There are numerous reasons why the Bay Area has a housing crisis. The reason we most often hear about is the influx of new residents to the area. The one we hardly think about, however, can be found in our own collective backyards.
“Not In My Back Yard” is a phrase that’s been used quite often in California over the last 30 years, usually as a precursor to challenge, block, delay or kill construction projects across the state. And NIMBY activists’ bludgeoning tool of choice is the California Environmental Quality Act. Like NIMBY, it’s better known by its acronym: CEQA.
“It (CEQA) has been abused in this state for 30 years by people who use it when it has nothing to do with an environmental reason,” said Carol Galante, faculty director of the Terner Center for Housing Innovation at UC Berkeley, and a former assistant secretary of the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development.
Galante spoke to me by phone as she traveled to Sacramento to provide testimony on the housing crisis to the state Senate Transportation and Housing Committee.
“NIMBY-ism is connected to the fact that for everyone who owns their little piece of the dream, there’s no reason to want development next door to them,” she said.
“CEQA gives them a tool to effectuate their interest,” she said. “It’s a sense of entitlement that comes with an incentive, because it makes their property worth more money.”
That’s downright disgusting. It’s an entitlement fueled more by greed and selfishness than any legitimate environmental claim.
In a study released in August by the San Francisco law firm of Holland & Knight, lawyers researched three years of state Environmental Quality Act challenges and came up with some startling findings.
Among them, the study found that 49 percent of all CEQA filings target taxpayer-funded projects.
The usual targets are transit and renewable-energy projects often approved to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and improve environmental quality. It found that 80 percent of such filings challenged urban in-fill projects. And the most frequently targeted private sector development is housing.
“CEQA has been singled out as one of the key causes of runaway housing prices and as a major reason California has fallen far behind other states in creating, retaining and on-shoring the middle-class manufacturing jobs that have helped create a manufacturing renaissance in other states,” said Jennifer Hernandez, head of the law firm’s West Coast Land Use and Environment Group and lead author of the study.
The study offered possible remedies: requiring anyone filing a new lawsuit under CEQA to state their environmental concerns, eliminating duplicate lawsuits for plans and projects that have already won approval, preserving the right of environmental review and public comment, and scaling back court-ordered invalidation of project approvals that harm health, destroy tribal resources or threaten the environment.
It doesn’t take a genius to figure out that if suburban sprawl is blocked for environmental concerns, and open lands are protected and urban in-fill is limited, it’s going to be very difficult to provide housing of any kind, except for the very wealthy.
If the Bay Area’s housing crunch is a byproduct of overzealous use of environmental law fueled by no-growth supporters, it’s the responsibility of the local and state elected officials to change that, even if means adopting measures to rein in state environmental laws, which were passed to preserve our environment, not bar the door to all new growth.
“We need to fundamentally rethink how the CEQA process works in this state,” Galante said. “I’m an academic. I say it like I see it, and this is a major issue that needs to be tackled.”
Posted by Steve Sinai
12 comments:
The Nimbys, must have birds instead of children. Long time Pacificans have children, and these children born and raised in Pacifica need homes, their own homes, and these homes need to be built, unfortunately most cannot afford 4 million dollar homes, which at the price, only draws new residents in from other areas.
Pacifican need homes, as the pacificans grow. Average home in Pacifica is about 3 bedrooms, 11 to 12 thous sq ft, if this couple has 4 children and each marry and each marry, you will have 10 adults living in one house, if the children marry and all live with their parents, is that what the nimbys want.
If all 4 married children with their children have 2 children each you have a large family grown to 18 people, are these 18 supposed to live in one house in pacifica.
No- make room for Growth. BUILD AS PACIFICA GROWS FOR PACIFICANS, as what pacificans can afford. Sounds like the nimbys need to go to the amazons, after all this is a city, not a jungle.
956 Inspired by the Old Woman Who Lived in the Shoe? I love fairy tales.
Anonymous 9:56 A.M. I think you meant to say 11 to 12 hundred Sq. ft. A 12,000 sq. ft. home would be Huge.
yes thanks big misprint i made
how is it possible to deprive people of housing? people are alive , need to survive, how does the city get away with deprivation?
theres an article in the san mateo times dated dec.15- 1973 concerning housing deprivation , and all these yrs later we are still having a worsening problem in the bay area, with so much increase in population, but in the article, had good review of oddstad, in pacifica.
12,000 square foot means your a serious player =)
Your money is weighted not counted.
1200 not 12000 mistake with an extra o
Finally the truth, NIMBY's are fueled by greed. They want home prices to go through the roof to enrich themselves. If you're pro affordable housing you are the enemy of the faux-enviros.
This may be true in some communities but not all. I just had to rescue relatives who were pushed out of their community they lived in for 30 years but the last 7 years an influx of illegals and gangs have made the neighborhood uninhabitable. Also, illegals, sanctuary cities drive up rent prices and drive down wages. They will work under table, for cash, and collect many welfare benefits. Seniors don't want to sell their humble home, which is now worth a cool mill, because of capital gains taxes they would have to pay , 6 digits. Add the environs who will fight to the death to stop developing because that means low income, single mothers and their dirty kids would be in their utopia. Sigh. What a tangle web we weave. Democrats create good intentions that end up bankrupting middle class families. White flight. HUD Housing. All failures. Utopia is really a bunch of whiny, racist, lazy communists.
10:36 - but I guess referring to "illegals" isn't racist? You cite opinions and myths as if they are facts. Where are the sources of what you cite about what illegals get as "free" benefits? The blackest pot calling the kettle....
why would you want seniors to sell their home? where are they supposed to go when they sell?
for the other comment above,seems over half the half the world is low income now a days, according to surveys you need to make , at least 125,000 a year to be in the middle class bracket plus have a certain amount in the bank.
and the other comment, there is not enough police to arrest all the gangs out there,since the cut back on the police force many yrs ago, there was always an increase in crime, and gang members took full advantage of it.
we do need the housing, when there is no housing for people, people may turn to more desperate measures to survive, like crime and maybe even violence, so its just better to build and provide shelter , at least you know where everyone is, and just hope for the best. there is alot of land is pacifica just going to waste.
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