By Ray Pearl, Executive Director, California Housing Consortium
As the legislative session moves into spring, one issue seems to have caught everyone’s attention: The state Supreme Court’s decision this month to freeze enrollment at UC Berkeley after a neighborhood group’s CEQA lawsuit brought new housing development (and the admission of 3,000 incoming undergraduates) to a temporary standstill.
This outcome outraged just about everyone—and sparked a great awakening about the sprawling nature of CEQA litigation. The Mayor of Berkeley condemned his city’s NIMBYs and filed an amicus brief against them; Governor Newsom said an enrollment cap “is against everything we stand for.” The New York Times called neighbors’ abuse of the law “noxious.” And it didn’t take long for the Legislature to jump into action: The Assembly and Senate unanimously passed a bill this week removing public college enrollment as a separate consideration under CEQA. The Governor signed it the same day, saying the legislation “sends a clear signal that California won’t let lawsuits get in the way” of educating college kids.
For affordable housing advocates, who have spent years fighting these same lawsuits in communities all over California—without the same fanfare—only to see projects tied up in court as the clock runs out on funding sources and tax credits, this all feels very familiar.
It also feels like an opportunity.
The Legislature and Governor showed two things this month: When they care enough, they can act decisively to change the law—even supposedly “third-rail” laws like CEQA—and they can do it quickly and without a single no vote from either party.
Now imagine if they were this focused—and this united—around actually getting new housing built, not just for Berkeley students, but for all of the 1.2 million lower-income Californians who desperately need affordable homes.
There’s no question the issues here—and the solutions—are the same. Eden Housing, one of the members of the California Housing Consortium, is fighting an eerily similar CEQA lawsuit over a 100% affordable housing development in downtown Livermore, just over the hills from Berkeley, that has put the entire 130-unit project on hold—a year after it was unanimously approved by the city council and more than a decade after the site was zoned for housing. A superior court judge has dismissed the lawsuit as “almost utterly without merit,” but that hasn’t stopped neighbors who don’t like the idea of affordable housing from threatening to delay the project indefinitely.
All of this uncertainty has a real cost: Earlier this year Eden was forced to return $68 million in state low-income housing tax credits for the project—and there is now no projected timeline for construction. Eden could be building right now; instead they’re fighting it out in court, without any support or sense of urgency from the Legislature or the Governor, and 130 lower-income families are paying the price.
CEQA is not the only tool used to stop affordable housing, but it’s a big one. There isn’t an affordable housing advocate in the state who doesn’t have a story about an outrageous abuse of this law.
The Legislature showed this month that they have the ability to act decisively when confronted with a major challenge. It’s our job now to remind them they can—and if they really want to solve the housing crisis, they must.
