As part of its effort to balance the budget in 2011, the Governor and the State Legislature voted to eliminate local Redevelopment Agencies throughout the State of California. The legislation passed two trailer bills along with the budget - AB 1x26 eliminated redevelopment agencies and AB 1x27 would have allowed them to continue to exist if they made payments to the State to help balance the budget in this fiscal year and future years. The Redevelopment Agencies sued the State of California in an effort to strike down both pieces of legislation. On December 29th, the Supreme Court ruled that AB 26, the bill to eliminate redevelopment agencies is legal and struck down AB 27, ruling that under Proposition 22, it is illegal to force the localities to pay the State. This is the worst possible outcome for affordable housing because 20% of Redevelopment Funding, nearly $1 billion a year, was dedicated to affordable housing production in 400 jurisdictions throughout the State.
The Affordable Housing podcast has been following this issue closely and we have invited back Lynn Hutchins, a partner at Goldfarb and Lipman LLP, a leading redevelopment law firm in California, to discuss the short and long term implications of the Court\'s decision.
Previous Affordable Housing Podcast episodes on this subject can be listened to on Eden Housing\'s website at http://www.edenhousing.org/podcast.asp.
For more information, visit:
- Senator President Pro tem Darrell Steinberg\'s website http://sd06.senate.ca.gov/,
- Non-Profit Housing Association of Northern California http://nonprofithousing.org,
- Housing California http://www.housingca.org, or
- Goldfarb and Lipman LLP http://goldfarblipman.com
For more information about the Affordable Housing Podcast, please visit http://EdenHousing.org.
