2025 Legislation

As of May 23, 2025, the following bills have been introduced by Senator Durazo and are a part of her legislative package. 

 

SB 21: Affordable Housing

SB 21 ensures SRO properties can continue providing sustainable housing by:

1. Amending the Housing Crisis Act to allow up to a 25% reduction in units when converting deed-restricted affordable housing SROs into larger units with affordable rents, private amenities, and supportive service spaces, with any additional reductions offset by one-for-one offsite replacements.
2. Requiring tenant protections, including a right of first refusal to return, rent guardrails, and a replacement housing plan.
3. Updating Department of Housing and Community Development (HCD) program eligibility to deem SRO tenants “homeless” for relocation purposes, waiving referral and homeless documentation requirements. This ensures that displaced SRO tenants can relocate to other permanent supportive housing with ease during redevelopment.

 

SB 346: Short-term Rental Enforcement

Requires the short-term rental platforms, upon request by a local agency that enacts a short-term rental ordinance, to provide the parcel number, and other information necessary to identify a rental’s location, for each short-term rental. If the platform does not provide this information, the local agency can fine the platform ($1,000 per violation up to $10,000 per day). This bill allows a local agency to conduct an audit of platform’s collection of transient occupancy tax. 

 

SB 513: Access to Training Records

Requires that employee personnel records relating to the employee’s performance include education and training records. Requires the employer to include the employee’s name, trainer, duration and date of the training, core competencies of the training, and the resulting certification or qualification.

 

SB 580: Strengthening Immigrant Protection Response Guides

Strengthens the Attorney General’s model policies and database guidance for state and local agencies. Requires the Attorney General to publish model policies for state and local agencies relating to interaction with immigration authorities and protecting state resources from immigration enforcement. Requires the Attorney General to publish guidance, audit criteria, and training recommendations for databases. Requires state and local agencies to implement both the AG’s model policy guidance and the database guides.

 

SB 590: Paid Family Leave for Chosen Family

Allows workers to use Paid Family Leave to care for family of choice.

 

SB 598: Construction Manager/General Manager

Allows water districts/special district award projects using an alternative project delivery method: GM/GC to give flexibility to water/special districts to build projects quicker and save money. 

California’s water infrastructure faces unprecedented challenges due to climate change-driven extreme weather events. Warmer, wetter winters are increasing the frequency of both droughts and atmospheric river storms, requiring the state to enhance its ability to capture, store, and distribute water efficiently. Traditional design-bid-build methods can be inefficient and costly, delaying the implementation of urgently needed projects. CM/GC offers a proactive, collaborative approach to address these needs effectively.

 

SB 629: Ensuring Safe Communities *Intent Bill Wildfire Package

Increases wildfire resilience in California by:

• Automatically designating areas that burned in a wildfire within the very high fire hazard severity zone, triggering the Wildland-Urban Interface (WUI) building code and defensible space maintenance requirements, as well as other fire safety regulations.
   
• Requiring annual defensible space inspections.
   
• Updating the state’s fire hazard maps to reflect the potential for urban conflagrations.

 

SB 635: Street Vendor Protection Act

Advances micro-entrepreneurs’ economic security and stability by limiting the sensitive data that can be collected. Specifically, this bill:

• Prohibits local sidewalk vending permitting procedures from inquiring into immigration or citizenship status, or criminal history, or requiring fingerprints.
   
• Prohibits local sidewalk vending enforcement officers from using their resources to share micro-businesses vulnerable information voluntarily.   

 

SB 707: Brown Act Modernization Act

This bill creates equitable opportunities for public engagement with local government by:

• Maintaining teleconferencing flexibility for legislative bodies and gives flexibility to some advisory and multijurisdictional bodies.
   
• Requiring city councils and county boards of supervisors to improve remote access to the public
   
• Requiring interpretation services and language translation of meeting documents and information.

 

SB 716: Lifeline Reform

Modernizes California’s Lifeline program by establishing a permanent home internet subsidy for low-income households. Modeled after the federal ACP, it ensures eligible families pay no more than $10 per month for high-speed broadband, helping to close the digital divide and uphold the state’s commitment to digital equity. The bill creates a dedicated fund, sets strong enrollment targets, and prioritizes outreach to underserved communities.

 

SB 754: Chemicals in Menstrual Products

Requires menstrual product manufacturers (of tampons and pads) to report out to the Department of Toxic Substance Control on the levels of potentially hazardous chemicals in their products. This bill comes after a study published in 2024 found lead, arsenic, and cadmium in tampons, and seeks to require manufacturers to be more proactive in the monitoring of toxins in their products. Rather than universities and organizations conducting one-off studies finding harmful contaminants, the responsibility should fall on manufacturers to ensure their products are safe for use by the over 9 million Californians who menstruate, including 1 million children.

 

SB 784: Consumer Protections in Home Improvement Financing

Strengthens existing protections for consumers who enter into home improvement contracts. Requires a call between the lender and the consumer confirming the financing terms and other contract details (with no salesperson present) before a financing agreement is executed. Ensures that the consumer’s repayment obligations (e.g. payment, interest, last fees, etc.) do not commence until the lender has confirmed that the improvements have been completed as promised by confirming the improvements have passed local permitting inspection (or obtained permission to operate in the case of solar panels), or conducting an investigation to confirm completion as promised. Establishes the consumer’s right to access all information and documents from the lender related to their account, including: financing application, financing agreement, electronic signature confirmation, recordings of all oral confirmation calls, completion certificates, documentation of payments to contractor, account transaction history. Extends right to cancel period for home solicitation sales contracts.

 

SB 809: Construction Trucking

The AB 5 construction exemption expired at the end of 2024. This bill provides amnesty in exchange for the implementation of the “two check” system, which is a very promising model to convert owner-operators to employee status and provide them adequate compensation for the use of their vehicles. This bill has language stating that owner-operators can be employees.

 

SB 834: Record Clearing

Building on the success of SB 731, which helped clear old conviction records and expand opportunities for millions of Californians. SB 834 will help ensure that people who have turned their lives around are not unfairly held back by outdated conviction records by:

1. Addresses pending charges – Ensures that if someone’s record includes an old “pending charge” but there has been no new activity for three years, it will no longer prevent them from qualifying for relief.
2. Provides confirmation of relief – Allows individuals to request a certificate from the court proving their record has been cleared.
3. Improves court records – Ensures that local courts update their records to show when a conviction has been cleared, just as the DOJ already does, so individuals don’t face unnecessary obstacles due to outdated information.

 

SB 838: Housing for Workers

Excludes hotels, motels, bed and breakfast inns, and other transient lodging, from being automatically streamlined under the Housing Accountability Act. SB 838 applies to new projects and projects in review after January 1, 2025.