Anyone who says the California Legislature isn’t at least trying to deal with the state’s housing crisis in a productive way hasn’t been paying much attention. For the past few years, lawmakers have passed a series of market-oriented measures that make it easier for developers to build new housing projects on a “by right” basis — meaning they automatically have the right to build the projects provided they follow local zoning codes and a few other standards.
In 2021, Gov. Gavin Newsom signed Senate Bills 9 and 10 to allow property owners to build duplexes in single-family neighborhoods and mid-rise projects along transit lines. Last year, he signed Assembly Bill 2011, which lets developers turn malls and parking lots into multi-family housing. One of the earliest pro-housing measures was Senate Bill 35. Passed in 2017, the law streamlined the approval process for projects that met affordable-housing guidelines.
The most-significant housing measure in this year’s Legislature, Senate Bill 423, recently passed the Legislature and landed on the governor’s desk. It extends the due-to-sunset provisions of SB 35 for a decade, but adds additional and praiseworthy elements. It finally applies these streamlining provisions (with some exceptions) to the coastal zone, thereby stripping the slow-growth California Coastal Commission of its ability to halt projects.
That in itself is an amazing feat. “Of course, nobody wants to see natural areas of the coast developed, but the coastal zone covers over 225,000 acres of land that are already developed,” explained city planner Nolan Gray on these pages. “Subjecting anything and everything built in these areas to additional layers of review simply does not make sense.”
Furthermore, SB 423 applies these streamlining standards to market-rate construction and not just affordable-housing projects. California’s housing crisis will be solved by allowing far more construction of privately funded housing developments — and not just more subsidized lower-income projects preferred by planners. We need more housing of all types.
Sen. Scott Wiener, D-San Francisco, has been the moving force behind most of these measures. One late amendment in SB 423 shows that he’s not only pushing these reforms in other people’s communities. As the San Francisco Standard reported, the bill singles out San Francisco for additional state scrutiny in meeting its housing-construction goals. San Francisco permitted only 2,800 new units last year even though it needs at least 10,000 new units annually, per the article.
Meanwhile, a new initiative campaign would eliminate the private use of California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA) lawsuits to challenge housing construction — and cap the amount of developer fees that local governments impose. Strange as it seems, California might be embarking on the right housing path after decades of encumbering the development process with fees, lawsuits and regulations.
Local governments continue to weep and gnash their teeth. Huntington Beach continues to challenge these new rules, although that seems destined for court rebuke. In its opposition to SB 423, the League of California Cities argued SB 423 “would double-down on the recent trend of the state overriding its own mandated local housing plans by forcing cities to approve certain housing projects.”
Well, yes, that’s exactly what the state is doing and it’s about time it did so. We urge the governor to continue this necessary market-based, pro-housing process by signing SB 423.