim Wood (D-Healdsburg) abstained, effectively voting “no.” The committee’s two Republican members, Marc Steinorth (Rancho Cucamonga) and Steven Choi (Irvine), voted “no.”