California Is Not as Progressive as We Like to Think We Are: A Housing Perspective
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Skyrocketing housing prices, exorbitant monthly rents, and tent cities popping up throughout California cities. We’ve all heard the statistics - California is in a severe housing crisis. In response to this, our leaders have set aggressive housing production goals, with Governor Newsom notably promising to develop a whopping 3.5 million new homes by 2025. Yet we are continually disappointed. In the four years since Newsom took office, less than half a million homes have been built within the state.
How do we explain California’s massive shortcomings in housing production? First we’ll look at some of the structural impediments that stifle efforts to build more homes. One of the more startling examples of this is an unsuspecting environmental protection act. Riding the wave of environmental reforms in the early 1970s, California’s Environmental Quality Act (CEQA) was passed with the virtuous intention of requiring government agencies to disclose the environmental impacts of their projects. This act sounds promising, yet its devastating consequences were unforeseen by the lawmakers who drafted it.
CEQA’s enforcement by litigation has endowed an already formidable law with an even sharper bite. In theory, the act is designed to promote a prudent evaluation of a development project’s environmental impacts. However, the ability to sue has given anti-development groups a weapon to kill development projects under the guise of “environmental concerns”. These lawsuits require the project to go under a time-consuming review process which usually takes anywhere from 18 to 36 months, but can take even longer. The legal process is expensive, and smaller development groups who lack sufficient resources are often forced to back down.
The People’s Park in Berkeley shows just how wealthy homeowners have mangled CEQA’s original intentions, exploiting the environmental review process to further their anti-development agenda. UC Berkeley had plans to build housing for 1,100 students and permanent supportive housing for 125 homeless or extremely low-income individuals in the community. The project easily passed preliminary CEQA review, yet despite this, longtime Berkeley residents decided to contest the initial assessment, suing the university for CEQA noncompliance. The residents argued that the university failed to adequately account for the “noise impacts” arising from the students who would reside there, which could be categorized as “noise pollution” under CEQA.
As ridiculous as this sounds, the voices of Berkeley citizens were too powerful for the courts to ignore. A state appeals court sided with the residents of Berkeley and indefinitely halted construction of the housing project. Recently, the California Supreme Court has agreed to hear an appeal of the case but a decision has yet to be reached.
This ruling sparked statewide outrage. Numerous California legislators have responded in support of UC Berkeley, calling the ruling absurd and dangerous. Governor Newsom responded to this issue in a statement calling out the “NIMBYs who weaponize CEQA”. NIMBY, an acronym that stands for “Not In My Backyard,” is a term employed to characterize individuals who actively oppose housing development in their local neighborhoods, often with the aim of excluding socioeconomically disadvantaged groups from affluent, single-family home communities. They fear an increase in crime rates, a decline in property values, and a deterioration in the quality of schools will inevitably accompany such development projects. However, we have seen time and time again that the NIMBYs’ arguments are devoid of any empirical evidence. Studies have shown that there is no significant change in housing prices when affordable homes are built in high-income neighborhoods. These unfounded fears are used simply as an excuse to keep neighborhoods segregated by class.
NIMBYs were successful in blocking housing construction in Berkeley, at least temporarily. Yet this is only a fraction of why California struggles to build more homes. Zoning laws, or regulations that dictate what kind of properties can be built on certain kinds of land, have restricted development throughout California for over a century. Of San Jose’s residential land, 94% is zoned for detached single-family homes, which are significantly more expensive than multifamily dwellings, such as apartments. In Los Angeles, 75% is restricted for single-family homes. This means that in some of California’s largest cities, it is illegal to build homes that would enable anyone but the upper-middle class to reside in.
California technically suspended these zoning laws with the passage of SB 9 in 2022. This bill allows developers to split land originally designated for single-family homes into a maximum of four housing units. Despite this recent effort to remove zoning laws, the effects remain widespread. In the Bay Area, the more single-family zoning, the whiter the area is. This policy affects everyone trying to buy a home: by stifling the construction of low to middle-class homes, cities can’t keep up with the housing demands driving prices up for everyone. The promise of owning a home is getting further out of reach for more and more Americans.
Building more multi-family homes, such as apartments, would be an excellent start to breaking this cycle and increasing housing affordability for all. What if California built affordable housing near transit centers, reducing car dependency and benefiting the environment? This is exactly what SB 50 was poised to do when it was introduced to the California legislature in 2018. Despite foreseen opposition from wealthy suburban homeowners with NIMBY philosophies, one would have expected the Democratic supermajority in the Senate to pass the bill with flying colors.
Despite these expectations, SB 50 died on the Senate floor shy of just three votes. Nearly half of the 29 Democratic Senators voted against the bill or abstained from voting. Several notable liberal groups, including San Francisco’s Board of Supervisors, voted 10-1 to oppose the bill. One member of the Board of Supervisors justified the decision by saying the board wanted to “keep some of the character that makes San Francisco, San Francisco”. Some critics raise concerns regarding displacement caused by construction and the potential loss of the participatory “community process” that determines the kind of development that should take place within their community.
Something isn’t lining up: challenging racially motivated zoning laws, building housing near transit to reduce carbon emissions created by cars, and embracing diversity within our cities are typically left-leaning positions. Shouldn’t California, one of the country’s most progressive states, be the first to pass housing legislation that reflects these values?
The statistics show otherwise. California lags far behind some of the most conservative states in the US, notably Texas, Florida, and Arizona, when it comes to the issuance of housing permits. On average, these states have granted nearly three times the number of permits as California has. In 2020, Texas issued 7,641 permits per 100,000 residents while California issued a mere 2,691 permits. Interestingly, other progressive states including New York and Massachusetts match or trail behind California in the number of housing permits granted.
These statistics are counterintuitive, as one would expect progressives to be pro-development. Some explanations include a growth in the job market of these conservative states, as well as their rate of recovery from the 2008 housing crash. Additionally, California and New York’s construction rules are notoriously difficult for developers to navigate, further complicating the construction of homes. Texas, Florida and Arizona’s efforts to issue permits and construct new housing is far from over, but it’s clear that they’re doing more than California.
Housing is a unique political issue that transcends expectations of party lines. Irrespective of partisan beliefs, people have an inherent desire to protect the value of their property - be that a home, a car, or anything of value. This tendency is universal, and it logically follows that those who own property of value will want to keep it this way. Upper-middle class citizens have more time, resources and motivation to fight for what they believe to be their home values and “character” of their neighborhood. This NIMBY-esque behavior appears overrepresented in our state’s housing politics, intensified by laws that have structurally challenged housing production from the very beginning.
In contrast to coffee shops and homes adorned with “Black Lives Matter” signs and rainbow flags, California’s liberalism has turned a blind eye to issues of housing accessibility within our neighborhoods. Progressivism alone has proven to be inept at solving our state’s housing inequalities, and viewing housing as a problem exclusively for the left to solve may have inadvertently intensified the situation by impeding potential avenues for change. Acknowledging that opposition to pro-housing policy is not exclusive to either party suggests that we must approach this issue in a way that caters towards all Californians regardless of ideology.
We need to convince Californians that building affordable and multi-family homes does not create a threat, rather, would enrich our communities. At the minimum, perhaps we can agree on some simple facts. Our communities and our children are enriched by diversity. We want our kids to grow up in safe neighborhoods with equal access to opportunity. And we all deserve the right to have a roof over our heads.