Why Are Key California Affordable Housing Bills Bottled Up? Monday, July 26, 2021 | Sacramento, CA Construction workers break down dirt at an affordable housing job site in Long Beach, on July 22, 2021. Pablo Unzueta / CalMatters Encouraging housing to be built in place of abandoned big box stores and strip malls. Making it easier to build student housing near community colleges. Establishing an authority in Los Angeles to finance affordable housing. These proposals all promise to ease California’s ever-worsening housing crisis by adding or preserving the already-scarce supply. But these bills also appear to be dead in the water. They missed a key July 14 deadline to be heard in a policy committee in the state Assembly before lawmakers went on a month-long summer recess until mid-August. It’s still possible to revive the measures before the session ends in mid-September, but doing so would require a rules waiver — and political willpower.