AB 2390 expands California’s streamlined, ministerial approval route for multifamily housing by setting objective site and project standards under which local governments must approve developments without discretionary permits. The bill ties eligibility to urban location, objective zoning/design standards, minimum residential floor area, and affordable-housing commitments, while excluding a range of environmentally sensitive or legally constrained sites.
Beyond by-right approval, the bill layers procedural and substantive conditions: a formal early scoping process with California Native American tribes, detailed labor and apprenticeship and health-care expenditure obligations for many projects, specific affordability set-asides tied to local compliance with housing-element and production reporting, and express exceptions for hazardous waste sites only when state or local agencies have cleared them for residential use. Those additions aim to accelerate housing production but also reallocate compliance and enforcement duties to developers, local governments, and state agencies.
At a Glance
What It Does
Authorizes ministerial, streamlined approval for qualifying multifamily developments that meet objective planning standards and affordability requirements, barring a list of excluded site types. It establishes fixed processing timelines and limits post-approval discretion by local governments.
Who It Affects
Developers of multifamily housing in urbanized areas, city and county planning departments that must meet new timelines and scoping duties, construction contractors and subcontractors subject to prevailing wage and apprenticeship rules, labor organizations, and California Native American tribes invited into early scoping consultations.
Why It Matters
The bill converts many projects that would otherwise face discretionary review into by-right builds if narrowly tailored conditions are met, while imposing mandatory labor, reporting, and tribal-consultation procedures—shifting where risk, cost, and review work fall in the housing pipeline.
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What This Bill Actually Does
AB 2390 creates a federalist-style checklist for when a multifamily project can bypass discretionary hearings and receive ministerial approval. To use the streamlined path a development must be on a legal parcel in an incorporated city that contains part of an urbanized area or on a legal parcel wholly inside an urbanized area or urban cluster for unincorporated sites; at least 75% of the site perimeter must adjoin urban-used parcels; and at least two-thirds of the development’s square footage must be residential.
The law defines “objective” zoning, subdivision, and design standards as measurable, pre-existing criteria and incorporates density-bonus concessions into the square-footage calculation (excluding underground space). Projects that meet these objective tests must also record long-term affordability covenants for required lower- or moderate-income units before the first building permit is issued.
The bill inserts a formal tribal scoping mechanism before filing: proponents file a notice of intent and the local government must notify culturally affiliated California Native American tribes within 30 days. Tribes then have 30 days to accept scoping; if they do, the local government must commence consultation within another 30 days.
If the consultation concludes there are no affected tribal cultural resources, or if the parties document an enforceable agreement on mitigation and treatment, the project may proceed under the streamlined rules. If the parties cannot reach an enforceable agreement about potential tribal cultural resources, the project loses eligibility for the ministerial path.
The scoping process is confidential to the extent specified by statute and tribal request, but the bill also requires the locality to provide written reasons whenever eligibility is denied due to tribal issues.AB 2390 tightly couples labor and workforce conditions to ministerial approval. For developments that are not public works, the bill requires prevailing wages and payroll verification, and it mandates registration requirements for contractors; developers must notify the Department of Industrial Relations of relevant contracts.
Projects with 50 or more units must also require apprenticeship participation and make per-hour health care expenditures roughly equated to a Covered California Platinum plan pro rata; contractors must deliver monthly compliance reports that are public records and face civil penalties for failures. Projects over 85 feet trigger a separate skilled-and-trained workforce regime that generates bidding and reporting requirements and allows relief when fewer than three compliant bids are received.Timing and review are prescriptive: local staff must issue written determinations of consistency within 60 days for projects of 150 units or fewer, and within 90 days for larger projects; design review must be completed within 90 or 180 days, respectively.
If staff fail to act within the timelines the development is deemed consistent. The statute limits what local governments can demand preapproval, caps parking requirements in many siting contexts, exempts certain subdivision approvals and some public-improvement decisions from CEQA, and defines when approvals expire or may be extended—approvals do not expire for projects that include significant public affordability investment and at least 50% of units affordable at 80% AMI or lower; otherwise approvals generally last three years with a one-time one-year extension available.
Finally, the bill excludes a long list of sensitive land types—coastal areas in certain conditions, prime farmland, wetlands, very high fire hazard zones (with specified exceptions), earthquake fault zones unless current code compliance is shown, FEMA flood zones unless the site meets FEMA qualifications, conserved lands, and hazardous-waste sites listed under PRC 65962.5—except where the site has a qualifying underground storage tank closure letter or one of several state agencies has determined the site suitable for residential use.
The Five Things You Need to Know
If a project contains more than 10 units and the locality is flagged for insufficient production, rental projects must dedicate at least 10% of units to households at or below 50% AMI (for-sale projects must dedicate 10% at or below 80% AMI); San Francisco Bay Area projects can instead opt to dedicate 20% at or below 100% AMI with an average income of those units at or below 80% AMI.
Hazardous waste sites listed under Section 65962.5 are disqualified from the streamlined path unless the property has an underground storage tank site with a uniform closure letter issued under Health & Safety Code or a state or qualifying local agency has explicitly determined the site suitable for residential use.
Developments that are not public works must pay prevailing wages and include prevailing-wage obligations in contracts; projects of 50 or more units must additionally require apprenticeship participation and make hourly-equivalent health care expenditures pegged to a Covered California Platinum benchmark, with monthly public reporting and civil penalties for noncompliance.
Projects over 85 feet in height must require prime contractors and subcontractors to use a skilled-and-trained workforce, with specific bidding, notice-to-union, affidavit, and monthly reporting obligations; if fewer than three compliant bids are received, the skilled-workforce requirement can be waived for that scope.
Local planning staff must issue written eligibility/determination notices within 60 days for projects of 150 or fewer units (90 days for larger projects); design review deadlines are 90 days and 180 days respectively, and failure to meet timelines results in the project being deemed consistent with objective standards.
Section-by-Section Breakdown
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Eligibility, objective standards, and site constraints
This subdivision establishes the core eligibility checklist: multifamily projects (two or more units) on legal parcels within defined urbanized areas or clusters; at least 75% of the site perimeter must abut urban uses; and at least two-thirds of the project’s square footage must be residential (density bonus concessions count toward that total, but basement/underground parking do not). It also enumerates disqualifying site types—coastal constraints, prime farmland, wetlands, very high fire hazard areas (unless current mitigation standards apply), FEMA floodplains (subject to FEMA criteria or map revision), conservation easements, protected-species habitat, historic/housing-demolition prohibitions, and hazardous-waste listings—while providing narrow exceptions where state agencies have cleared suitability for residential use.
Affordability conditions and interaction with density bonus/local ordinances
The bill requires recording long-term affordability covenants before the first building permit for any units used to meet below-market requirements and mandates minimum set-asides based on the locality’s housing-element and production performance. It preserves compatibility with other state and local affordability rules by allowing a single affordable unit to satisfy multiple obligations if it meets the strictest applicable income limits, and it declares several amendments declaratory of existing law to reduce legal uncertainty about how these set-asides interact with local ordinances and the Density Bonus Law.
Tribal scoping consultation before submission
AB 2390 builds a formal pre-application tribal scoping process: after a notice of intent, the local government must notify affiliated tribes within 30 days, tribes have 30 days to accept a scoping consultation, and consultations must begin within 30 days of acceptance. If consultation establishes no affected tribal cultural resources or results in an enforceable mitigation agreement, ministerial eligibility stands. Failure to reach an enforceable agreement or unresolved disagreement about impacts bars the streamlined path; the locality must provide written reasons for ineligibility. The bill also specifies confidentiality obligations for tribal information during scoping and contemplates separate consultations where requested.
Labor, apprenticeship, health-care expenditure, and skilled-workforce rules
This expansive subsection applies prevailing-wage obligations to constructions that are not public works, requires inclusion of prevailing-wage clauses in contracts and notice to the Department of Industrial Relations, and establishes enforcement pathways (Labor Commissioner, underpaid workers, joint labor–management suits). For projects with 50+ units it adds apprenticeship participation and health-care expenditure requirements tied to a Covered California Platinum equivalence, with monthly public reporting, civil penalties for missing reports, and penalties for contractor noncompliance. For projects over 85 feet, the bill requires use of a skilled-and-trained workforce, objective minimum-bid standards, notice to local unions and contractor groups, and reporting; limited waivers apply where three compliant bids are not available or where a project labor agreement covers the work.
Ministerial approval and design-review timelines
Local planning staff must determine consistency with objective standards and notify applicants within 60 days for smaller projects (150 units or fewer) and 90 days for larger ones; design review has 90-/180-day caps correspondingly. If staff do not act within these windows the development is deemed consistent. Design review, where applied, must be narrowly focused on pre-published objective criteria and cannot be used to reintroduce discretionary review that would negate the ministerial approval.
Parking, subsequent permits, public improvements, and permit validity
The bill constrains local parking requirements for streamlined projects—no parking can be imposed in specific contexts (e.g., within 1/2 mile of transit, historic districts, car-share proximity), and otherwise caps parking at one space per unit. Localities cannot require unrelated studies for eligibility, cannot impose additional fees or inclusionary requirements solely because a project used the ministerial route, and must process subsequent permits (demolition, grading, building permits, public improvements) without new or special procedures. Approvals do not expire for projects that secure substantial public affordability investment and at least 50% of units affordable at or below 80% AMI; other approvals last three years with a one-time one-year extension and special rules for modifications and litigation pauses.
CEQA, coastal rules, department guidance, retroactivity, and sunset
AB 2390 preserves certain CEQA exemptions for state and local agency actions tied to affordable housing support and clarifies coastal development permit treatment for coastal-zone projects that otherwise meet this section’s criteria. It authorizes HCD to issue implementing guidelines, sets cross-references for production reporting and housing-element cycles as triggers for affordability requirements, contains retroactivity clauses for some amendments, and includes a statutory sunset—the entire section repeals on January 1, 2036—giving the statute a fixed operational window.
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Explore Housing in Codify Search →Who Benefits and Who Bears the Cost
Every bill creates winners and losers. Here's who stands to gain and who bears the cost.
Who Benefits
- Developers able to site projects on qualifying urban parcels — they gain a by-right ministerial path that reduces discretionary hearings and the uncertainty, delay, and litigation risk associated with conditional use permits and other discretionary approvals.
- Low- and moderate-income renters and homebuyers — the statute imposes mandatory affordability set-asides and long-term covenants (55 years for rentals, 45 years for ownership) that expand the stock of restricted units tied to streamlined projects.
- Labor organizations and apprentices — prevailing wage, apprenticeship participation, skilled-and-trained workforce requirements, and monthly public reporting create opportunities to increase journeyperson employment, apprenticeship placements, and enforce labor standards on privately financed builds.
- California Native American tribes — the formalized scoping consultation gives tribes an earlier, statutorily required seat at the table to identify and negotiate protections for tribal cultural resources before ministerial review begins.
Who Bears the Cost
- Developers and prime contractors — subject to prevailing-wage obligations, mandatory apprenticeship participation for many projects, health-care-equivalent expenditures on larger developments, monthly reporting, and potential civil penalties, increasing project overhead and administrative burdens.
- Subcontractors and small contractors — must register, participate in apprenticeship programs or demonstrate subcontractor compliance, and may face higher labor-cost competition when projects require skilled-and-trained workforces, potentially squeezing smaller firms.
- Local governments and planning staff — required to run timely scoping consultations with tribes, hold public meetings in certain low-resource census tracts, issue determinations within fixed windows, process monthly reports as public records, and defend eligibility decisions in the face of litigation.
- State enforcement agencies and the Labor Commissioner — charged with administering civil wage and penalty assessments, reviewing payroll records, and resolving disputes within 18-month windows, increasing enforcement caseload and resource needs.
Key Issues
The Core Tension
The central dilemma in AB 2390 is speed versus safeguards: it accelerates housing production by removing discretionary review for projects that meet objective criteria, but it simultaneously layers protections—tribal consultation, environmental exclusions, prevailing-wage and apprenticeship mandates—that slow or raise the cost of delivery; the bill therefore replaces one form of gatekeeping (discretionary public review) with a different set of gates (statutory eligibility thresholds, agency suitability findings, and enforceable labor and reporting obligations).
AB 2390 tries to thread rapidly through three distinct governance problems—speeding housing approvals, protecting tribal cultural resources, and enforcing worker protections—and that creates several practical frictions. First, the bill requires tribal scoping consultations to be confidential in particular respects while simultaneously making monthly contractor compliance reports public records; reconciling tribal confidentiality with public transparency obligations and PRA exposure will require careful local protocols and may produce legal challenges over what information is shielded.
Second, the hazardous-waste carve-out depends on agency determinations or a uniform underground tank closure letter; the statute does not prescribe uniform residential-suitability standards or liability allocation for later-discovered contamination, leaving local governments and developers to navigate potentially uneven agency interpretations and insurance or cleanup contingencies.
Third, the layered labor mandates—prevailing wages for non-public-works projects, apprenticeship thresholds and healthcare expenditure benchmarks, and strict skilled-workforce rules for tall projects—will materially raise labor costs and administrative burdens on many private developments. While they advance worker standards, these clauses may shrink the pool of feasible bidders, encourage use of project labor agreements, or increase prices in markets where margins are tight.
Finally, the statute contains a severability/validity risk: it declares a portion of the labor-healthcare clause distinct and severable but makes the remainder a material part of the section; a judicial invalidation of major labor provisions could lead to broader nullification arguments, injecting uncertainty into projects relying on the section.
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