02/01/07 6:30 PST

Assembly Member Mark DeSaulnier introduced his first piece of legislation Wednesday, a bill to create a new fee for filing real estate documents in Contra Costa County to help pay for more low and moderate income housing in the county.

If the bill, Assembly Bill 239, becomes law, the Contra Costa County Board of Supervisors would be authorized to increase the fee for filing real estate documents by $1 per page. The money from the fee increase would go into a housing trust fund would be used to address a wide range of affordable housing needs in the county for very low, low and moderate income residents.

Those needs include new rental housing, preservation and rehabilitation of existing rental housing, homebuyer assistance, new housing construction and housing for special needs populations including seniors, group homes, emergency shelters and transitional housing, according to DeSaulnier's Chief of Staff Greg Bedard.

The new fee would generate an estimated $2 million that could then be used to leverage matching funds from the state, Bedard said.

"We have a serious problem with a lack of affordable housing in Contra Costa," said DeSaulnier, D-Concord. "Our working families and seniors are being squeezed out of the market."

A member of DeSaulnier's staff said that AB 239 is almost identical to a bill introduced last year by State Senator Tom Torlakson. That bill, however, failed on the assembly floor.

Contra Costa County Supervisor John Gioia, who co-chairs the county's housing trust fund, said that realtors had opposed it "out of a hard-fast philosophical opposition to any increase of fees at the time of transaction, whether it's $5 or $500."

The housing committee, working with DeSaulnier, might consider imposing a flat fee rather than the $1 per page fee increase, which would prevent realtors from allegedly misrepresenting the cost in their efforts to oppose the bill, Gioia said.

As it is written now, the $1 per page increase would come to about $15 for the average transaction, according to Gioia, but last year realtors claimed that the fee increase would have the effect of making housing less affordable.

Another reason Torlakson's bill failed was that it applied only to Contra Costa County and other legislators were reluctant to vote for a law that upset realtors while not positively impacting their own jurisdictions, Gioia said.

This year the housing committee has been working with DeSaulnier on the legislation and they are considering trying to make it a state-wide fee increase or at least joining up with San Mateo County, which has a similar bill.

"Safety in numbers," Gioia said.

AB 239 will now be referred to the rules committee, which will then refer it to a policy committee for consideration.

If it passes, it wouldn't go into effect until Jan. 1, 2008, according to Bedard.