A bipartisan group of California lawmakers announced over 20 new bills Thursday to make building homes easier — and eventually more affordable.
Several minimize requirements that lawmakers say prevent builders from taking on and completing projects.
East Bay Democratic Senator Tim Grayson is a licensed contractor. He said at a press conference at the state Capitol Thursday morning those requirements contribute to California’s low inventory and high costs.
“Families in California are being ripped apart,” he said. “Ripped apart because children who are now young adults cannot afford to live in the very state that they were raised in.”
A recent report commissioned by the California Legislature said the state is short 2.5 million homes and nearly 200,000 Californians are unhoused as a result.
California Building Industry Association President and CEO Dan Dunmoyer said he supports the bill package. He added that both delays and state required fees -– which these bills would also cut back -– contribute to high housing costs in California.
“You’re paying interest on all that and you're passing it on to the consumer when he or she buys a home,” Dunmoyer said.
The bills would standardize more regulations like permitting processes and require less from builders such as impact studies.
Several also make changes to the California Environmental Quality Act, or CEQA, which requires the state to consider the environmental impact of a project.
Oakland Democratic Assembly member Buffy Wicks said CEQA often impedes new affordable housing.
“Just as it's been wielded to protect us from harmful projects, we know it has been weaponized countless times by opponents of housing projects to delay those projects, to drive up the costs of those projects that our working families pay for in the end, and often to straight up kill housing production,” she said.
Susan Jordan is the founder and executive director of the California Coastal Protection Network, an environmental advocacy group. She said she is concerned about AB 357, a bill in the package, authored by Chula Vista Democrat David Alvarez, that would exempt new student housing from review by the Coastal Commission.
“When you have no environmental review of any development that happens in the coastal zone, which is — as you know — a highly constrained environment, you worry about what negative impacts could happen,” she said.
When asked what is different about these bills compared to the high volume of housing-related laws passed over the last year, Assembly member Wicks said these are stronger and build on previous work and lessons learned.
“We are 50, 60, 70 years in the making of this crisis and we’re, I don’t know, six, seven years towards the solution of it,” she said. “Often, you’ll see a lot of the streamlining bills end up being a sort of Christmas tree with all different pieces put on it and then it sort of drowns under its own weight…From my perspective, the bill that I put forth is pretty clean.”
Wicks also said she is interested in fast-tracking the bills.