Stop scapegoating CEQA for California’s affordable housing crisis

Governor Newsom recently signed a slew of bills eliminating the requirement that government agencies disclose the public health and environmental impacts of most infill housing developments in California. Infill is generally defined as development in urban centers, close to mass transit, jobs and infrastructure.

The sponsors of these bills claim that eliminating environmental review will address the current shortage in affordable housing, but lawmakers’ decision to blame environmental regulation for the shortages is misinformed. The California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA), the state’s preeminent environmental law, has already been streamlined in multiple ways to spur housing development, yet still not enough affordable housing is being constructed. Our leaders must focus on other, more effective ways to promote affordable housing.

Environmental regulation is not a significant barrier to housing. For example, in San Francisco, there are now over 58,000 entitled housing units that remain unbuilt. These projects completed the environmental review process but were never constructed. Moreover, housing shortages are a national phenomenon; many states without environmental laws like CEQA are experiencing these same types of housing shortages. In addition, studies show that California has as many as 1.2 million housing units sitting vacant; Los Angeles alone has over 93,000 vacant units.

Despite this evidence, the building industry continues to blame CEQA and avoids seeking real solutions to the housing crisis. A land use case in South Richmond illustrates what special interests have done to scapegoat and weaken this law. Developers there proposed constructing 4,000 housing units on a site along the San Francisco Bay shoreline that was used as a chemical manufacturing site for almost 100 years. This manufacturing activity — first by Stauffer Chemical Company, then by Zeneca, Inc., now part of AstraZeneca — left dangerous toxic chemicals buried on the site. Studies showed that sea-level rise, plus the project, would move the buried toxics to the surface, into the bay and onto neighboring properties.

CEQA allowed community members to raise this critical issue and demand proper environmental review and mitigation. When the community was ignored, litigation followed. As recent studies have shown, CEQA is an essential tool for environmental justice communities like South Richmond to protect the public interest.

The legislation just enacted, however, will shield future housing projects from such inquiries into the public health and environmental impacts of new infill development. One new law, AB 1633, will even allow developers to sue cities that seek to conduct rigorous environmental review of housing projects, an unprecedented weakening of California’s landmark environmental law.

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