Posted on 04/03/2005 3:38:22 PM PDT by NormsRevenge
SACRAMENTO (AP) - California's housing shortage, which has pushed median home prices above $470,000, is spurring a variety of moves to change the state's 35-year-old environmental protection law, long considered the nation's toughest.
Attempts by the state's home building industry to change the 1970 law, signed by former Gov. Ronald Reagan, are nothing new, but this year Republican Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and a growing list of Democrats are joining in. Key lawmakers are pushing bills to make it easier for developers to maneuver around the law, especially to build housing in downtowns and older urban neighborhoods.
The growing momentum to change the California Environmental Quality Act sets up a clash between business and environmental interests in a state with some of the nation's highest priced homes and lowest rates of homeownership. A majority of Californians can no longer afford to buy homes, prompting some lawmakers to lament their generation may be the state's first unable to provide a better life for its children.
Although environmental groups have given Schwarzenegger's early moves high marks, the governor is expected to unveil proposals to ease current CEQA rules and make it harder to use the law to stop residential construction projects. A draft version of the bill would limit the ability of opponents to file some lawsuits and would streamline the regulatory process for developers in areas already planned and zoned for housing.
Earlier this year Schwarzenegger called home ownership "part of the American Dream" and promised to eliminate "regulatory and legal hurdles that delay construction and increase the costs."
His proposal also expands on recommendations made by the California Performance Review study Schwarzenegger started last year. The review's report said CEQA creates "too many opportunities for blocking projects for non-environmental considerations" and that neighborhood opposition groups especially use it to block multifamily apartment projects.
Builders and their allies provided key input to the CPR panel and also to a 41-member Resources Agency advisory group regarding the draft legislation.
Although many of the proposals are aimed at limiting the sprawl of housing to empty farmland, environmental groups fear the proposals will change the law so much that it will actually foster more sprawl instead of more housing in urban areas. On the defensive, they're highlighting the act's success stories and preparing for battle in the Legislature.
"If builders get their way, ordinary Californians are going to be sitting in traffic even longer and living further out and having fewer options," said Karen Douglas, attorney for the Planning and Conservation League, a lobbying coalition of environmental groups. Because the law requires detailed studies of a development's potential effects on its surroundings, it "has made the state better."
Developer groups don't argue the law's benefits. Instead, they say it's been twisted by NIMBY - "not in my back yard" - groups to shrink development proposals by forcing extra environmental studies. Such delays - a new environmental impact report can cost up to $200,000 and take 18 months - sometimes make developers just walk away.
A handful of law firms have used it to stall many of the 40 Wal-Mart Supercenters planned in California. Developers building housing subdivisions on empty land also find themselves wrangling with lawsuits alleging insufficient environmental studies.
Some of the tactics led Oakland Mayor Jerry Brown, a Democrat who was staunch defender of the law when he was governor of California from 1975 to 1983, to push for a new law to restrict opponents' ability to use it to block downtown Oakland housing projects.
The problem isn't the law but those who abuse it, said Tim Coyle, the top lobbyist for the California Building Industry Association.
Coyle said legislators, many of them former city council members, complain to him that the law "keeps getting in the way of urban revitalization projects and neighborhood restoration projects."
Last year, California developers built 211,000 new homes and apartments, and expect to reach a similar target this year. But that's still 80,000 short of demand for a two-year span, they say. As prices of existing homes reached a median price last month of $471,620 - where half cost more and half cost less - fewer than one in four households could afford one, reports the California Association of Realtors.
"We're killing the most fundamental goal or objective of every middle-class Californian - owning a home," said Senate President Pro Tem Don Perata, D-Oakland.
Perata wants more central city and downtown housing projects declared off limits to CEQA challenges and has introduced a bill greatly expanding the acreage and number of homes that qualify. The bill is part of a package of anti-sprawl legislation that Perata said will be a top Senate priority this year.
Other lawmakers have followed suit. Bills awaiting their first hearings would allow builders to use "short form" environmental reports in areas already planned and zoned for homes, make those who file CEQA lawsuits disclose their backers and their economic or other interest in the project.
Another would exempt some downtown residential projects from traffic impact studies.
"There are plenty of situations, in Sacramento and elsewhere in the state, where smart growth, infill housing developments, which are designed to give people an option to live close to work and where they shop, are faced with significant traffic mitigation requirements," said its author, Assemblyman Dave Jones, D-Sacramento.
In Sacramento, opponents recently used the act to delay a 119-apartment project just blocks from a downtown light rail line and within walking distance of thousands of jobs.
Despite some of the complaints, the law's defenders said its benefits are too great to ignore.
It's not perfect, because any law that opens the way for lawsuit can be abused, said Sean Hecht, executive director of the Environmental Law Center at the University of California at Los Angeles School of Law.
"The fact that some people might frivolously file employment discrimination lawsuits when there's been no discrimination doesn't mean we throw out employment law. I see CEQA the same," he said. "Like any good law, it's done some really important things for our state."
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Read the bills, SB948, SB832, SB785, SB427, AB648 and AB1387 at http://www.legislature.ca.gov
Planning and Conservation League: http://www.pcl.org
California Building Industry Association: http://cbia.org
smc.eduWhat Eli wants for himself:Eli Broad: "Now, Los Angeles will have at its center a grand boulevard and urban park, providing millions of people each year the opportunity to walk, shop and play while enjoying downtown at its best."
Eli Broad
Born: New York, 1933
Position: Chairman, AIG Retirement ServicesQuote: "In general, I never understood how this region could not have a vital center or downtown like other metro areas did. I believe we have to have far more people living in the center of the city. People are going to find they want to live there because there will be things to do."
. . . SunAmerica Inc. Chairman Eli Broad, stressed that a push for efficient land use, with higher housing density and mixed urban zoning, requires focused, but still absent, public policy.
California Coastal Commission November 1999 Agendac. Application No. 4-99-185 (Broad, Malibu) Application of Eli Broad, Trustee of the Broad Revocable Trust, to demolish two single-family homes, construct 4,690 sq. ft. single-family home, attached garage, detached 510 sq. ft. garage with upstairs 440 sq. ft. guesthouse, & new septic system, offer to dedicate lateral public access easement over southern beachfront part of site and construct 6-ft-wide public sidewalk, at 21958 and 21962 Pacific Coast Highway, Malibu, Los Angeles County. (SMH-V) [APPROVED WITH CONDITIONS]
BTT!!!!!
The method can make new rural-suburban lots available for redevelopment using environmental laws in much the same manner as applied to owners of target tracts of acreage properties. As you recall, Measure J had other effects besides chewing up the forest in big chunks. Prior to the election, the people who held small suburban lots in small rural towns owned something that could support a residential structure, worth about the same as any other small urban lot. After the passage of Measure J, a once buildable 3/4-acre lot in town worth $50,000 (in current dollars), a fell to about one-fifth its prior value. Their land was “worth-less.”
We’ll call this one, “The Squeeze”:
Now that those “worth-less” lots are worth lots, why didn’t the bag-holders keep them?
One has to wonder if there were politicians out there, clever enough to realize that they could serve the developers, the anti-development activists, and the environmentalists, all in one policy swoop. It all seemed so plausible, repetitive, and ubiquitous.
Snip
Are politicians and planning bureaucrats really smart enough to set up a system like this, or was this just a misattribution of random events and human nature suffering from the creative scrutiny of some paranoid author? Every lawyer and planner interviewed during the research for this book who was asked that question, stated flatly that the politicians aren’t that smart and are ideologically opposed to such things. The subject of one interview how-ever, was (unknown to me at the time) one of the very people who had made oodles of money in the land conversion business. His comment was that there are people who are that smart, and that certain authors should be “careful.”
The purpose of this book is not to bust people but to point out the systemic flaws that develop when government does not respect private property rights as unalienable. That flaw is the lack of civic discipline that “limited govern-ment” under the Constitution was intended to provide; i.e., the power to feed one's urges with other people's money. It is the power to take control of property without compensation. It is the essence of democratic government.
>>As you know well ccg, both political parties are playing the game.
Yep--just follow the money. It's not too hard to see.
Yes, of course... God forbid that anyone should be allowed to venture forth from the puss of crime ridden sespools we call CA cities and flee unto the mountains of the Sierra-Nevada CONcravency to both own and CONTROL a small parcel of land with which to raise their offspring in the image of God and in favor with God and man!!!
It's NOT "Sustainable Development," it's suffocatable development outside the rotten city limits they're after!!!
Once again... Rural cleansing!!! But it's easy to see how easy it is for them to fool people... Look at all the FReepers that exhibit complete resignation to this Faciastic/Socialistic scheme!!! It's just breathtaking!!!
That response is why I cringe when those on our side label the masterminds behind the dark side as dumb. They are that smart and as dangerous as you were warned.
How absolutely right you are, oh Great Grampa!!!
Most Americans, conservative or moderate have zero clues to what is going on, why and very important-who is funding the action.
"In possession of what can only be called an evil genius, the dark side has patiently set up the demise of a constitutional republic, without firing a weapon."
The Eugenics/Euthanasia is good for Americans has been pushed by the limo drive elite of the dark side for about 7 decades. George $oro$ has invested over $45 million to make Americans place Eugenics/Euthanasia as another core building block like abortion for the dark side.
what planet are you from?...there are a lot of nice places to live besides the land just east of san diego.
affordable housing does not require a condo developers free-for-all. affordable housing involves rental reform, community activism, and other political actions that do not impede the work of environmentalists.
You know .. you people immediately expose who you are when you start your conversations by insulting people.
I've lived in San Diego for over 20 years. I've seen housing and rental rates go through the roof - because several building projects have been squashed by environmental groups who won't allow certain sections of "scrub brush" land to be reconstituted so humans can live there. The housing projects bring in trees and plants and encourage new businesses to expand.
This area has grown larger the last few years because of the increase in military activity. We need those lands in order to have cheaper housing. So .. while the environmental people are whining continually about gas emissions - they force people to live farther away from their jobs - causing them to travel more .. somehow that logic escapes me.
You signed up today. Hit and run poster?
I could refute your post with logic, but it's not worth it if you're only a hit and run.
i am awaiting the logical response.
The short answer is that it is a supply and demand problem. Housing is a commodity like any other, and no amount of trying to mandate "affordable housing" or whatever is going to solve the root problem. Rent reform (you did not define any details or give an insight into how it would work) can't help if there aren't enough housing units to begin with.
In Davis, there was a no growth policy. At the same time, the number of enrollments at the university was growing. Apartment vacancy was at less than 1%, and rents were skyrocketing. Homeowners in Davis started building additions to their homes, so they were living on properties with no yards and all house, so that they could rent to students. The Davis city council (the great thinkers that they are < /src >) did not like that, so decided to legislate against it. I'm not sure if rent control was considered, but would it have helped get students into apartments (which were nonexistant)? What finally happened (after a few years of no vacancies) is that the Davis city council allowed a few more apartment buildings to be constructed, the vacancy rate went from less than 1% to over 5 or 10%, and apartment building owners started offering incentives to move into their buildings. Alleviating the housing shortage was the only workable solution.
It is common leftist belief that a supply problem can be fixed by legislation rather than by fixing the actual supply problem. If legislation could fix shortages, the USSR would have been the land of milk and honey.
"Young couples can't afford $625,000.00 for a home, and that is what mine just appraised for."
Enjoy it while you can. The eventual rise in interest rates will likely bring about a much overdue correction in housing prices.
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