California Gov. Gavin Newsom on Wednesday signed a number of housing bills aimed toward tackling the state’s lack of inexpensive housing and making it simpler for tenants to hire a house within the first place. 

Newsom signed a whopping 56 bills into regulation which he mentioned “incentivize and reduce barriers to housing and support the development of more affordable homes.”

Housing developments will now be extra streamlined with much less pink tape, density legal guidelines will be overruled within the curiosity of housing, and establishments like schools or spiritual organizations can now use parts of their property to construct housing. Newsom additionally signed a invoice that can please anybody who has tried to hire in California on a restricted earnings: Landlords can now solely acquire one months’ hire as a safety deposit as a substitute of two.

State Sen. Scott Wiener (D-San Francisco) is very happy with the signings, as a number of of the bills had been his, together with making a tax increment financing construction to exchange 5,800 inexpensive houses in San Francisco which have been misplaced to redevelopment. 

“California desperately needs to ramp up housing production and the Governor’s action today helps put us on a path to that goal,” mentioned Wiener in a press release Wednesday. 

Of Wiener’s bills, Newsom signed Senate Bill 423, which accelerates the event of inexpensive housing by strengthening the provisions of SB 35, which can sundown on the finish of 2025. SB 35, one other invoice from Wiener again in 2016, permits initiatives to undergo a simplified and expedited housing approval course of in areas that aren’t on observe to satisfy their housing manufacturing objectives.

SB 423 continues the momentum of 35, but in addition consists of “strong new labor standards,” reminiscent of greater wages and well being advantages for employees on housing developments. 

Wiener additionally put forth the San Francisco Replacement Housing Act, or Senate Bill 593, which goals to fix the errors of the previous by including inexpensive housing to neighborhoods that had been demolished for development, displacing their lower-income residents. According to Wiener, examples of those neighborhoods are Japantown, SoMA, and the Western Addition. SB 593 will create 5,800 inexpensive houses within the metropolis, Wiener mentioned. 

Assembly Bill 12 was signed by the governor as properly. Assemblymember Matt Haney (D-San Francisco) backed the invoice, which expands tenant protections by limiting safety deposits to 1 month’s hire in as a substitute of as much as thrice the hire. 

“Massive security deposits can create insurmountable barriers to housing affordability and accessibility for millions of Californians,” mentioned Haney on social media Wednesday. “Despite skyrocketing rents, laws on ensuring affordable security deposits haven’t changed substantially since the 1970s. The result is that landlords lose out on good tenants and tenants stay in homes that are too crowded, unsafe or far from work.” 

Other bills signed by Newsom set up penalties for CEQA abuse, permitting inexpensive accent dwelling unit (ADU) condos, and increasing density bonuses, which give builders the flexibility to extend density above the utmost allowed in a municipality’s General Plan. 

“It’s simple math,” mentioned Newsom in a press release launched by his workplace. “California needs to build more housing and ensure the housing we have is affordable.” 

For a full record of all of the housing-related bills signed by Gov. Newsom, go to leginfo.legislature.ca.gov.