California lawmakers have been passing an impressive number of laws in recent years that attempt to streamline the California Environmental Quality Act process for approving new housing developments. That’s an admirable development given that CEQA is a prime culprit for the state’s housing-affordability crisis. The 1970 law not only adds costs to most projects, but allows any “stakeholder” to file a lawsuit to slow projects or gain costly concessions.
Gov. Gavin Newsom went further this year than before, as he even held up the budget until he secured the passage of laws that expand CEQA exemptions. Nevertheless, the state steadfastly refuses to simply reform the law for all projects. Its piecemeal approach of granting exemptions for this specific type of project or that one hasn’t sparked the expected building boom. This Editorial Board has long advocated a comprehensive CEQA fix.
The San Francisco Chronicle’s Emily Hoeven recently highlighted one newly signed law, Senate Bill 158, which should spark concern among reformers. “It aimed to clean up recent sweeping reforms that exempted most urban infill developments from review,” per the column. “But a strange provision buried in SB 158’s dense, complex text did the opposite.” It applied CEQA review to projects meeting a convoluted formula that applied to one apartment building in Santa Barbara — home to incoming Senate Leader Monique Limón. It has triggered a lawsuit from the developer.
We fear that elevating Limón to the top Senate spot bodes ill for California’s ongoing efforts to roll back decades of housing regulation. Her office told Hoeven that she supports “smart reforms to CEQA,” but the Santa Barbara legislator is well known for her environmental activism — and environmentalists have been among the biggest supporters of Not In My Back Yard (NIMBY) obstruction.
With the state’s most-prominent housing-reform activist, Sen. Scott Wiener, D-San Francisco, likely heading on to Congress to replace the retiring Nancy Pelosi, we fear the Legislature might be shifting back to its bad-old NIMBY ways. That would be a shame, given that California needs to step up its CEQA reforms, not backtrack.
