The 2025-26 Budget: State Mandate—Santa Ana Regional Water Quality Control Board

May 5, 2025 - We recommend the Legislature reject the Governor ’s proposal and instead fund past costs —which total less than $1  million —for three reasons: (1)  in a similar case in the San Diego region, a 2022 court decision found that local governments lacked sufficient authority to raise fees for stormwater mandates when they had to seek voter approval to do so; (2)  CSM
https://lao.ca.gov/Publications/Report/5039

The 2025-26 California Spending Plan: Housing, Homelessness and Local Government

Oct 22, 2025 - Of this amount, 10  percent is set aside for California tribes. MHP provides low-interest (0.42  percent) loans to developers for the construction and rehabilitation of rental housing for lower-income households.
https://lao.ca.gov/Publications/Report/5082

The 2025-26 Budget: Oversight of Encampment Resolution Funding [Publication Details]

Mar 5, 2025 - To assist the Legislature in its fiscal oversight role of this large and multiyear program, this post: (1) provides data on the size of the population of people experiencing homelessness in California and recent state spending on housing and homelessness; (2) describes the ERF program’s goals, funding, and reporting requirements; (3) provides an update on ERF grantee awards,
https://lao.ca.gov/Publications/Detail/5007

The 2019-20 Budget: What Can Be Done to Improve Local Planning for Housing?

Feb 20, 2019 - This can be seen in Figure  3 which shows how many new affordable housing units were approved each year under the Low ‑Income Housing Tax Credit Program (a key affordable housing finance source used as a component of most affordable developments) over the past two decades.
https://lao.ca.gov/Publications/Report/3938

The 2025-26 Budget: State Mandates—Regional Water Quality Control Boards

May 30, 2025 - For a more detailed discussion of the administration ’s rationale —which also applied to the mandate addressed in the Governor ’s January budget proposal —and our corresponding assessment, please see our recent post .
https://lao.ca.gov/Publications/Report/5054

An Initial Look at Effects of the COVID-19 Pandemic on Local Government Fiscal Condition

May 12, 2021 - The state will have limited insight into which local governments have been most affected by the pandemic until after the SCO publishes additional years of local government financial data. The picture will beco me more clear next year when the Legislature considers the state ’s 2022 ‑ 23 b udget after the SCO has published local governments ’ 2019 ‑20 financial
https://lao.ca.gov/Publications/Report/4428

Perspectives on Helping Low-Income Californians Afford Housing

Feb 9, 2016 - As Figure 3 shows, displacement was more than twice as likely in low –income census tracts with little market –rate housing construction (bottom fifth of all tracts) than in low –income census tracts with high construction levels (top fifth of all tracts).
https://lao.ca.gov/Publications/Report/3345

The 2017-18 Budget: Local Update of Census Address Program Overview

Mar 23, 2017 - Census results are used for many purposes, including reapportioning seats in the House of Representatives, realigning congressional and state legislative districts, and distributing roughly $400  billion in federal funds to the states.
https://lao.ca.gov/Publications/Report/3629

Climate Change Impacts Across California - Crosscutting Issues

Apr 5, 2022 - Figure  3  shows how most of California ’s largest and most destructive wildfires have occurred in recent decades. This pattern has been particularly notable in the last few years, which have seen some of the worst wildfires in the state ’s recorded history.
https://lao.ca.gov/Publications/Report/4575

The 2017-18 Budget: National Housing Trust Fund Staffing

Feb 23, 2017 - HCD requests $423,000 for 3 positions to administer the NHTF allocation. LAO Comments. HCD ’s increase in workload to administer the NHTF allocation justifies its request for 3 additional staff in 2017-18.
https://lao.ca.gov/Publications/Report/3580