Scott Wiener on ‘the most consequential housing reform we've seen in modern history'
The California Environmental Quality Act —known informally by its initials 'CEQA'— requires developers to publicly disclose and, if possible, lessen the environmental impacts of a project.
Proponents credit it with protecting the environment and public health. Critics say it has halted many developments with years of litigation and expensive environmental reports, even when they had no effect or even a positive effect on the environment.
A partial roll back of the law, long pushed by State Sen. Scott Wiener (D-San Francisco), passed Monday night after Gavin Newsom in June tied it to the state budget. The governor this week also signed a bill from Assemblywoman Buffy Wicks that exempts most urban housing projects from the law.
Newsom called the bills the 'most consequential housing reform that we've seen in modern history in the state of California.'
Not everyone was thrilled. A coalition of more than 100 environmental organizations released a letter this week calling it 'the worst anti-environmental bill in California in recent memory.'
Within hours, a Southern California land use lawyer said his clients were already scrambling to build. 'There's over 10 projects we're going to push the go button on with this exemption probably Tuesday,' Dave Rand, who represents a number of developers, told my colleagues.
Wiener, who has been pushing for new housing for years, talked with Essential California about what it might mean for the state. This conversation has been edited for length and clarity.
Why is this a big deal?
It's going to make it easier and faster to do the things that we need to do to make life more affordable.
In California we have tied ourselves in knots for decades. There are so many things that we all agree we want and that we want more of, and yet we put rules in place that make it really hard or impossible to achieve those goals.
So are we tossing environmental protections?
CEQA was created in the early '70s as an environmental law.
It does play a role in protecting the environment. We're preserving that role.
But CEQA is also frequently used to delay, obstruct or kill projects for reasons having nothing to do with the environment. CEQA has become a tool for NIMBYs, a tool for businesses that want to undermine their competitors, a tool for the oil industry to stop the clean energy transition.
It's a tool that can be used by anyone who has the resources to hire an attorney.
So anyone who doesn't like a project for any reason can use CEQA to delay or even kill a project for reasons having literally nothing to do with the environment.
Do you have your own personal list of the wackiest CEQA lawsuits?
The oil industry suing [Los Angeles]. … That was a real doozy.
Recently, there was a CEQA lawsuit against a food bank. There was a CEQA lawsuit against a proposed child-care center in Napa. There was a CEQA lawsuit that almost killed off San Francisco's bike plan.
What else do you want people to understand about this?
A lot of times when people think about the housing crisis, they go right to homelessness. It's so much deeper than that. So much of the housing crisis is just about pushing working-class people and middle-class people out of the state.
Any society that makes it hard for a middle class to exist is an unhealthy society.
We are making it harder and harder for the middle class because of the obscene cost of housing.
The cost of housing in California is a result of choices that we made as a state.
We value parking and views more than we value people having homes that they can afford. We value the look and feel of a neighborhood more than we value people having homes they can afford. We know the housing shortage pushes people into poverty.
This sends a very clear message that we are willing to touch sacred cows in order to solve California's problems and reduce the cost of living in California.
Here's more on the CEQA rollback:
Email us at essentialcalifornia@latimes.com, and your response might appear in the newsletter this week.
Today's great photo is from Allen J. Schaben at the Santa Ana Federal Building. In areas of Little Saigon, news of federal immigration raids has hit the community harder than ever before.
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