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Culture War Roundup for the week of April 3, 2023

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It's Morning in California. Rather, it's Morning in the legislative season, a time when big ideas seem possible, before they disappear into a swamp of obscure pitfalls and shenaniganry. Here's my understanding of the current roster of big housing bills this year, and the threats and potential involved. See also Alfred Twu's very detailed writeup (PDF).

(Part of an ongoing series on housing, mostly in California, also at theschism.)

Some common themes:

  • CEQA, the California version of NEPA, is a problem, and though it's right up there with Prop 13 as a Third Rail in California politics, many of the housing bills this year center around exempting projects from CEQA, especially after a particularly egregious use to block student housing because the students themselves would constitute an environmental impact. (I'm reminded of SourceWatch's very cursed Precautionary Principle chart.)
  • Last year's AB 2011 was a particularly big deal, not because of its contents, but because Assemblymember Wicks (previously seen here) managed to get the carpenters' union on board. The Building Trades have been adamant in their demands (basically, require that workers on streamlined projects attended a particular union training program), which the YIMBYs consider a dealbreaker. The compromise in AB 2011 was to provide various benefits to any worker on those projects, and to give preferences to graduates of union apprenticeship programs. There's a huge difference in California politics between "the unions oppose" and "the unions are divided". This mainly applies to SB 423, but the model will likely be tried in plenty of other bills.

The major bills:

  • AB 68 (CA YIMBY), the Housing and Climate Solutions Act. (Not to be confused with 2019's AB 68, part of the push to legalize ADUs). This will likely be a two-year bill, but it's a mass upzoning in the vein of SB 827 and SB 50. Those bills failed, so the YIMBYs are taking a different tack: this is a collaboration between California YIMBY and the Nature Conservancy, as it would not only make it easier to build in cities, it would make it harder to build in the wilderness, under the Gain/Maintain/Sustain rubric outlined here. Details are still in flux, but Livable California is furious. Much of how this goes will depend on how labor gets on board.
  • SB 423 (CA YIMBY), an extension of 2017's SB 35 (previously seen here). The original SB 35 streamlined approvals (including CEQA exemptions) for general plan-compliant projects in cities behind on their housing goals. It was a compromise, which got the Building Trades on board: all-subsidized projects could pay prevailing wage, but market-rate projects had to use "Skilled and Trained" labor, which is extremely scarce. As a result, the only SB 35 projects completed as of this point are subsidized. SB 423 would apply AB 2011-style labor standards to all projects and indefinitely extend the streamlining. The intra-labor fight has been intense. The carpenters are supporting in droves; the remaining trades are stopping just shy of calling them scabs.
  • SB 4, a revival of 2020's SB 899, which would allow churches and nonprofit schools to build housing on their land. This is enormously popular, and was killed for unclear reasons last time. There's been some remarkable cross-pollination with SB 423 at the Capitol, with religious leaders supporting SB 423 and the carpenters supporting SB 4.
  • AB 309 (CA YIMBY), a revival of AB 2053, which would take the first steps in establishing a statewide social housing agency.
  • AB 1630 would exempt student housing within a thousand feet of a school from CEQA, as well as from a variety of building standards such as floor-area ratios, parking minimums, density limits, and height limits under forty feet. This is a direct response to the Berkeley ruling earlier this year.

These bills will of course change going forward, and some will certainly fail to advance, but this is the state of things at the top of the year.

a particularly egregious use to block student housing because the students themselves would constitute an environmental impact

Yeah, humans tend have an impact on environments they live in. Seriously, how did we get a system that is so self defeating? It's insane that Califorians can't build houses.

Seriously, how did we get a system that is so self defeating?

I'd argue the problem stems from having tons and tons of empty land.

Other countries (specifically Asian ones) simply can't afford inefficiency or the death cult of "environmentalism, therefore do nothing ever" in this area; North America is unique in having the vast majority of its land unsettled so the moralization to preserve its "character" is appealing (to the corrupt citizens and politicians that are getting rich off the inherent rent-seeking this enables).

Most of the places that are growing these days are in deserts or upon flat land as far as the eye can see partially for this reason (US Southwest and to a degree the Midwest up through Idaho, Alberta, Saskatchewan)- can't spoil a view that really wasn't much to begin with (realistically, it's just another farm field), the hard requirement for life support to survive outside 6 months of the year (extreme heat for Southwest, extreme cold for Canada) is complementary to building for cars (obligatory "future car sanctuary states"), while most of the places that are locked in the hardest are the places that look the nicest.

Also, local government and people within that local area actually having actual power.

The dirty secret is one of the ways France, Spain, Germany, etc. can cheaply build trains, metros, and even housing at times is simple - the federal government has immense powers to step in and say, "sorry, we're doing this, giving you market value for your land, and you have no recourse in the law at all to stop us."

There's other things, but this is something people on both sides overlook.

The dirty secret is one of the ways France, Spain, Germany, etc. can cheaply build trains, metros, and even housing at times is simple - the federal government has immense powers to step in and say, "sorry, we're doing this, giving you market value for your land, and you have no recourse in the law at all to stop us."

"Moses tore down America's great old cities, Jacobs ensured you could never build great new ones."

I want to emphasize that this is indeed how things used to work in the United States, most notably in postwar New York City, where Robert Moses legendarily used eminent domain to raze neighborhoods to build his projects. (If you have plenty of time, the Henry George Program had an excellent discussion about Moses.) The environmental movement of the sixties and seventies was in large part a backlash to Moses; the edifice of law and regulation they erected made it harder to build bad things by making it harder to build anything.

The tradition that separates us from better-functioning countries dates back seventy years at most.

You see this in our transit projects, where things simply get bogged down because it's much easier to say no or be cautious or add requirements than it is to say yes. You see this in our environmental laws like CEQA and NEPA (the federal version of CEQA), where they're used to delay obviously environmentally-friendly projects (congestion pricing, solar panels, offshore wind) in favor of an environmentally-unfriendly status quo. You see it in the way that these processes provide a foothold, so, for example, labor unions fight against CEQA reform because their process involves threatening obstruction to get labor benefits. And you see it in the infuriating "precautionary principle" which acts as a fully-general excuse for inaction, because you're comparing the worst case of "Life Continues" if you don't do something and "Extreme Catastrophe" if you do.