California churches, nonprofit colleges could build homes on their land with proposed law

Democratic state Sen. Scott Wiener, shown in 2019, has introduced a bill to allow California nonprofit colleges and faith organizations to build affordable apartment buildings on their land. California nonprofit colleges and faith organizations such as churches, mosques and synagogues would be able to build affordable homes on their land under a bill introduced Tuesday to help alleviate the state’s worsening housing shortage and homelessness crisis. “SB 4 will unlock an enormous, and I’m not exaggerating, an enormous amount of land for 100% affordable housing,” state Sen. Scott Wiener said at a news conference to announce the proposal, citing a 2020 study by UC Berkeley’s Terner Center for Housing Innovation that found nearly 40,000 acres currently used for religious purposes could be developed. President Andrew Meredith said the trades council was strongly opposed to SB 4 unless it was modified to address a long list of concerns and include the skilled and trained workforce requirements that he said help prevent “unintended consequences that could potentially exploit the workforce building the housing.” “We should not have to sacrifice the training and protection of construction workers to provide incentives to developers to build affordable housing,” Meredith wrote.