Why California Needs a State Public Bank
In 2019, California passed AB 857, first-in-the-nation legislation allowing cities and counties to charter public banks to address capital needs for affordable housing, rural infrastructure, small business lending, and climate disasters. At the time, affordable housing developers, Community Development Financial Institutions (CDFIs), and community banks were stretched thin, dividing a limited pool of capital among a growing list of needs. Local public banking efforts have since grown statewide – with the San Francisco Board of Supervisors voting to put a public bank on the November 2026 ballot, a first for any US city.
There’s significant momentum in public banking that is responding to a real and growing need. When Rise Economy organizers asked practitioners what intervention would be most transformative for their work, their answer was overwhelmingly low-cost, patient capital that supports long-term community investments. Our new report with the USC Equity Research Institute. Financial Justice in California: A Public Bank for the Public Good, lays out the scale of the crisis and makes the case for a state public bank.
Complexity and Scale of the Problem: Testimonies from Rise Economy Members
California still needs to build over 1.3 million homes for low-and-moderate income (LMI) households, and despite development-friendly reforms, financing gaps of nearly $1.79 billion in 2024 alone stalled development of nearly 45,000 already-permitted affordable homes. Affordable housing developers routinely stitch together financing from a dozen or more sources, adding costs, extending project timelines by years, and increasing the risk for projects to stall if just one piece of the funding puzzle falls through.
For rural communities, persistent gaps are widening. As Rob Wiener of the California Coalition for Rural Housing (CCRCH) put it, “There’s not enough capital and investment…investors don’t always look at investing in rural communities.” Rural areas disproportionately rely on community banks, which are vanishing fast. Between January 2024 and April 2025 alone, 32 credit unions acquired or announced plans to acquire 35 community banks nationwide. Credit unions are not subject to the Community Reinvestment Act (CRA), an anti-redlining law that instructs banks to lend and invest in LMI neighborhoods. As credit unions absorb community banks, capital access for rural communities shrinks.
Native communities face similar disinvestment compounded by the complexities of tribal sovereignty. As Patrick Gallardo of the Scotts Valley Band of Pomo Indians and California Valley Miwok Tribe explained, “Most banks that I’ve come across treat tribal sovereignty as a legal risk to mitigate rather than a government status to respect.” State-recognized tribes, who lack federal sovereign immunity and federal benefits or reservation land, face an even steeper climb.
And as climate disasters increasingly strike the state—as they did in the 2025 Los Angeles wildfires, which caused up to $53.8 billion in damage—communities desperately need capital to prevent further displacement and loss of wealth.
Federal Rollbacks Are Compounding The Crisis
The Trump administration is worsening this crisis by threatening the funding and regulatory oversight that communities have long depended on. In 2025, the administration rescinded modernization of the CRA, reverting reinvestment guidelines to 1995-era standards. The CRA is critical: nearly 85% of all low income housing tax credit (LIHTC) investments, the largest source of subsidy for affordable housing development in California, are made by CRA-motivated banks.
In their FY2026 budget, the administration proposed eliminating the CDFI Fund’s discretionary spending, a vital resource for the institutions filling these gaps. Significant advocacy won level funding but uncertainty remains: FY2025 funds have not been disbursed and the FY2027 budget proposes similar cuts. As part of their deregulatory regime and rollback of diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) initiatives, they have sought to eliminate the Minority Business Development Agency (MBDA), defund 150+ Women’s Business Centers, and bar non-citizens from the Small Business Administration’s (SBA) core lending programs.
How Public Banking Can Meet the Moment
Public options have increasingly become a tool for governments and mission-driven nonprofits to fill gaps where private markets underserve residents. Examples include CalRx, which sells insulin for $11 a pen; New York City’s city-owned grocery stores aimed at lowering food costs; and public health insurance options launched in Washington, Colorado, and Nevada. California is studying how to scale social housing (permanently affordable housing owned by public entities or mission-driven nonprofits), including community land trusts, shown to produce better outcomes for residents. The state is also developing CalAccount, a no-fee debit account which would serve the 2.5 million unbanked or underbanked households losing $5 billion a year to fees and predatory products.
California doesn’t need to invent a new model. For a century, the Bank of North Dakota—the only state public bank in the country—has partnered with local lenders to offer low-cost patient capital. This proved invaluable during COVID-19 when North Dakota deployed emergency funds to small businesses at twice California’s rate. Outside the United States, Germany’s KfW Group, a state-owned investment and development bank, shows the model can operate at California’s scale. KfW’s wide mandate lets it finance home purchases, construction loans, and climate resilience upgrades. Its Federal Funding for Efficient Buildings program alone impacted 689,000 units and created nearly 360,000 jobs in 2023.
These models aren’t templates to copy wholesale but they offer real lessons for any public bank: robust governance, a mandate responsive to the state’s needs, and extensive partnerships with existing institutions. A California public bank would follow that lead, strengthening CDFIs, credit unions, and community banks by offering the low-cost patient capital they cannot access otherwise. It would reinvest fees the state already pays banks back into California communities. And lastly, it would give the state reliable capital that is insulated from political volatility and boom-and-bust budget cycles.
Californians deserve to have their resources work for them. Native communities deserve a financial institution that respects their sovereignty, rural communities deserve the same attention as our largest cities, and BIPOC communities deserve to share in the prosperity they’ve built without their needs being endlessly politicized. We have tremendous resources circulating in our economy. A public bank would help us direct them to the things that we need.
About the author:
Doni Tadesse is the Statewide Organizing Director at Rise Economy, where he helps lead a statewide coalition advancing racial and economic justice across California. His work brings together community organizations, advocates, financial institutions, and policymakers to expand access to capital, strengthen corporate accountability, and advance policies that create more equitable economic opportunities for BIPOC and other historically excluded communities. Through coalition-building and strategic organizing, Doni works to build power among the communities most impacted by the legacy of redlining and systemic disinvestment. Outside of work, Doni is actively engaged in his local community and is deeply interested in music, Black and queer political thought, the politics of cities and who belongs in them, and pop culture as a lens for understanding all of the above.