SACRAMENTO Housing advocates compare the effort to add carveouts California’s premier environmental law with a game of whack a mole: Legislators simply keep adding exemptions to save projects and avoid endless delays.
California legislators have created a variety of amendments to minimize the effects of state-required environmental assessments on housing production and other construction. These exceptions were added to prevent projects from becoming embroiled in long-running legal battles.
The number of exceptions that are added to the California Environmental Quality Act, also known as CEQA, has been growing.
How do you build bike or bus lanes. This is exempt. Do you want to see denser housing built in your neighbourhood? This is exempt. How to build a stadium that will be used by a major sports team. This is often exempt. Are you trying to build student housing This could also be exempted in the near future.
After a state Supreme Court decision that upheld a decision by the California Supreme Court to stop enrollment at UC Berkeley, anger over the sprawling nature CEQA litigation reached fever pitches last week. This was in response to neighbors’ accusations that the prestigious school didn’t conduct an environmental review.
State Senator Scott Wiener, a San Francisco Democrat, has introduced a bill to speed up housing production. SB886This would allow the UC, CSU, and community college systems to skip lengthy review processes to build housing for students or faculty.
The UC Berkeley case has sparked a larger debate about whether California should reform its environmental law. A major overhaul will likely face strong opposition from labor unions, as well as some environmentalists.
Peoples Park is pictured in the background with UC Berkeleys campus on February 9, 2021 in Berkeley, Calif.
Noah Berger/Special To The ChronicleThe Bay Area Council, an advocacy group for economic development in the region, called on Monday for legislators to correct this law. The council asked legislators to rewrite CEQA to ensure that urban infill projects don’t have to go through such a lengthy and costly review process.
Jim Wunderman of the Bay Area Council said that this latest example in Berkeley is borderline insane. It is no longer protecting the environment; it is protecting special interests. It has become a real rouse.
The landmark environmental law, known as seek-wuh in the past, was signed by then-Gov in 1970. Ronald Reagan. Before approving a building project, it requires that local governments and public agencies study the environmental impact. However, the law’s scope has expanded over the decades, often due to court rulings that require public agencies and local governments to consider the public health consequences of growth, such noise and traffic.
CEQA has become a tool to file lawsuits against projects that are not related to the environment, according to many housing advocates. They claim that neighbors are using the law to stop housing.
Bill Fulton, former Ventura mayor and director of the Kinder Institute for Urban Research, stated that legislators have pursued carveouts as a realistic, short-term solution to making changes. However, he stated that the state is creating an exclusionary Swiss cheese CEQA, which treats too many people differently, and the approach of adding exclusions isn’t sustainable.
Fulton stated that there was a whack a mole aspect to the last few years. The Legislature must decide the goal of CEQA.
Fulton said that the law’s biggest flaw is that it doesn’t give infill development in urban centers the same scrutiny as projects located in rural areas near wildlife habitats. Fulton claimed that this approach fails to recognize the benefits of people commuting from outlying areas to commute to work and live closer to their homes.
Wiener, the senator who introduced the bill to exempt campus housing from tax, stated that CEQA needs structural reform but acknowledged it could prove difficult. He stated that the alternative to changing law is more sprawl and people driving farther distances in their cars.
Wiener stated last month that CEQA is too often used to achieve goals that have no impact on the environment.
Wiener has been a signatory to a variety of CEQA exemptions bills in recent years.
2017’s SB35 was passed. This allows developers to skip the environmental analysis and streamline permitting.
SB288This law, which was passed in 2020, allows public transportation agencies to temporarily bypass the need for environmental reviews and speed up environmentally-friendly projects like light-rail service and bus routes. Wiener is currently introducing legislation to expand the exemption.
SB10The 2021 Act allows cities to skip the Environmental Review process to upzone parcels for higher density. This allows small apartment buildings of up to 10 units in urban areas and close to transit.
There is also a growing bipartisan push to reform CEQA, which has both the support of progressive and conservative lawmakers. James Gallagher (Royal GOP Assembly Leader), Yuba City, in Sutter County, said that legislators have the ability to make more changes if they wish.
Housing is a critical need in the state. Gallagher stated that housing is not only needed on university campuses. The problem isn’t the court, but the law.
Housing advocates claimed that while the carveouts have been a boon for speeding up construction and saving vital projects, they want more. But they are concerned that the strong coalition of labor unions as well as environmentalists against a CEQA overhaul could stop a major overhaul.
It is becoming more popular and we are still far from it being feasible, stated Laura Foote, executive director at YIMBY Advocacy (the pro-housing advocacy organization).
Foote stated that while the practice of adding carveouts has had benefits, it leaves us vulnerable to a system in which our land-use decisions are heavily influenced by anti growth NIMBYs who have a lot of wealth to pay lawsuits against public transit projects and infill housing. This could even prevent universities from increasing their student population.
There are signs that CEQAs defenders are starting to open up to the discussion.
The State Building & Construction Trades Council of California is a powerful coalition of unions that recently supported SB886, Wieners bill to exempt student accommodation from CEQA. The bill would require schools to employ skilled construction workers who are paid the prevailing wage, effectively ensuring that they are managed by unionized laborers.
Erin Lehane is the legislative director of the trades council. She said that while there were some disagreements between labor leaders and Wiener over past attempts to limit the law’s scope, they are now in a good place to repair relations.
Lehane was sceptical about whether the building unions would support a larger effort to reform CEQA. This is vital for protecting low-income and disadvantaged people from harmful development. She claimed that the law has been used as a scapegoat for the crisis of housing, when there are many other factors.
She said that the building trades have been strong supporters of CEQA and are now defenders of CEQA. California still finds the law very valuable. These conversations must be had.
Dustin Gardiner, a San Francisco Chronicle staff reporter, is Email: [email protected] Twitter: @dustingardiner
