This story was originally published by CalMatters. Sign up for their newsletters.
A bill that supporters hoped would kickstart California’s moribund condo industry and boost the scarce number of entry-level homeownership opportunities, died under mysterious circumstances at the stroke of midnight on Tuesday after failing to get a final vote before the end of the legislative session.
Assembly Bill 1903 by Oakland Democratic lawmaker Buffy Wicks would have changed the way that disputes between homeowners and builders over purportedly shoddy construction are resolved in a way the bill’s author hoped would result in fewer defect lawsuits and less developer skittishness around building condos. .
Backed by real estate interests, “Yes In My Backyard” advocates and a bevy of city governments, the bill sailed through the Senate without objection on Monday after 11:15 p.m.
But in a legislative mystery with weighty implications for California’s dysfunctional housing market, it never made its way back to the Assembly. At midnight, the legislative session officially came to a close. The bill had already passed the Assembly the prior week. But lacking an obligatory “concurrence” vote needed to lock in the final amendments, the bill died quietly without facing a single “no” vote in either chamber..
In a statement released on Tuesday afternoon, Wicks said that she was “incredibly disappointed and frustrated” that the bill “was ultimately held by the Senate.”
“We put hundreds of hours, months of negotiations, and endless stakeholders engagement and coalition building,” she said. “Ultimately I had a bill Friday morning that I truly believe would have unlocked condo construction to serve our working class families desperate for homeownership opportunities.”
A spokesperson for Senate President Pro Tem Monique Limón, a Santa Barbara Democrat, did not respond to a request for comment.
The bill was closely watched by pro-development advocates, who championed it as a key to unlocking the type of naturally affordable for-sale construction that the state so desperately needs.
But the bill had been opposed throughout the year by the politically powerful Consumer Attorneys of California, a lobbying group representing civil trial lawyers, along with many homeowners associations. Both argued that the bill would make it unduly hard for homeowners to take irresponsible builders to court over legitimately defective construction.
Those groups stopped fighting the bill when Wicks agreed to water it down over the weekend. Stripping out language that would have specified the types of defects ripe for litigation and placed new restrictions on how defects can be identified, the final bill simply required homeowners to clearly document the defects before filing suit, to give the builder a chance to repair them first and, if those repairs were made complete, to absolve the builder of future liability.
But it was too late. Wicks, in her statement, said she was confident the backers of the bill could “bring back something even stronger” in future sessions.
A spokesperson for the Consumer Attorneys of California did not respond to an interview request before this story was published.
When a bill dies at midnight
The final hours of August 31 in even years are always frantic in the Capitol.
State law requires the Legislature to dispense with most bills by the end of August at the end of each two-year legislative session. The rules also require any given bill to be in print for 72 hours before they can get a vote. “There are always a handful of bills that don’t make it across the finish line,” said Chris Micheli, a seasoned Sacramento lobbyist.
One of the most notable examples in recent memory was SB 1120 from 2020, another high profile and contentious housing bill. Incidentally, it was Wicks who went viral after taking to the Assembly floor, masked and holding her newborn daughter, to unsuccessfully plead with her colleagues to pass the bill on time. (Another version of the same policy to allow for duplex construction in neighborhoods zoned just for single-family homes passed the following year).
Another bill from this year, SB 1013 by Riverside Democratic Sen. Sabrina Cervantes, which would have put new restrictions on automated license plate readers, was unceremoniously held in the Assembly and did not receive a final vote. That was the victim of “an inter-house hostage situation,” Politico reported Tuesday.
When a bill dies this way it can be hard to tell whether that’s the result of simple time mismanagement or malign political intent — either directed at the bill itself or born of a general political beef between the two often quarrelsome chambers.
“I suspect the answer to your question is ‘yes,’” said Dan Dunmoyer, president of the California Building Industry Association, a trade group that was pushing the bill. “It appears this bill was slow walked — or not walked at all. But I can’t tell if this is truly hostage taking or things just got jammed up.”
The final amendments to the construction defect bill were negotiated between Wicks and an apparently skeptical Sen. Tom Umberg, a Santa Ana Democrat and chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee, who shared the concerns of trial attorneys and HOAs. Those discussions dragged out until virtually the last possible moment on Friday evening, just over 72 hours before the end of session.
“The chair was moving the goal posts and running out the clock,” said Michael Lane, a lobbyist with SPUR, a Bay Area-based urban planning think tank and advocacy group. “There’s probably lots of blame to go around, but I think he was being very sly.”
Umberg’s office also did not respond to a request for comment.
Much ado about condos
Builders, but also pro-housing advocates, have argued for years that current state law incentivizes construction defect lawsuits against condominium projects. That’s because condos are stacked together, making shared defects more likely across homeowners. The close cohabitation and the existence of homeowners associations make it easier for many litigants to organize against a single builder.
In California, where new residential construction is largely bifurcated between pricey single homes built for buyers and apartment buildings constructed for renters, condos represent a more affordable sweet spot. But developers have been more reluctant to build condos over the last two decades. Supporters of the bill blame litigation.
Comprehensive data on construction defect lawsuits does not exist. Reliable estimates on condominium production are also sparse. But developers claim that such lawsuits are a near certainty for condo projects.
“One hundred percent of our condos are sued for defect,” said Dunmoyer in an earlier interview. “If the trial lawyers convince the legislature that it’s okay to file a defect claim when there’s no defect, then we just don’t build condos. It’s not complicated.”
One recent analysis conducted by the consulting firm Economic & Planning Systems estimated that the threat of litigation increased construction costs on condos by roughly 1.9% to 4.4%. That may not be a massive cost increase, but supporters of the bill argue that it’s enough to steer multifamily developers toward rental projects.
Additional reporting by Kate Wolffe
Most Popular
‘Hard to believe’: Two Redwood City residents died in Palo Alto motorcycle crashesAugust 28, 2026 5:59 pm