California pushes for affordable housing while Trump plays games
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SACRAMENTO — President Trump was handed a golden opportunity to upstage Gov. Gavin Newsom in Newsom’s own state on an issue of critical importance to Americans everywhere. But Trump naturally blew it.
The governor and the Democratic-led state Legislature shined.
Trump was victimized by his own self-centered obstinance and inhumanity. And Republican congressional leaders were left looking embarrassed and wimpy.
The issue was housing affordability — the lack of it that is stifling the American dream of homeownership everywhere, not just in California.
In Sacramento, the Legislature lopsidedly passed an $11.25-billion bond proposal aimed primarily at providing government subsidies for building affordable housing. Newsom immediately signed the measure last week, just beating the deadline for getting it on the Nov. 3 election ballot.
“In California, we don’t turn away from the needs of our people,” Newsom boasted in a prepared statement, taking a veiled shot at Trump, his favorite political target.
This came just after both houses of Congress, with members working collaboratively in a rare bipartisan manner, overwhelmingly passed a landmark bill aimed at boosting housing supply. The measure removed regulatory barriers, upgraded federal programs and incentivized new home building.
A Trump “promise kept,” the White House proclaimed.
Whoops! The president then suddenly flip-flopped. He canceled a planned bill-signing ceremony, torpedoing the legislation, an opportunity to gain sorely-needed points for the GOP heading into the fall elections and a chance to outboast Newsom, arguably his most annoying political antagonist.
Trump said he wouldn’t sign the housing bill unless Congress approved his unrelated voter ID legislation, which has practically no chance of passage. The least of his concerns seemed to be struggling homebuyers and renters.
As of this writing, it wasn’t clear what Trump would ultimately do. Nothing ever is certain with him. Shocked and confused GOP congressional leaders even held back sending the president the bill, then ducked out on holiday recess.
At the California state Capitol, by contrast, the governor and legislative leaders were united, working off the same page and successfully negotiating a final agreement on housing help.
As icing on the cake for voters, $1.25 billion was added for the popular CalVet loan program for military veterans. Their home loans are repaid through mortgages, costing the state nothing.
But the remaining $10 billion would need to be paid off by taxpayers over 30 years — at an estimated $580 million annually, bringing the total bond cost to about $17.4 billion, including interest.
Putting this in perspective, the Legislature just passed a $352-billion state budget for the fiscal year starting July 1. Of that, $7.5 billion will go for retiring debt on $73 billion in bonds. And the state has voter authorization to sell $38 billion more in bonds.
During legislative floor debates, some Republicans objected to the additional borrowing.
“We’ve got record revenue, why do we need to borrow money?” asked Assemblyman David Tangipa (R-Fresno).
That was answered during the Senate debate by Sen. Christopher Cabaldon (D-West Sacramento), one of the measure’s principal jockeys.
Building affordable housing “simply is impossible, it can’t be done without this bond” to finance government subsidies, Cabaldon told colleagues.
Developers are subsidized so they can build at a cost that will result in affordable consumer prices, mainly rents in this case.
Some Republicans also objected to inserting the CalVet money for voter appeal. Assemblyman Carl DeMaio called it “window dressing.”
CalVet funds normally are acquired through very small, separate bond measures.
But in the end, only a few Republicans voted against the big bond, which was officially authored by the Assembly Speaker and the Senate leader to display political muscle.
To their credit, the Legislature and governor in recent years have been whittling away at regulatory obstacles to home building. But many cities still balk at rezoning residential neighborhoods to make room for new multifamily dwellings.
The bond proposal is mainly designed to generate affordable rentals for poor people. More money was added at the end for affordable student and farmworker housing.
There’ll be a separate bond proposal on the November ballot that goes in a different direction but doesn’t conflict. It would help middle class homebuyers. And that measure wouldn’t cost taxpayers a cent.
“Housing supply is not just about poor people. It’s not just about homelessness,” says the middle class initiative’s originator, former legislative leader Bob Hertzberg, a Los Angeles County Democrat.
His proposal would authorize $25 billion in revenue bonds. Like the CalVet program, those bonds would be repaid by homebuyers through mortgages — not costing the state anything.
Under the plan, a homebuyer could borrow most of the money needed for a down payment on a newly constructed single-family home or condo. Typically, a 20% down payment is required. Under Hertzberg’s proposal, 17% could be borrowed. Regular lending institutions would arrange the second mortgage.
To be eligible, a homebuyer’s income could not exceed 200% of the area’s median income. In L.A. County, that would be around $213,000 for a family of four, Hertzberg figures. The home would need to be the owner’s primary residence.
The November ballot will be bursting with state propositions — 14 in all, mostly very complex, running the gamut. Besides housing, there’ll be proposals for a billionaires tax, voter ID requirement, local tax limitations and fast-tracking of public works.
Voters could just throw up their hands and reject everything.
“At some point, voters are just gonna say, ‘I don’t know about all this stuff. There’s a lot of stuff,’” says Dan Dunmoyer, who heads the California Building Industry Assn.
California’s housing affordability crunch won’t be solved by just two bond packages. But they’d help.
We and all of America could also use some help from our seemingly unconcerned president, who enjoys free public housing.
What else you should be reading
The must-read: Newsom, California Legislature reach $351.7-billion budget deal
Money (That’s what I want): Controversial billionaire tax proposal will appear on November ballot
The L.A. Times Special: Here’s a clue about these mystery books: ‘Papa’ may be California’s next governor
Until next week,
George Skelton
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Ideas expressed in the piece
The article argues that California’s governor and Democratic legislative leaders have moved decisively on housing affordability, in sharp contrast to the president’s erratic handling of a bipartisan federal housing bill, and portrays state officials as more focused on struggling renters and homebuyers than on political gamesmanship.[3][7][8]
The column contends that the Veterans and Affordable Housing Bond Act of 2026, a proposed $11.25‑billion package combining $10 billion in general obligation bonds for affordable rentals with $1.25 billion in self‑supporting CalVet revenue bonds, is a “historic” investment that would expand homeownership and build or preserve tens of thousands of lower‑income units across the state, including for veterans, farmworkers, students and people experiencing homelessness.[3][7]
The piece emphasizes that, although the $10‑billion portion of the bond would be repaid by taxpayers over roughly three decades, the measure is justified because it leverages additional federal tax credits, local funding and private capital, supports high‑paying construction jobs, and targets long‑term affordability requirements for the housing it finances.[3][10]
The article highlights the CalVet loan expansion as politically savvy and substantively important “icing on the cake,” noting that these veterans’ home loans are backed by revenue bonds repaid entirely through mortgage payments, making them popular programs that expand homeownership without adding to taxpayer‑supported debt.[3][1][5]
The column presents the separate Middle‑Class Homeownership initiative championed by Bob Hertzberg as a complementary, market‑based solution for moderate‑income buyers, describing how a $25‑billion revenue bond fund would allow eligible buyers of newly built homes, condos and townhouses to put down just 3% and finance the remaining 17% of the traditional down payment through a second mortgage, all without direct taxpayer cost because repayments replenish the fund.[2][6][9]
The piece suggests that California’s twin housing bond proposals—one focused on lower‑income rentals and veterans, the other on middle‑class ownership—offer a comprehensive, bipartisan path to boosting housing supply across income levels, and argues that they compare favorably to the stalled federal 21st Century Road to Housing Act that the president refused to sign after attempting to tie it to an unrelated voter ID measure.[3][7][8]
The column warns that an overloaded November ballot with numerous complex propositions could lead voters to reject even well‑crafted housing measures out of confusion or fatigue, yet concludes that approving the state bonds would still represent meaningful progress on affordability in the absence of reliable federal leadership.[8][9]
Different views on the topic
Some Republican lawmakers and fiscal conservatives in Sacramento question the wisdom of issuing $10 billion in new general obligation bonds when California is enjoying strong revenues, arguing that committing future taxpayers to decades of debt service for housing programs risks crowding out other priorities and reflects a pattern of relying on borrowing instead of budget trade‑offs.[7]
Critics of the bond act also point to California’s already sizable stock of voter‑approved debt and warn that continually stacking new statewide bond measures can obscure the full long‑term cost to residents, who must repay principal and interest through general tax revenues even as housing needs remain enormous and evolving.
Skeptics of bundling veterans’ benefits with broader housing subsidies argue that expanding CalVet within a much larger affordability package is partly a political strategy to make the bond more attractive at the ballot box, and they contend that popular veterans’ programs should be advanced on their own rather than used to help secure support for borrowing that extends far beyond military households.[3]
Housing analysts and local officials who are wary of state borrowing stress that bonds alone cannot overcome entrenched land‑use barriers, noting that many cities still resist rezoning for multifamily construction; they argue that Sacramento should prioritize stronger enforcement of zoning reforms and permitting streamlining over large capital packages that may struggle to translate into projects if local opposition persists.[8]
Some taxpayer advocates and business groups worry that a crowded ballot featuring multiple housing, tax and governance measures could invite a backlash against all propositions, and they use this as a reason to question whether lawmakers should place large, complex financing packages before voters in the same election rather than phasing them in more gradually.
Supporters of the bipartisan 21st Century Road to Housing Act in Congress, including Republicans who helped write it, criticize the president’s decision to cancel the signing and link the bill to voter ID legislation, but others on the right defend efforts to prioritize election‑security laws and express concern about federal provisions that would cap how many single‑family homes institutional investors can buy, arguing that such limits interfere with private markets and could deter investment in new housing.[4][8]
Some housing advocates who generally back more public investment nonetheless caution that the middle‑class revenue bond proposal will reach only a fraction of would‑be buyers and focus narrowly on new construction, and they argue that deeper affordability challenges for renters, extremely low‑income households and people facing homelessness require sustained operating subsidies and services that go beyond one‑time capital measures aimed at ownership.[9][10]
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