This past year California lawmakers passed and Governor Gavin Newsom signed more than 1,000 bills, and most of those will become new laws in 2024. Plus there are bills from previous years that are also scheduled to take effect after Jan. 1.
Not all of those laws will impact your day-to-day life. The establishment of “Workplace Readiness Week” (now the week of April 28) or new procurement rules for transportation analytics software may not really change your 2024 (though maybe they will!).
We took a look at a few new laws that may, from new rules for building affordable housing to how you interact with police officers and new emission standards for certain small engines (think leaf blowers).
Making it easier for faith groups and colleges to build affordable housing on their land
Religious institutions
and nonprofit colleges in California will be allowed to build affordable housing on their properties without having to go through complex and expensive rezoning processes under a new state law that goes into effect in January.
Senate Bill 4, often called the Yes In God’s Backyard (YIGBY) bill, gained bipartisan support in the Legislature and was signed by Governor Gavin Newsom in October. State Senator Scott Wiener, D-San Francisco, authored the bill, which is officially called the Affordable Housing on Faith Lands Act.
The law rezones land owned by nonprofit colleges and religious institutions, such as mosques, churches, and synagogues, to allow for affordable housing. Many faith-based groups and nonprofit colleges are currently located on lands where multi-family housing is expressly prohibited by local zoning rules.
It allows them to bypass most local permitting and environmental review standards that can take years to complete. The law is set to sunset in 2036.
Neither “CEQA (California Environmental Quality Act) nor local political processes can be misused to stop these affordable housing projects,” according to a
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