On October 7, California governor Gavin Newsom signed into law Senate Bill 555, the Stable Affordable Housing Act of 2023. The legislation commits the state of California to producing a study on the prospects for creating “a robust sector of social housing that offers below-market rents affordable to households of all income levels who are unable to afford market rents and that is permanently shielded from the speculative market.”

Introduced by Sen. Aisha Wahab, the bill emerged from five years of discussions among tenant organizations, unions, and other members of the Housing Now! coalition.

SB 555 embeds a definition of social housing in state law and sets in motion a public process “to identify tools to help achieve the state’s goals for lower and moderate-income housing by creating social housing through both new production and preservation of existing units.” The resulting California Social Housing Study, to be completed in 2026, will include recommendations to the state legislature for creating social housing at the scale needed.