This California law made housing too expensive. Here is how to change it | Opinion (2025)

For the Democrats of the California Legislature who believe in more urban housing and traditional environmental protections, one bill above all this year will test their true values.

A liberal lawmaker from Oakland is proposing the most sweeping change in history to the California Environmental Quality Act, the landmark law that, for 55 years, has forced any major project to evaluate and address how it will affect air quality, traffic, noise and other environmental concerns.

CEQA is a sacred cow among Sacramento Democrats because it is California’s most important environmental law supported by powerful interests. However, it is increasingly described as an immovable obstacle blocking the construction of needed, high-density housing. When it’s been modified, billionaire sports owners have been the beneficiaries, such as when a bill authored by former Sacramento Mayor Darrell Steinberg later restricted legal challenges seeking to stop the construction of Golden 1 Center in Sacramento.

Assemblymember Buffy Wicks proposes exempting most new housing projects within existing communities from CEQA to avoid slowing construction or killing needed housing projects.

“I think it’s a test case for the environmentalists,” Wicks said in a recent interview with The Bee. “I think it’s a test case for labor. I think it’s a test case for Democrats.”

She’s right. Assembly Bill 609 should pass for one basic reason.

Sometimes the world changes dramatically and a law that is half a century old doesn’t perfectly fit the times. That is precisely the case with CEQA. The result can be more harm than good, particularly as it impedes smart housing developments California desperately needs inside communities rather than sprawling outward. If there is one big barrier Sacramento can eliminate this legislative session to address our years-long housing crisis, AB 609 is it.

The battle lines have yet to materialize on this new legislation, which awaits its first analysis and committee hearing. “We do not have any kind of support or opposition yet from the environmental community,” Wicks said. But we have years of history that explain why changes to CEQA have been incremental or temporary, by emergency order.

CEQA has wrongly been elevated in Sacramento to a nearly untouchable status, a faux Magna Carta of environmentalism protected by a devoted legion of lawmakers, activists and staffers who comprise a Knights of the CEQA Table of sorts. It’s time to break up the gang.

Signed into law by then Gov. Ronald Reagan in 1970, CEQA has prevented countless bad development and industrial problems from happening. It has killed them with due process and transparency, forcing projects to look at a wide range of alternatives, identifying all their impacts to traffic, air and water, and mitigating them in one way or another when possible.

The problem that Wicks is identifying is that this same law equally applies to a desperately needed new apartment complex as it does a new oil drilling complex in town. California’s infamous brand of not-in-my-backyard local politics has weaponized CEQA to kill the new housing that most everyone, in concept, admits we really need.

The result is fewer housing units that cost too much to build. A new study by the RAND Corporation proves the point, again. A typical apartment project costs 2.5 times more in Los Angeles than in Texas, according to the study. The same project costs three times more in San Francisco.

California Democrats, who have run this state unimpeded for two decades, own this problem. AB 609 can help fix it.

“I think it’s time we have this big public conversation,” Wicks said. And she’s starting things off on a decidedly bipartisan note. Republican Assemblymember Heath Flora of Ripon is a co-author, as is Republican Assemblymember Greg Wallis of Rancho Mirage.

“For too long, (CEQA has) been a barrier to everything from building houses and other infrastructure, to managing our forests,” Flora said.

AB 609 doesn’t pave the way for huge mansions in the name of environmentalism. Qualifying land must be surrounded by at least three-quarters of existing construction, it can’t be larger than 20 acres and it must propose at least 10 new units to the acre. This initial definition of an infill project worthy of a CEQA exemption is a good start and deserves the scrutiny it will get.

But Democrats and Republicans alike should not lose track of the bigger picture: Our collective failure to build more housing where it belongs has led to more homelessness, greater emissions, longer commutes and a degrading quality of California life. Nobody who voted for CEQA 55 years ago could have contemplated the challenges we now face today. It’s time for Democrats to stop defending the past and focus squarely on the state’s future.

This story was originally published April 17, 2025 at 5:00 AM.