LOS ANGELES – Mayor Karen Bass today issued the following statement after Governor Gavin Newsom signed Assembly Bill (AB) 1734, which was sponsored by Mayor Bass and authored by Assemblymember Reggie Jones-Sawyer. This is the second bill sponsored by Mayor Bass that has been signed by Governor Newsom.
“I want to thank Governor Newsom for recognizing the importance of this bill with his signature, and for all of the work that Assemblymember Jones-Sawyer put into authoring and advocating for it. Part of what makes homelessness such an arduous crisis to confront are the barriers standing in the way at every level of government. This bill helps address those barriers,” said Mayor Karen Bass. “In order to truly confront the homelessness crisis, we must build more housing in every neighborhood across the city – and Assemblymember Jones-Sawyer’s AB 1734 will help us to do that by removing a bureaucratic barrier. By creating an exemption from the Surplus Land Act, we can more easily build on existing publicly-owned property more quickly.”
As the Mayor continues to build off of her efforts to build more affordable housing in every neighborhood, already having expedited more than 7,000 units of affordable housing and issuing her Executive Directive 3 to maximize the use of City-owned land for temporary and permanent housing, Assemblymember Jones-Sawyer’s AB 1734 will create an exemption from the Surplus Land Act, allowing the City to more easily utilize existing publicly-owned property to further address the housing and homelessness crisis. As the sponsor of AB 1734, the Mayor and Assemblymember Jones-Sawyer worked together to lead the passage of the bill in order to build upon the progress made in confronting the homelessness crisis and bringing more than 17,000 Angelenos off of the streets and into housing.