Mary Lynn Coffee Comments on Passage of Housing Bills in California
Mary Lynn Coffee was quoted in the Law360 story “Newsom Signs CEQA Reform, Aiming To Ease Housing Crisis” (subscription required). The article provides an overview of bills recently signed into law changing CEQA — the state’s landmark environmental law — to eliminate roadblocks to new housing development, but Mary Lynn noted other bills are wending their way through the legislature that will delay and make environmental approval of housing projects more difficult.
Governor Newsom signed a package of budget trailer bills into law — Assembly Bill 130 and Senate Bill 131 — that revise the 55-year-old California Environmental Quality Act by carving out exemptions for specific housing developments so they can be reviewed under a streamlined process, so long as they are infill development, consistent with current general plan and zoning designations, and meet other requirements. For example, A.B. 130 shields infill housing developments that meet local zoning, density and objective planning standards from the law, provided, among other requirements, that they are surrounded by existing development on at least 3 times and are not located on environmentally sensitive or hazardous sites. Its goal is to speed up building in urban infill areas designated for development, which in turn should lower home prices without raising environmental and climate concerns, since growth on undeveloped parcels (regardless of zoning) is not streamlined in any way.
The exemption for infill projects has received positive notice from the Governor, legislators and lawyers, but Law360 reported that some experts have posited while the CEQA changes may facilitate infill development, other pending legislation will make new housing development much more difficult. Pending bills that will inhibit development include SB 601, which will add a new layer of state regulation to waters of the state in addition to existing regulation by U.S. EPA, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, the California Department of Fish and Wildlife and the State and Regional Water Boards. Similarly, AB 1319 would add an additional layer of state regulation to undeveloped sites for approximately 80 species already protected by the Federal Endangered Species Act and/or the California Endangered Species Act.
Commenting for the story, Mary Lynn said, “Allowing that infill development to move forward, particularly without multiple layers of CEQA review, is really a very critical step, and one that I do think will help encourage and increase the amount of infill we’re building. But it’s not going to solve our housing crisis.”
She continued to say if bills like SB 601 and AB 1319 are signed into law, the additional regulation resulting from those laws will further depress housing development, even in areas that are highly urban or urban-adjacent, but do not meet the very strict definition of ‘infill’ in the CEQA reform bills. On balance, particularly if SB 601 and AB 1319 become law as currently written, the result is likely perpetuation of California’s housing crisis, notwithstanding the important reforms in AB 130 and SB 131.
