Assembly Select Committee on Housing Construction Innovation Announced

​Assembly Speaker Robert Rivas has appointed Assemblymember Buffy Wicks (D–Oakland) to Chair the newly established Select Committee on Housing Construction Innovation, a body tasked with exploring and advancing modern, cost-efficient, climate-smart approaches to building new homes in California. 

​The findings of the committee will be summarized in a white paper released in early 2026. The committee then plans to translate its findings into a package of legislative proposals in 2026 aimed at removing barriers and supporting responsible innovation in the construction phase of housing development. 

The announcement noted that construction methods have not kept pace with innovation in other industries. While technology has transformed fields from communications to manufacturing, the majority of California homes are still built using the same labor- and time-intensive processes that dominated a century ago.

The Select Committee will convene a comprehensive, public examination of why  innovative methods such as those in other countries have not scaled and what the state can do to support responsible, effective adoption. The goal is to identify opportunities that reduce costs, expand affordability, and accelerate the delivery of housing across the state.

“California has made real progress in the work to open up land and speed approvals — but those gains won’t matter if we can’t bring down the cost of actually building homes,” said Assemblymember Buffy Wicks (D-Oakland). “This Select Committee will dig into the innovations that can meaningfully lower construction costs and help us produce housing at the scale Californians need. By learning from practitioners, studying what’s working around the world, and further identifying the barriers holding us back, we can chart a path toward modernizing how we build housing in this state.” 

The Committee will examine:
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• The potential of innovative construction techniques to reduce costs
• Opportunities to accelerate housing timelines
• Environmental and climate-aligned advantages
  
• Regulatory, labor, and financing considerations
  
• The risks, benefits, and barriers to expanding industrialized construction and related technologies at scale