A patchwork of bills are giving housing developers and local governments more options to reduce red tape for housing projects.
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You may not have seen the headlines (there weren’t any). You may have missed the raucous debate (there wasn’t much of one). But with the end of the legislative session last week, California is now on the verge of laying down a welcome mat for most major affordable housing projects across the state.
That’s not because of a single bill, but a patchwork of current and former legislation that, taken together, “basically covers any flavor of affordable housing you could possibly want to build,” said Linda Mandolini, president of Eden Housing, an affordable housing development nonprofit.
Now, affordable housing projects — in most places and most of the time — may soon be exempt from all that, fitted out in a suit of procedural …