This was supposed to be the year California voters would get the chance to right a historic wrong by repealing a racist and classist provision in the state Constitution that makes it difficult to build affordable housing.
The California Legislature voted unanimously to put on the ballot a constitutional amendment to repeal Article 34, which requires cities to get voter approval before building “low-rent housing” with public money. Article 34 was adopted in 1950 in the midst of a discriminatory reaction against public housing, and has been a burden on building low-income housing in a state desperate for more affordable housing.
Lawmakers planned to put the constitutional amendment to a vote in November, but the ballot has increasingly become crowded with at least a dozen measures and initiatives, raising the cost of running a political campaign. Without a war chest for a statewide public education effort, Sen. Ben Allen (D-Santa Monica) said he would withdraw the amendment and hope for a “calmer” election.
It is disappointing that lawmakers are putting the repeal of Article 34 on the back burner, but the decision is understandable. And because the state has embraced workarounds, including an expansive law passed last year to exempt more affordable housing from Article 34, it's no longer the hurdle it once was. Still, lawmakers should not give up on repeal; It is important to remove this ugly law from the state Constitution, even if it is difficult.
Winning at the polls could be difficult. Californians are still hesitant to give up local control, even as it exacerbates the state's crippling housing shortage.
Voters have been asked to eliminate or weaken Article 34 three times since 1950, and each time they said no. The last attempt was in 1993. Allen worked with former Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti on another repeal attempt in 2020, which was shelved. Advocates looked to 2022, but then decided to wait until 2024 to have time to raise money for a public education campaign about the state's ugly history of housing discrimination.
Repeal advocates Polls found that voters initially oppose giving up their right to control what is built in their community. But they support repeal once they understand the racist roots of Article 34 and the way it has fueled segregation and inequality.
A real estate industry group drafted the original initiative in 1950. It was proposed as a way for residents to preserve “local control” by requiring voter approval for public housing. But the campaign also warned that public housing was a form of socialism and a threat to capitalism, and was being pushed by “minority pressure groups.” Giving voters the right to veto public housing was another way to allow them to prevent low-income and minority residents from moving into their communities, although it was wrapped under the guise of grassroots democracy.
Section 34 hindered thousands of units of public housing development in California. By 1968, voters across the state had rejected nearly half of the public housing units that had been proposed, and many other projects were shelved rather than submit to the uncertain outcome of a vote. The courts later decided that cities and counties can hold elections to authorize the construction of a total number of public housing units, rather than going to voters for each individual project. While that has made it easier to build low-income units, holding elections remains a costly and time-consuming hurdle.
Los Angeles in 2022 position LH Proposition on the ballot to authorize up to 75,000 units of new publicly funded affordable housing across the city. It passed with 70% support. Last year, Gov. Gavin Newsom signed Allen's Senate Bill 469, which exempts from Section 34 any project that receives a grant or loan from the state Department of Housing and Community Development or a state tax credit. This covers most low-income subsidized housing developments.
Article 34 remains a stain on the state Constitution and lawmakers should continue working to repeal it. There is still another amendment scheduled for the November vote: repealing Proposition 8, which banned same-sex marriage but was repealed and remains zombie-like in the Constitution. LGBTQ advocates worry that the increasingly conservative Supreme Court could roll back protections for same-sex marriage and revive Proposition 8.
Likewise, there is no good reason to keep Article 34 in force, only the risk that it may be misused. It should be removed from the California Constitution. If not in November, soon.
