Gov. Gavin Newsom is streamlining a major mixed-use development near Skid Row in downtown Los Angeles to speed the building of housing and urban infrastructure, using new state laws aimed at reducing environmental litigation.
Newsom took the action March 7 to accelerate a housing development, called the Fourth and Central Project, which is estimated to provide 1,521 residential units, including at least 214 affordable housing units. The 10-building project is expected to generate $2 billion in economic activity and 10,000 union jobs, according to the Governor’s Office.
“The governor’s action means that any legal challenges brought against the project must be heard within 270 days to the extent feasible – reduced from the typical timeline of three to five years,” the Governor’s Office’s announcement states. “This is the third project and the first housing project to be streamlined since the governor signed the infrastructure package into law.”
Business groups and developers have long complained that the state’s landmark environmental-review law, the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA), has generated excessive red tape and delayed needed housing and other essential infrastructure projects.
The governor is using new powers provided by Senate Bill 7, a 2021 measure that allows Newsom to certify certain clean-energy and housing projects for “judicial streamlining” under CEQA.
““For decades, we’ve let red tape stand in the way of these kinds of critical housing projects – and the consequences are in plain view all around us,” Newsom said in a prepared statement. “Now we’re using California’s infrastructure law to build more housing, faster.”
Environmental groups who have used the CEQA law to obstruct a host of new economic development and housing projects across California through the decades have also questioned the streamlining initiatives. They claim the streamlining potentially papers over industrial remediation issues at urban developments and reducing the voice that CEQA gives to affected low-income communities.
“CEQA isn’t supposed to stop projects,” Jennifer Ganata, legal department co-director for the group Communities for a Better Environment, told the Southern California Record. “It’s supposed to make projects better.”
Though CEQA opponents say the law causes litigation, Ganata said environmental reviews are not always the cause of delayed housing projects. Projects can be delayed by high construction costs and the decision by some property owners to hold land, she said.
“There are a bunch of different economic reasons why affordable housing is not being built, and it doesn’t have to do actually with the environmental review process,” Ganata said.
She and other environmental activists claim environmental regulation is not a major impediment to building more housing in California, and they point out that there are currently 58,000 housing units in San Francisco that have gone through environmental review but remain unbuilt.
“I don't see the work we're doing as being a NIMBY (an acronym for ‘Not In My Back Yard’),” Ganata said. “I understand NIMBYs to be folks in more affluent areas who are trying to keep out affordable housing projects.”
CEQA does provide low-income environmental justice communities “legal hooks” to challenge projects, she said, but the results can be positive by ensuring that remediation of industrial waste, such as storage tanks, takes place and seismic issues are considered.
Environmental groups have proposed alternatives to CEQA streamlining, such as taxing vacant housing units, changing tax laws that overly burden affordable housing developers and allowing local governments to purchase property where such housing could be built.