CEQA Suits Block Housing, Transit

Housing has always been expensive in California. It is understandable since the state is a great place to live. Housing is in high demand. 

Buying a house has been out of the reach for many families for a long time.  California has the second lowest ownership rate in the country.  In the greater Southern California region, which includes Los Angeles, Orange, Riverside, San Bernardino and Ventura counties, approximately 48 percent of the housing stock comprises rental units according to the U.S. Census Bureau.

However, today, even the rental market is also becoming unaffordable.  A recent study by the California Housing Partners Corporation and Harvard University concluded, “The rental market in Southern California is the least-affordable it has ever been.”  One in five Southern California renters spends more than half their monthly incomes on rent.

The major cause of the housing crisis is lack of supply.  With more people and more demand economics tells us the market should increase the supply of housing.  But that is happening very slowly. 

A report by the nonpartisan California Legislative Analyst’s Office says the cause of California’s high prices is the California’s Environmental Quality Act (CEQA). 

Holland & Knight, a California law firm, recently released their study of over 600 CEQA lawsuits from 2010 to 2012.  What they found is that the most frequently targeted projects for CEQA litigation are residential projects (21 percent).  Forty-five percent of the projects challenged were multi-family (apartments and condominiums) and many of these projects included affordable housing.

Of course, just because a residential project is multi-family doesn’t mean it will not have environmental impacts. Projects proposed for wetlands or in sensitive natural areas should be scrutinized for environmental impacts.  Proposed projects located in undisturbed greenfields or where there is lack of infrastructure such as water, power, roads and public transit, should receive detailed environmental reviews. 

But the report also found that 80 percent of the projects sued under CEQA - not just housing but also parks, schools, commercial, retail and industrial projects - were in-fill projects.  They were proposed to be built in areas that had infrastructure in place and were already urban places.

Half of the CEQA lawsuits were filed against public projects.  The most frequent were against public transit projects.   A CEQA lawsuit delayed San Francisco’s plan to expand bicycle lanes for five years increasing the cost by millions of dollars of taxpayer money.  Student housing near USC, that was specifically designed to reduce impacts on adjacent neighborhoods, was tied up in the courts for years by a CEQA challenge.

These findings run counter to our perception of CEQA.  It is easy to see through the thinly veiled “environmental protection” arguments of so many CEQA cases and recognize them for what they are – efforts by business competitors, NIMBY’s, labor unions, and people just fearful of change – to use the law to thwart change or damage opponents. CEQA was never intended for such uses It is unfortunately easy to see how much damage is being caused in California under the banner of environmental protection.