Permit Streamlining Act: local emergencies.

Assembly Member Ávila Farías, joined by a coauthor, advances a measure that creates a new, post-disaster fast-track for certain housing permits by requiring local agencies to decide, within 10 business days of receiving a complete application, whether to approve or deny permits for state- or federally approved modular homes, prefabricated homes, or detached structures that could function as accessory dwelling units on affected residential properties after the parcel has been deemed safe for development.

Key mechanisms establish the framework and conditions for the expedited path. The measure defines “affected property” as residential land destroyed or rendered substandard by a disaster that triggered a local emergency, and it relies on existing definitions of “disaster,” “local emergency,” and related terms from other statutes. It imposes a not-withstanding requirement that a local agency act on a complete application for the listed structures within 10 business days after safety is confirmed, and it adds a parallel duty for utility providers to issue a written notice outlining next steps for a connection request within 30 days of receipt, barring infeasibility due to the disaster. In addition, local agencies must provide public information resources, including a substandard-building conditions checklist, a notice about confidential third-party code inspections, and, for larger cities, a permitting timeline performance dashboard. Compliance with the public-information provisions is due by March 31, 2028, with updates every four years thereafter. The bill also states that the measure addresses a statewide concern and applies to all cities, including charter cities, and it declares no state reimbursement is required for the mandated local duties.

The proposal interacts with existing law by situating the expedited permits within the broader Permit Streamlining Act framework and the California Emergency Services Act, linking the new timelines to a state-declared safety determination for the affected parcel. It applies statewide, including charter cities, and places new cost and transparency obligations on local agencies without dedicated state funding, while clarifying that the trigger for the expedited process is a state-confirmed safety determination. Ambiguities noted in the analysis include the exact process and authority for deeming a parcel safe, how the complete-application concept integrates with other environmental or land-use requirements, and how the dashboard and other public-information duties will be resourced and enforced across jurisdictions with different capacities.