Asm. Rick Zbur

Existing law establishes homeless youth emergency service pilot projects in the City of Los Angeles and the City and County of San Francisco providing services to homeless minors, including food and access to an overnight shelter and counseling to address immediate emotional crises or problems. Existing law also requires similar programs to be established in the Counties of San Diego and Santa Clara, and all of these programs to be operated by an agency in accordance with a grant award agreement with the Office of Emergency Services. Existing law requires the Governor to create the California Interagency Council on Homelessness and specifies the duties of the council. Existing law requires agencies and departments administering state programs to collaborate with the council to adopt guidelines and regulations to incorporate core components of Housing First, which include, among other things, a tenant screening process that accepts applicants regardless of sobriety, not rejecting applicants based on poor credit or financial history, and prohibiting participation in services or program compliance from being a requirement for permanent housing. This bill, until January 1, 2027, and upon appropriation by the Legislature for these purposes, would require the Department of Housing and Community Development to establish the Unicorn Homes Transitional Housing for Homeless LGBTQ+ Youth Program, to be administered by local community-based organizations that provide a majority of its services to the LGBTQ+ community. The bill would require the department to fund community-based organizations in the participating Counties of San Diego and Sacramento that provide transitional housing for LGBTQ+ youth, 18 to 24 years of age, inclusive, experiencing homelessness due to family rejection, with the ultimate goal of reunification with the youth's original family. The bill would require the community-based organization to place eligible youth with volunteer host families who meet specified criteria, pursuant to the results of a background check, and who are able to provide crisis intervention with a trauma-informed approach, as defined, to their care. The bill would also require the program to comply with the existing core components of Housing First. The bill would require each community-based organization to prepare and submit an annual report to the department, with the first report due on or before December 1, 2024, and a final report due on or before June 30, 2026, which would be required to include specified information, including the number of times the organization was contacted by youths, how many of those contacts became participants in the program, and how many of those initial contacts became repeat contacts. The bill would also require the department to compile the annual reports into a final report, to be submitted to the Legislature on or before December 31, 2026.

Existing law establishes the Transgender Wellness and Equity Fund, under the administration of the State Department of Public Health's Office of Health Equity, for the purposes of funding grants to create programs, or funding existing programs, focused on coordinating trans-inclusive health care for individuals who identify as transgender, gender nonconforming, or intersex. This bill would, upon appropriation by the Legislature, create the Transgender, Gender Variant, and Intersex Wellness Reentry Fund for purposes of funding grants to create programs, or funding existing programs, focused on reentry programming specifically to support transgender, gender variant, and intersex people who have experienced carceral systems. The bill would make legislative findings and declarations.

Existing law, the California Uniform Controlled Substances Act, classifies controlled substances into 5 schedules and places the greatest restrictions and penalties on the use of those substances placed in Schedule I. The act classifies the drug fentanyl in Schedule II. Existing law prohibits a person from possessing for sale or purchasing for purposes of sale, specified controlled substances, including fentanyl, and provides for imprisonment in a county jail for 2, 3, or 4 years for a violation of this provision. This bill would, subject to an appropriation, establish the Fentanyl Misuse and Overdose Prevention Task Force to undertake various duties relating to fentanyl misuse, including, among others, collecting and organizing data on the nature and extent of fentanyl misuse in California and evaluating approaches to increase public awareness of fentanyl misuse. The bill would require the task force to be cochaired by the Attorney General and the State Public Health Officer, or their designees, and would specify the membership of the task force. The bill would require the first meeting of the task force to take place no later than June 1, 2024, and would require the task force to meet at least once every 2 months. The bill would require the task force to submit an interim report to the Governor and the Legislature by July 1, 2025, and would require the task force to report its findings and recommendations to the Governor and the Legislature by December 1, 2025. The bill would repeal these provisions on January 1, 2026. This bill would declare that it is to take effect immediately as an urgency statute.

The Costa-Hawkins Rental Housing Act authorizes an owner of residential real property to establish the initial and subsequent rental rates for a dwelling or unit with respect to which certain criteria are met, including that the dwelling or unit is alienable separate from the title to any other dwelling unit or is a subdivided interest in a subdivision, as specified. The act exempts certain tenancies and dwelling units from these provisions, including a unit where the previous tenancy been terminated by the owner pursuant to specified law. This bill would authorize a jurisdiction to require the owner of a residential real property that is subject to an ordinance or charter provision that controls the rental rate to permit a tenant who is not subject to eviction for nonpayment and who has a permanent physical disability related to mobility to move to an available comparable or smaller unit, as defined, located on an accessible floor of the property if certain conditions are met. The bill would require an owner who grants a request pursuant to these provisions to allow the tenant to retain their lease at the same rental rate and terms of the existing lease if certain conditions are met, including, among others, the move is determined to be necessary to accommodate the tenant's disability related to mobility and the new dwelling or unit is in the same building or on the same parcel with at least 4 other units.

Existing law, added by the Governor's Reorganization Plan No. 1 of 1991, creates the Department of Pesticide Regulation and authorizes the Director of Pesticide Regulation, among other things, to adopt regulations for the issuance and renewal of licenses and certificates for pest control operations. Existing law requires the director, on or after January 1, 2025, to adopt regulations for the issuance and renewal of licenses and certificates for pest control operations for a 3-year period. This bill would require the department, by January 1, 2026, to establish and convene a Department of Pesticide Regulation Environmental Justice Advisory Committee, as provided, that would provide prioritized recommendations to the department on ways to integrate environmental justice considerations into department programs, policies, decisionmaking, and activities, and on how the department can improve its engagement with communities with the most significant exposure to pesticides. The bill would require the advisory committee to hold, at a minimum, 2 public meetings annually and to post, as needed, its recommendations on the department's internet website. The bill would also require the department to post, as needed, on its internet website an update on its efforts to incorporate the advisory committee's recommendations.

(1) Existing law, the Meyers-Milias-Brown Act (act) , authorizes local public employees, as defined, to form, join, and participate in the activities of employee organizations of their own choosing for the purpose of representation on matters of labor relations. Existing law generally requires that the scope of representation under the act include all matters relating to employment conditions and employer-employee relations, while excepting the consideration of the merits, necessity, or organization of any service or activity provided by law or executive order. Existing law states that the Legislature finds and declares that the duties and responsibilities of local agency employer representatives under the act are substantially similar to the duties and responsibilities required under existing collective bargaining enforcement procedures and therefore the costs incurred by the local agency employer representatives in performing those duties and responsibilities under that act are not reimbursable as state-mandated costs. This bill would impose specified requirements with respect to the temporary employees, as defined, of a public employer who have been hired to perform the same or similar type of work that is performed by permanent employees represented by a recognized employee organization, subject to limited exceptions. In this regard the bill would require those temporary employees to be automatically included in the same bargaining unit as the permanent employees if the requested classification of temporary employees is not presently within the unit. The bill would further require the public employer to promptly participate in collective bargaining to establish certain employment conditions for the newly added temporary employees if the parties' current memorandum of understanding does not address them, as specified. The bill would also require a public employer to, upon hire, provide each temporary employee with their job description, wage rates, and eligibility for benefits, anticipated length of employment, and procedures to apply for open, permanent positions. By imposing new duties on local agencies that employ temporary employees, the bill would impose a state-mandated local program. The bill would require complaints alleging a violation of its provisions to be processed as unfair practice charges under the act. The bill would additionally include the same findings and declarations as set forth above. (2) The California Constitution requires the state to reimburse local agencies and school districts for certain costs mandated by the state. Statutory provisions establish procedures for making that reimbursement. This bill would provide that no reimbursement shall be made pursuant to these statutory provisions for costs mandated by the state pursuant to this act, but would recognize that a local agency or school district may pursue any available remedies to seek reimbursement for these costs.

Existing law establishes the California State Nonprofit Security Grant Program under the administration of the Director of Emergency Services to provide grant funding to improve the physical security of nonprofit organizations that are at high risk of violent attacks or hate crimes due to ideology, beliefs, or mission. Existing law authorizes applicants to use grant funds for prescribed security enhancements, including security training. Existing law makes the operation of the program contingent upon an appropriation in the annual Budget Act. This bill would require the grant program to provide the grants to nonprofit organizations and would authorize the grant program to provide grants to an applicant that provides support to the above-described at-risk nonprofit organizations for vulnerability assessments, security trainings, mass notification alert systems, monitoring and response systems, and lifesaving emergency equipment. The bill would prohibit the director from taking into account during the evaluation of an application the applicant's prior history with or receipt of grant funding to improve its physical security. The bill would require the director, when evaluating applications, to consider whether an applicant is more likely to be a target of hate-motivated violence. Existing law requires the Office of Emergency Services to provide ongoing technical assistance for nonprofit organizations that require a vulnerability assessment for a state application to the California State Nonprofit Security Grant Program or a threat assessment for a federal application to the Nonprofit Security Grant Program of the United States Department of Homeland Security. This bill would require that the above-described technical assistance include a resource page on the office's internet website, as specified, and continuous outreach to stakeholders on available resources for vulnerability assessments outside the established grant cycle.