Prop 1: Yes
“Veterans and Affordable Housing Bond Act of 2026”
It sucks that we have to do it this way. Everyone running for office in the richest state in the world will talk about “addressing housing and homelessness,” but we don’t have a permanent source of year-over-year funding for affordable housing. We spend about 1 percent of the general fund budget on housing and homelessness programs, combined, and since Newsom has done stuff like zero out funds for existing programs, borrowing money from some to feed others, it’s all subject to tons of legislative wrangling and dealmaking, every year, to claw the money back. Housing bonds like this one just punt the issue to the bond market and the voters, which means that when the money runs out, we’re in crisis mode, and we do it all over again.
However, it is fundamentally good that the state is spending money to subsidize affordable housing, which is what this will do, locking down around half a billion dollars in the state’s annual budget for subsidizing affordable housing, for the next twenty-five years. But the state spends it now, which is good, because housing is an upfront cost, whose benefits come after. It’s why Newsom’s people can point to the 2018 version and say stuff like “the $18.5 billion earmarked over the last five years has resulted in 57,000 new units of housing,” using the present perfect tense for budget dollars we’ll still be paying off for thirty more years (while people are already living, affordably, in that housing)
Oakland Review of Books
The main argument against this one is that “Veterans” leads the title but get only $1.25 billion of the $11 billion bond. If you’re an election-denying anti-vax MAGA state senator from Bakersfield, this is bad; hardworking, God-fearing taxpayers shouldn’t give money to undeserving homeless and assorted poors. And if you feel comfortable judging a ballot proposition by an ad hominem attack on its opponent, then please: Do the opposite of what the dishonorable Shannon Grove (R-Bakersfield) says and scratch “yes on Prop 1” with your quill.
The one nice thing that’s new about Prop 1 is funding for the Community Anti-Displacement Preservation Program (CAPP), which would actually be dedicated to acquiring housing off the speculative market permanently, including by converting commercially owned property to social housing and community land trusts. Only $200 million of the $11.25 billion would go to CAPP, but at least we are actually putting money toward a program dedicated to converting existing housing, especially where tenants are organizing to win that housing from slumlords and corporate speculators.
Find more of our voting guide here.