Transcription:
Robert Berry (
I'm going to move to our lunch and keynote part of our program. Can everyone hear me? Hello? Can everybody hear me okay? Yeah. I'm I guess I'm treasure says I'm too tall here. So, It's my honor to introduce our pre-conference luncheon speaker today. Her career in public service began in 1995. When she was appointed to the assessment appeals board of San Francisco. She served on the San Francisco board of supervisors where she championed human rights and let efforts to empower small businesses. In 2006 she came to Sacramento to serve in the assembly as majority whip and then speaker prote in 2015 she was elected to the board of equalization and became the board's chairperson. The year following in November of 2018 she was elected state treasurer with more votes than any other candidate for the office in state's history. She was also the first woman CPA elected to state treasury as the state's primary banker her office processes more than 3 trillion in banking transactions provides transparency and oversight for a government investment portfolio averaging 200 billion and serves as agent of sale for all state bonds and trustee of billions of dollars of state indebtedness. As our chairperson at CDIAC she has been a staunch advocate for CDIAC and our mission particularly our work in public finance education. Please join me in welcoming the 34th treasurer of the state of California. Fiona.
Fiona Ma (
Thank you all. It's great to see everyone in person. And before I give my prepared remarks I just wanna let everyone know that we are having a special at Cal saver at at scholarship 529. Right now how many of you have opened up a scholarship 529? How many of you are thinking about opening up a scholarship 529? Well right now you can get a hundred dollars bonus. If you open a new account for a thousand dollars or more this is free money a hundred dollars. So, we are trying to get everyone to take advantage of this during the month of September. So, again thank you. all for coming here today for utilizing CDIAC and our services our team works really hard to make sure that we are preparing that the latest and the greatest webinars, conferences other types of panels to make sure that we are keeping up with what is happening in real time. I also do wanna announce that we have elected officials modules we've done four modules geared toward elected officials but anyone can access it. And it's really to talk about financing bond financing budgets pensions things that elected officials should know about before they get elected but don't and then once they get into office they are told to really trust someone right? The budget director the city manager. And that's not really how elected officials should be working. And, So we have developed four modules we're gonna do how many more eight four more. And then we also released our two modules on pensions which are available on our CDIAC website. So, thank you all again for coming and supporting us. I know this morning there was a lot of talk about housing housing housing housing. And so you're all in luck cuz I'm just gonna talk about housing right now. And then later on when I open up the bond buyer I'm not gonna talk about housing so it'll be two different speeches so don't worry. But if you have any questions obviously we will have a Q and A after this and we know that the house housing shortage is very real in terms of the homelessness in terms of building more density sprawl Ec cetera. And okay. So it's it's really hard for me to go back and forth speaking ad lib and speaking from my notes. Let's see. All right. I'm just gonna start with you know homelessness. We all know that California has a dis proportionate share of homeless people in the nation the legislature and the governor have devoted significant resources to address this issue. And in a single example governor Newsom advocated for project home key during the pandemic which was really to buy hotels and allow homeless individuals to get out off the streets especially during COVID. And he has continued this in his budget to buy more hotels and motels to alleviate the issue cuz we know it's very difficult to build new housing anywhere in this state. Second as people struggle to keep up with rising rents and escalating home values they're often displaced by gentrification and critics argue that this housing pattern has produced in Exodus from urban areas paradox a the attempts in California slow. This sprawl have led to an exacerbation of the supply problem as land and development costs are generally significantly cheaper in Greenfield developments than in urban or near urban cores. So, problem number three the next generation is priced out. How many of your concern that your kids are not gonna be able to live here in California? The legislature and governor did ask laws that allow you to put an ADU that's an accessory dwelling unit in your backyard. If you do have enough space and your jurisdiction allows it but it is legal. And I know that is one option that will help homeowners as we age and wanna stay in our homes to be able to deal with the rising cost by building an ADU or a junior ADU which is a junior accessory dwelling unit which is within the confines and walls of your house like a garage KLHFA has $40000 of free grant money to help with preconstruction and planning for anyone who wants to set up an ADU but our next generation you know may want something else. And so the average California home now costs more than seven times the median income for 25 to 34 year olds compared to a cost of only three times the median income for this demographic in 19 seventies while many factors contributing to homelessness are beyond the reach of finance current public and private finance solutions have not been able to accelerate the production of entry level affordable housing following the 2007 to 2009 financial crisis. And the great recession that was induced by it capital requirements for banks originating and holding mortgage loans were altered in significant ways. The tightening of lending standards has presented challenges as we all know to would be home buyers everywhere. But the problem is particularly acute in California where medium home prices have risen to all time highs in many of the states urban areas nearest to employment areas. In April California's median sales prices for a single family home reached a record high of $884000 which is a 8.7% increase over April of 2021 and 43% higher than the pre pandemic high in August of 2019. Home ownership is one of the most highly reliable means of building wealth and is often key to long term prosperity that crosses many generations. And I can attest to that cuz when we were born my parents opened up a savings account for all three of the kids and we could use it for either college education. If there was money left we could use it for higher education like a graduate program to start our own business or to put as a down payment for a home. And So, when I moved to San Francisco after undergrad I decided to buy a two unit building in San Francisco. didn't understand about rent control at the time really. But at least that was helping make the mortgage payments. And after 10 years I wasn't able to fix much of the house the two unit building. And so I just sold it as is and they knocked it all down and built you know another three units on that site. But it did help me build equity. And so I'm a big supporter of home ownership. And, recently the governor put 500 million into a new program. We were tasked with doing the study through California forward and that program is the California dream for all program and the governor put $500 million into a seed a seed money so that we can offer basically silent seconds. We are gonna be in the shared appreciation business with low to moderate individuals who want to buy their first home but can't save enough for the down payment. So, California will be using this money zero interest to give to these taxpayers who wanna buy their homes. And then we will make the money back on the back end when the property is sold and that money our share will go back into the funds so that other people can't afford to buy a home. So, we're very very excited about this. the California housing finance authority will be administering the program and they are currently working on that and we think this is definitely a win-win, for this state right? we're helping people stay here, helping people afford to build equity and also putting it back into a revolving loan fund so that others can also access this this fund. So, those are some of the exciting things that we are looking forward to. Also, our California school finance authority. I know Katrina Johansen is here. We embarked on our first sale to the Santa Rosa community college to build student housing on the community college site. And, So I am traveling all over the state asking folks if your community college has some land and they want to build student or teacher housing on site. We are now getting into that business cuz we know that it is a high risk business building on community college campuses because of the transient nature of community college students but we've successfully done it. It's a great model. And we really want folks to be able to access higher education. As you know community college tuition is free for any first time college attendee. And so this is really a great way to get people who have not decided what they wanna do later in life to go to a community college. And, if there's housing that's a win-win for them as well. I also, want to embark on more generational housing. I live with my father who's 88 years old, and you know as he gets older and I'm getting older, we're definitely taking care of each other but you know our needs change for sure. And, if we could build more community generational housing that allows seniors to stay in the community they have some time, sometimes they wanna volunteer they wanna babysit. It allows folks with kids to go back to school or back to the workforce and then also to take care of our seniors when they need a little help getting their medication or getting to the doctors. We really I really wanna build more of that family. Since, so many kids are not living with their parents these days right? And So, being able to build that network of support I think would help everyone who wants to stay here in the state. We also pass prop 40 two years ago and prop 40 now allows anyone to transfer their low prop 13 tax base in their home to any other home in the state of California before it was only to those counties that allowed property owners to transfer their low prop 13 tax base. So some of you probably know Placerville. Placerville has lots of seniors who from the bay area they sold their you know four bedroom home and then moved to one of the 55 plus homes in Placer county because they could transfer their prop 13 basis. And, that I think is also gonna help keep more folks here but also open up those three and four bedroom homes to new families who wanna move in. So, these empty nesters can afford to sell their house and still stay here in the state of California. So, we are doing a lot in terms of housing many of you know that I chair CIDLAC and TCAC that oversees the bonds and the tax credits that goes to subsidize affordable housing. Over, the last four years we have really prioritized new construction for very low and extremely low individuals. So, you should see a lot more applications. We are oversubscribed as Ben knows. He's the largest underwriter for our bonds here in California. And ,we're hoping that the federal government will make an adjustment to the bond requirement from 50% to 25%. And, that would alleviate some of our pressure and allow more 4% tax credit projects to be funded. But we thank the governor Gavin Newsome for allocating 500 million of state low income housing tax credits for the past four years that he's been in office. This has made our bonds more competitive. And, we also got two rounds of 9% disaster credits from the federal government which has also helped to rebuild in those areas that were devastated by the wildfires. So, you may not see it but there is a lot of emphasis. We are really concerned about housing but as you know a lot is tied to housing. Water is still an issue right? We're going into our what fourth year of a drought. Transportation we wanna do more with transit oriented development to build around transit hubs. so we're incentivizing that through our TCAC and CIDLAC process but we always can use more ideas. I know some of you are working on workforce housing through the JPAS and being able to sell 15 year bonds that will allow the city to take the property back after 15 years after the bonds are sold. And, this is really to address the missing middle. And I always get ideas every day. Someone's pitching me on you know like a co-op type project. If you have any good ideas please let us know. We have very very creative staff with Sheila and Robert and and Katrina. I see here in the room that we wanna do more. We wanna think outside the box we wanna help solve the problem, We wanna be part of the solution and not a barrier. And, I hope that you have seen a difference in the office. Normally when you call government offices the answer is always no. Right, I tell everyone to please start with that's interesting. Let's see if we could do it right. and that makes a huge difference you know by being open and receptive to new ideas but it also means having to put more work in. So, my team has put a lot of extra work in because they're trying to create these new programs. I'll give you one example Blake Fowler and his team. We put together a trans program a tax revenue anticipated notes program under CSFA during the pandemic cuz we thought that the schools were not gonna get the income so that they were gonna get a deferral right. And they were not gonna make their their cash flow. And, So they spent about a year and a half trying to create this innovative program so that these schools if that happens they kind of have a line of credit but that had never been done. And So, we thanked the department of finance the controller's office and everyone who you know put their minds together. And now we ended up having surpluses. But now if we ever go through this again the mechanism is there and schools don't have to worry about their cash flow needs. So, we're just doing our best that we can as many of you know an accountant I'm a real estate tax accountant by training. And, So I kind of bring that lens into the office and all of my directors have some sort of private sector experience. So they understand that time is money right? If someone has to fly up and get someone to sign a document that's been sitting on their desk you know for weeks that is not acceptable. And that is a real life story. And, if I have to go upstairs and make them sign that paper and actually bring it downstairs and fax it to someone or send it someone that's not a good day for that person. So, I am very hands on. I'm in the office. I chair my meetings. I take this job very seriously. And again thank you all for all you do to keep California golden. We are the fifth largest economy. We still are post pandemic. And that's because of our entrepreneurial spirit because people actually wanna work and they wanna get back to the way it was. So, again thank you all for making California the great state that it is and making my job easier. Thank you.
(
Any questions? Do you have any questions or what time is it? You're good. I got a couple minutes. Okay. Any questions?
(
Okay. I'm gonna talk about one more program then. Cal kids is a new program that just started July 1st for every newborn born in the state of California. After July 1st they will get anywhere from 25 to a hundred dollars in their own child's savings account. That amount is gonna be kept for them for 18 years and they will be able to use that for college savings college education or for a certified apprenticeship program for every first through 12th grader who is on free and reduced lunch they will get $500. If they're homeless they'll get another 500. And if they're a foster youth they'll get another 500. So that could be $1500 extra. So you may have your friends and your family your teachers you may get a notice at school. Is this real? Yes it is real. And, the state of California is really investing in our next generation to make sure that they don't have to go into high student loan debt. So, that's an exciting program that we are also running under our scholarship 529 program. Yeah.
(
Well okay. So, that's the problem right now is just a separate account but we are hoping people will link the account so that they can see it. You know like your bank account you have all these accounts you can see it but we're hoping to change the law so that they can roll their child savings account into 529 and you know access greater returns. Yeah.
Audience Member 1 (
Is that effect of June of this year?
Fiona Ma (
Next year? July of this year. July. Okay. Yeah, There you go. No more questions. Okay. Thank you all for coming and we'll see you on the other side.