ICYMI: CalMatters' Dan Walters: "Housing Action Just Half-a-Loaf"

By: Dan Walters
Sept 16, 2019

Gavin Newsom’s first legislative session as governor began with promises to vigorously confront California’s huge and ever-growing housing shortage.

“If we want a California for All, we have to build housing for all,” Newsom told legislators in his State of the State address in January, pledging to crack down on cities that don’t meet their quotas of zoning land for new housing and to reduce or eliminate red tape that discourages housing investment.

“In recent years, we’ve expedited judicial review on CEQA (the California Environmental Quality Act) for professional sports,” Newsom said. “It’s time we do the same thing for housing.”

The session ended last week with housing construction in decline and little or no action to overcome local footdragging and reform CEQA, but with passage of a statewide rent control law that, if anything, will retard housing development even more.

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While the legislation keeps one Newsom pledge on housing, as construction declines, he and lawmakers are not doing much to reverse the trend.

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Bottom line: During his campaign for governor, Newsom set a goal of building 3.5 million new units of housing by 2025. Nothing that occurred in the Capitol this year would even begin to make that happen.

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You can read the entire article published in CalMatters here.