Region: California
The Path to Abundance, Part III
Abundance reforms will pose difficult tradeoffs, including with environmental goals and public participation
This is the third post in a series of six posts. The first post is here. The second post is here. The reforms that abundance advocates have proposed are varied, in part because they target a wide range of policy areas. I will begin with housing as an example of the reforms being proposed – …
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CONTINUE READINGWhat Does Wildfire Resilience Cost?
A new UCLA Law report focuses on wildfire liability costs and wildfire mitigation costs in the transmission context.
When it comes to updating transmission lines and other wildfire-related costs, how much of the burden should fall on utility ratepayers? That’s one of the questions at the heart of a new report published by the UCLA Emmett Institute. First, some context: California saw its hottest temperatures ever recorded in March this year. With a hotter climate come more frequent and …
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CONTINUE READINGThe Path to Abundance, Part II
Reducing legal and procedural obstacles to development is a necessary, but probably not sufficient, solution
This is the second post in a series of six posts. The first post is here. As I explained in my prior post, the United States (and indeed other countries) has not produced the level of infrastructure for housing or energy required to address housing demand, demand for energy to advance economic development, the needed …
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CONTINUE READINGClimate Issues in the 2026 Governor’s Race: Housing and Climate
Fifth in a series of posts outlining key challenges and opportunities facing California’s next governor.
(This climate issue brief is authored by CLEE’s partners at the Terner Center for Housing Innovation.) California faces complex and integrated challenges of unaffordable housing and climate change. Failure to build adequate housing supply has resulted in high prices that have pushed home buyers and renters to locations that are further from jobs, schools, and …
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CONTINUE READINGThe Path to Abundance, Part I
Exploring the legal, policy, and political challenges for the abundance movement.
The abundance movement is having a moment. Abundance policy reformers call for legal and policy reforms to advance more housing, energy, and other infrastructure. Abundance advocacy has motivated a Yes In My Backyard (YIMBY) movement that has pushed for major changes to local land-use regulation to build more housing in states across the country. One …
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CONTINUE READINGPolicy Implications of Accelerating Warming
If warming is coming more quickly, we need to pick up the pace on policy responses.
There seems to be an emerging scientific consensus that the rate of global warming is rising. After screening out the effects of natural factors like El Niño, scientists have concluded that the pace of warming has roughly doubled since the 1970s. What does this tell us about policy? Some of the implications are more obvious than others, and at least one implication may be unsettling for some climate advocates. Most obviously, we need to accelerate our efforts to carbon emissions. We will be closing in on possible tipping points faster than expected. Climate impacts that we might have expected twenty years from now could hit in half that time.
CONTINUE READINGHonoring Dolores Huerta
Huerta has received the Eleanor Roosevelt Human Rights Award, the Presidential Medal of Freedom, and four honorary degrees–so why is her name rarely mentioned without Chávez’s?
Content Warning: Sexual Assault. Over the next week, as we draw nearer to California’s first “Farmworkers Day,” we’re undoubtedly going to see Dolores Huerta’s name in the news a lot. But unfortunately, I fear that the focus will be more about the recent New York Times investigation revealing that César Chávez sexually abused numerous …
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CONTINUE READINGA State Density Bonus Loophole?
State density bonus law may allow a large mismatch between affordable housing provided and the additional density a proponent gets.
This is the second in two blog posts about state density bonus law and its potentially unintended consequences. The first post is here. As I noted in my prior post, the basic concept of state density bonus law is that if a project proponent includes a certain amount of affordable housing in their project, they …
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CONTINUE READINGThe Complexity of California Housing Law
Byzantine statutory provisions in state housing law may produce unintended consequences
One of the most important state laws to advance housing production in California is the state density bonus law. At heart, that law extends an offer to developers seeking to build a housing project. If you add some affordable housing to your project, the state will let you build higher than local zoning might otherwise …
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CONTINUE READINGClimate Issues in the 2026 Governor’s Race: Building Decarbonization and Energy Efficiency
Fourth in a series of posts outlining key challenges and opportunities facing California’s next governor.
(This climate issue brief is authored by CLEE’s partners at the Building Decarbonization Coalition and Caliber Strategies.) As California pushes to decarbonize, its homes and commercial buildings are a central driver of the state’s affordability, energy and infrastructure challenges. Building energy consumption (both electricity to power appliances and gas to power furnaces and stoves) is …
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