Bill Fast-Tracking Office to Housing Conversions Headed to Governor’s Desk With a Unified Labor Agreement

Sacramento – Today, Assemblymember Matt Haney’s (D-San Francisco) legislation that allows local California governments to expedite office-to-housing conversions has reached a critical milestone in the legislative process, having passed out of the Senate with a 27-11 vote, and is now heading to the Governor’s desk awaiting a signature.

As California is in the midst of a generational shift in work culture, offices in places like downtown Los Angeles and the financial district in San Francisco are seeing the highest vacancy rates in 30 years. Combined with plunging commercial real estate values and commercial leases failing to renew, cities are facing an unprecedented level of blight, unless dramatic steps are taken to increase residential and visitor foot traffic.

While local elected leaders have called to repurpose vacant office buildings into residential ones, there are many technical and financial challenges to renovating an existing office building in California specifically. By mandating by-right approval processes for mixed-use housing conversion projects in city centers, AB 3068 will pave the way for the construction of several thousands of new housing units.

“California’s downtowns are desperate for ways to inject vitality into their streetscape,” said Matt Haney, Chair of the Select Committee on Downtown Recovery. “While the demand for living downtown is at an all-time high, many urban centers simply lack the available housing. If we are serious about jump-starting the economic engine of our cities, we need to remove the red tape that makes office to housing conversions nearly impossible.”

The bill also features an unprecedented labor agreement between the Building Trades and Carpenters Union for the specific types of office-to-housing projects that this bill streamlines. As a result of careful negotiations, the bill ensures that the workforce building adaptive reuse projects are afforded safe working conditions and fair wages.

“The Nor Cal Carpenters Union is proud to work with legislators to create viable solutions to bring desperately needed housing to California,” said Jay Bradshaw, Executive Officer of the Nor Cal Carpenters Union. “AB 3068’s contractor workforce standards were tailored for a subset of projects that reuse and convert existing underutilized commercial concrete and steel buildings to provide homes. AB 3068 expressly reaffirms the labor standards for “ground-up” new construction embedded in critical California housing legislation passed in recent years: AB 2011 and SB 423.”

AB 3068 now sits on the Governor’s desk awaiting a signature.

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