In March of last year, I wrote a report of the AB 812 Affordable
Housing for Artists in your Cultural Districts Plus Women of Impact
which was an interview with Edwin Borbon, Legislative Director for the
office of Assembly member Tasha Boerner who presented the bill. Later in
June, 2024, the North County Arts Network invited Tracy Hudak from
California for the Arts to present this policy in more detail. Now in July of
2025, we have the California official tool kit guide for any cities or counties to help with the AB 812 process.
I attended a webinar on affordable housing for
artist specifically the AB 812 policy presented by Tracy Hudak, and her team
including Jean Johnstone, co-author of the toolkit and policy advisor. Jennifer
Lovehorn, Chief Cultural Affairs Officer for Civic Arts at Berkeley joined
in with her examples of the progress made in northern California.
They covered what AB 812 does and doesn’t
do, what it requires, what terms you need to know to understand the policy, and
a bunch of resources available through links in the toolkit. It was a chance to
ask questions and share some knowledge in this very complicated area of
housing. Basically, they hope that AB 812 might streamline the already existing
policies, but more hopefully, it prioritizes artists for affordable housing in
general and sets precedent for the
importance of keeping artist in or near existing cultural districts.
AB 812 really starts with the California Cultural District’s
program, which is administered by the California Arts Council. The program was
established in 2017 by designating 14 districts across the state as a 5-year
pilot program. They recently closed application for the next round of 10 more
districts. But there is hope for future rounds. Assembly member Tasha Boerner
from San Diego, and her team developed AB 812 as a tool to help arts
communities work with their local governments to make affordable housing more
easily available to eligible artists who live in either a locally designated
cultural or within a ½ mile radius of state designated cultural districts.
In AB 812, up to 10% of whatever percentage of affordable
housing units there are, will be eligible for artists and cultural workers in housing
developments in cities that can pass an ordinance or a resolution for a
Cultural District.
Just a note: An ordinance is voted on and
becomes law. it is a state-sanctioned and legally defensible process. A resolution,
which is also voted on is much easier to obtain, but is not law and can easily
be undone. Remember a city or county council is elected and so changes often,
but if an ordinance it is set, it is law.
Three
things have to be included in this ordinance that includes affordable housing.
1.
It
has to be consistent with the local tenant preferences to prevent displacement
act.
2.
It
has to have a provision that prohibits any existing tenants from being evicted
in favor of an artist.
3.
It
must include fair and comprehensive vetting process defining who is an artist
and that they are eligible for affordable housing.
Plus it has to be near
or in the cultural district and conform to the local inclusionary zoning
policies while being aware that California law prohibits discrimination. If there
are zoning issues. you might have to change regulations in terms of noise, or
late night hours of activities or for light industrial or even looking at tax
increment financing. Working with the community development officials will help
you sort through these requirements
Establishing a cultural district and
passing an ordinance, both require political support, action, and votes. Luckily,
California lawmakers get really excited about cultural district. So, the
toolkit also provides strategies and case-making resources to build political
will for all those steps. It’s critical to identify local champions and
partners. You need votes, literally, for ordinance and cultural districts so, developing
relationships with elected officials is vital. Potential champions
include community foundations, neighborhood councils, your business improvement
districts, your chambers of commerce, etc. And also, of course, arts
commissions, or even planning commissions and other commissions as well. It is
also important to have a grassroots strategy to educate the public and increase
public will and support through letters to the editors, digital campaigns,
press events, collective taking action, letter writing, making public comment,
etc.
AB 812 allows the city to decide on much of fine
turning of the ordinance. Best
practice says that a panel or committee should make decisions about who is or
is not an artist. Artist should be ranked (not a value judgement of the quality
of the work) but compared to who lives there now or who has been pushed out remembering
the goal is to keep artists in their
cultural community.
The artist has to supply proof of income. For
example, the artist income does not have to all come from art. One of the
interesting educations from this webinar was about affordable housing in
general. The term affordable housing is actually a very specific, and it refers
to below market rates. This is based on AMI (area median income). Affordable is
30% or less of your income. So anything over that is considered a rent
burdened. More than 50% of your income can mean you are qualified to be subsidized
by the government or other renters if you’re in a mixed-income development.
If was suggested you can look to existing local
policy to see if artists are already established as a priority. Perhaps your
community has an approved cultural plan which identifies that access to
affordable housing is an issue. Maybe the creative economy has been identified
as an important sector in terms of economic strategy
This is because, even without
AB812, artists can be eligible for either
- set aside (worked out in a
development agreement)
- or word force housing (because of the needs for your
profession).
Neither are eligible for state or federal funding but they can be prioritized
by a city. - A tenant preference ordinance is a local law that gives
certain groups priority when applying for affordable housing units, i.e.
Veterans, houseless, etc. They are established if a local government finds that
a group is especially at risk of displacement and needs priority access to
affordable housing more broadly across a region. But they require a strong justification under
fair housing laws, and involve a long and rigorous process to establish.
The toolkit has lots of examples from Jennifer
Lovehorn, Chief Cultural Affairs Officer for Civic Arts at Berkeley. For
example, she reported that the state and federal tax codes do specify artists with
tenant preference. The toolkits supplies
all of these examples and even sample surveys and the wording could be helping
in writing your ordinance. Berkeley has been
working for 10 years on this priority and only in September is a vote for their
drafts ordinance
coming up as a possibility. I suggest reading this draft as it is the first one I have seen for the AB812 requirements and is a good guide to what one looks like.
One of the best parts of a webinar is the
questions at the end, because these clarify and even raise interesting
additional information.
What is the role of a neighborhood council in this process? Neighborhood council could be a key partner in
establishing a cultural district, and helpful in solidifying relationships to
elected officials. They can make the case for the need for artist housing and
how that aligns with other localized goals in that district,
Are
culture bearers or arts workers qualified under these definitions? Yes, as this is one of those discretionary
items that the city can decide and yes, it would fall under best practices. Another
thing cities decide is what happens if the artist can no longer work as
an artist. Remember not all housing is live/work, so best practices might mean
that artist can stay if it is just a live space.
Is it possible to adopt an AB 812 ordinance
without establishing policy? Yes, you don’t need a policy as it is a state law.
You just need the ordinance.
Why
is it important to have conducted an artist survey or census that identifies
housing as key challenge? You will need that data and also looking at the land
use plans and the general city plan if you want to apply for a grant to help
you fund this whole process. In particular, a survey to show how income
disparities affect different groups within a population is major and may need a
separate consultant.
Please
refer to the following resources:
· Webinar Recording
· Webinar Slide Deck
· AB 812 Implementation Toolkit, Version 1.1 *Updated
version! We made some improvements based on the webinar discussion*
· CAC Recording Cultural Districts Overview
Video
