The California Assembly and the State Senate have passed a package of affordable housing bills that will—at least start—to combat the affordability crisis growing throughout California. While there are several bills in the package, the staple bills are SB 2, SB 3 and SB 35. We sat down with Beth Mullen, national director of CohnReznick's Affordable Housing Industry Practice, to talk about the bills, how they will help combat the affordability issues and how the development community is responding—especially in the wake of Measure JJJ and a new linkage fee that the development community is opposing.

GlobeSt.com: There are a number of affordability bills that have recently passed, but the main bills seem to be SB 2, SB 3 and SB 35. Can you tell me about each, and how they will help combat the affordable housing issues?

Mullen: SB 2 is the most exciting of the bunch, at least from my perspective, because that is bring fresh dollars to the preservation of affordable housing. It is a permanent source of financing, and is basically a document recording fee of $75. The affordable housing industry has been working on this for 10 years at this point, and it has been a long road to come up with a permanent source of housing. That is expected to bring in $250 million a year to create affordable housing. That is pretty exciting, and it really helps to fill the gap when the redevelopment agencies were abolished.