This week, Gov. Gavin Newsom hit one of the third railroad tracks in California politics. He hopes the results will be shocked in the state's housing construction industry.
Since the law was signed in 1970, Newsom Strong has armed the state legislature, leading experts to consider it the most significant reform of the California Environmental Quality Act or CEQA.
These changes abandon CEQA, with nearly all proposed low-rise or medium-term developments being multi-family housing in urban communities. No more thousands of pages of soil research, buildings may bring shadows. Angry neighbors no longer have the risk of CEQA lawsuits.
The governor signed legislation Monday night, saying eliminating these rules shows that no matter how challenging the politics is, the state will remove the barriers to construction over decades that ultimately stifle housing construction and suffocate the ability of Californians to live.
“The world we invented is always competing with us,” Newsom said. “We have to perform.”
Californians don’t have to wait for the impact of reform. They are effective in the Governor's pen.
At least in the short term, the results may have a smaller direct impact on architecture and more developments on the way California urban development is developed. Many internal and external barriers controlled by local and state governments – interest rates, labor availability, zoning, material prices and tariffs – will still determine whether housing has been built. What has changed is that the key points of external leverage in external groups have been continuously ill for the disease.
In the words of one critic, “the law that swallows California” may be difficult to understand Ceqa’s changes.
On the basis of this, CEQA says that project supporters must disclose and reduce their environmental impacts where possible before they can be approved. However, with full research by developers and local governments, the process of CEQA starting can take years, with opponents suing them because of the inadequacy and the judges getting everyone back on.
Time is money, and project opponents quickly realize that they can take advantage of this uncertainty. Sometimes, if their complaints turn a deaf ear at City Hall, the threat Seka Challenge is the only way to hear yourself and avoid harmful results. But in other cases, the law becomes a powerful Cudgel, designed to influence the attention that is most tangential to the environment.
An example is the Legion. The owner of the San Jose gas station has sued a nearby competitor gas station that wants to add some pumps. The biological advocate sued the proposed family planning clinic in South San Francisco. Berkeley homeowners sued the University of California’s program to increase enrollment at the state’s flagship colleges and the traffic and noise that could result.
Over time, CEQA negotiations embedded in California’s development system, known and used by all major players. Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass has recalled that in the 1990s, she was a community organizer in South Los Angeles, using CEQA to try to stop liquor stores from opening. The company owned by billionaire developer Rick Caruso, who is a bass rival in the recent mayoral election, usually a CEQA critic, this year CEQA lawsuit filed Challenges a major reconstruction of the TV studio near Caruso Mall.
For housing, the main interest group investing in CEQA at the state level is the labor organization representing construction workers. Their leaders believe that if lawmakers give CEQA relief to developers, which raises their bottom line, workers should share their loot with better salaries and benefits.
In 2016, such union opposition was enough to prevent the then-government proposal. Jerry Brown has limited CEQA's challenges to urban housing development and cannot even get a vote in the Legislative Council. A year later, Brown's version of the bill passed, but it was simply because developers who wanted to take advantage had to pay union-level wages to workers.
Since then, almost every year, lawmakers have participated in this dance with labor groups. In 2022, the Carpenters Conference in California violated the National Construction and Construction Trade Commission and supported labor standards with fewer labor standards, which lawmakers included in multiple bills.
But the construction of housing was not followed. The number of projects issued with licenses is millions less than the projects Newsom promised to build on the 2017 campaign. Californians continue to pay record prices for their own placement, while those fleeing the state often use the cost of living as a reason. Newsom and lawmakers believe they need to do more.
“We don’t want to sit here and hit our heads against a political wall and never show up again,” the parliamentary chips said at the signing ceremony on Monday.
Wicks wrote this year’s legislation that exempts CEQA’s urban housing development rules without any labor requirements and works through normal processes. In May, Newsom grabbed Wicks' bill and other CEQA reform legislation and said it hoped they would pass part of the budget. Doing so will bring the bill into law in the event of normal annoyances occurring at the committee hearing.
Newsom doubled as budget negotiations intensified. He insisted on a rare move to insist on bringing the country's recognition of the entire spending plan this year with the adoption of CEQA reform. This means that lawmakers who would otherwise object can vote only if they are willing torpedo budgets.
What emerged is a CEQA waiver for homebuilders in urban multifamily homes. The union-level wages of construction workers are only required for high-rise buildings or low-income buildings, both of which are often due to higher buildings and other state and local rules to achieve affordable construction.
CEQA will not affect single-family residential buildings.
How important this is to the immediate realm of building is not yet known. Regarding the impact of CEQA, studies were mixed together. A person from the University of California, Berkeley law professor found that less than 3% of housing projects in many major cities across the state faced any CEQA lawsuits in three years. Another discovery has challenged thousands of housing units in just one year. Nevertheless, a growing number of reform advocates believe that the threat of CEQA lawsuits to California’s development and the cold effect of the law dominant in the debate.
“This shows that the earthquake shift in California’s democratic politics has changed from Simpisism to abundance,” said Mott Smith, chairman of the board of the Builders Committee, a real estate trade group that advocates urban housing. “You can touch this fabulous third railway and live and see another day.”
Those who live across the street from the proposed five-story apartment building and oppose housing will have to find a 55-year-old environmental law to stop it.
