Lennar Homes workers construct a roof at the Lilac Ridge community in Vacaville, California. Two bond measures take aim at the state's housing crisis.
Bloomberg News
Proponents of a $25 billion bond measure to help middle-class Californians buy homes have delivered more than 900,000 signatures to the California Secretary of State in the hope of qualifying the measure for the November ballot.
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The effort led by former state Sen. Bob Hertzberg is one of three massive statewide bond measures headed for the fall ballot.
"We turned in 918,000 signatures and the measure requires 546,000 signatures," said Hertzberg, who championed programs to increase home ownership during his 14 years combined service in the Assembly and Senate.
"We have a high level of confidence it will qualify. We have no opposition and our polling is very favorable," he said.
To qualify for the ballot, the citizen's initiative, the California Middle-Class Homeownership and Family Home Construction Act of 2026, needs to collect 546,651 valid signatures, equal to 5% of the votes cast in the prior gubernatorial election.
County officials still need to validate the signatures before the June 25 deadline for it to qualify for the November ballot.
The measure joins Senate Bill 417, a $10 billion affordable housing bond that cleared the Senate in January and is awaiting referral to an Assembly committee. Originally planned for the March ballot, Sen. Christopher Cabaldon's office said they are aiming for the November ballot. Cabaldon co-sponsored the bill with Assemblymember Buffy Wicks.
The third statewide bond measure, Senate Bill 895, a $23 billion initiative to establish the California Foundation for Science and Health that would fund scientific research, was referred to the Senate Health Committee in February.
The California Coalition for Home Ownership initiative led by Hertzberg and the California Association of Realtors would establish a homeownership loan program for households with incomes that do not exceed 200% of the area median income. It would only require applicants to contribute 3%, rather than the typical 20% downpayment to qualify for a mortgage, with the remaining 17% financed through a state-backed loan.
The bonds would be issued through the California Housing Finance Agency, a self-supported state agency established in 1975 as the state's affordable housing lender.
A poll conducted by the non-partisan Public Policy Institute of California in February found voters divided (49% yes, 50% no, 1% undecided) on the $10 billion affordable housing bond working its way through the Legislature. Six in ten voters are in favor of a billionaires tax, which would levy a one-time, 5% tax on income and trusts with over $1 billion in net worth, affecting the roughly 200 billionaires in the state, and generating an estimated $100 billion in revenue.
PPIC didn't poll on the other two bond measures, but a majority of Californians and likely voters, say they prefer to pay lower taxes and have a state government that provides fewer services rather than pay higher taxes and have a state government that provides more services.
Senior reporter for The Bond Buyer's West Coast Region.
Keeley Webster has covered the Bond Buyer's nine-state West Coast region for more than a decade. Prior to The Bond Buyer, she wrote about commercial... Read full bio
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