CEQA
CEQA and UC Berkeley’s Enrollment
A recent court order freezing UC Berkeley enrollment highlights key issues in CEQA
A recent court order, freezing UC Berkeley’s student enrollment at 2021-22 levels, has earned some press attention and notoriety. Commentators on Twitter have accused the lead plaintiffs (residents in the Berkeley area) of being exclusionary NIMBYs. The court’s decision was premised on violations by UC Berkeley of the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA), a law …
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CONTINUE READINGGuest Blogger John Graham: California Court Decision Will Affect Future Use of Carbon Offsets to Mitigate Emissions of Development
The California Court of Appeal Rules San Diego County’s Climate Action Plan Violates CEQA
The challenge to San Diego County’s Climate Action Plan (“CAP”) in Golden Door has been closely watched by many interested in the use of carbon offsets to mitigate GHG impacts in California. Simply put, carbon offsets are mechanisms that reflect off-site GHG reductions—from activities like reforestation—that can, in some cases, compensate for a project’s GHG …
CONTINUE READINGCalifornia Housing Reform Goes Into Suspended Animation
NIMBYs Win A Battle, But Trench Warfare Continues
The NIMBYs have won a battle: A high-profile bill that would have increased home building near mass transit and in single-family home neighborhoods across California has been killed for the year, ending a major battle over how to address the state’s housing affordability crisis that has attracted attention nationwide. Senate Bill 50 by Sen. …
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CONTINUE READINGNew report on housing entitlement in LA
Report covers regulatory approvals for residential projects in four LA cities in 2014-16
I’ve blogged previously about work that a team here at UC Berkeley (Moira O’Neill, Giulia Gualco-Nelson, and myself) have been doing on studying land-use regulation, environmental law, and housing production in California, to get a better sense of how regulatory processes may be driving the housing crisis in the state, and eventually to produce specific …
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CONTINUE READINGNew CEQA SB 743 Transportation Guidelines Finally Finalized
Critical revisions will be discussed at March 1st Conference in Los Angeles — register now!
It took five years, but California has finally ditched an outdated and counter-productive metric for evaluating transportation impacts under the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA). With the guidelines finalized on December 28th, a mere half-decade since the passage of SB 743 (Steinberg) in 2013, the state will ditch “auto delay” as a measure of project …
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CONTINUE READINGDeveloping Policy from the Ground Up
New article provides more detailed data and analysis of housing entitlement in the Bay Area
This blog post (and the underlying article) was co-authored by Moira O’Neill, Giulia Gualco-Nelson, and Eric Biber. Our team has released a new article on land-use regulation and housing in the Bay Area, building on our report from last February that explored the role of local law and the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA) on …
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CONTINUE READINGNew Report: Improving Landscape-Level Planning for Solar PV Development
New UC Berkeley/UCLA Law report details policy changes to help achieve new SB 100 renewable energy goals
A new report from UC Berkeley and UCLA Schools of Law, A New Solar Landscape, identifies key reforms for California to enact at the state, regional, and local level to increase the pace and optimal siting of utility-scale solar photovoltaic (PV) development. With the passage of SB 100 (de León, 2018), California now requires electric …
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CONTINUE READINGVMT Mitigation Webinar – Tuesday October 30, 10-11am
Berkeley Law’s free event will feature the Governor’s Office of Planning and Research
Under Senate Bill 743 (Steinberg, 2013), California law now requires developers of new projects, like apartment buildings, offices, and roads, to analyze and mitigate the amount of additional driving miles the projects generate. To facilitate compliance with SB 743, some local and regional leaders are considering creating “banks” or “exchanges” to allow developers to fund …
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CONTINUE READINGCEQA and Local Land Use Regulations: Shakedown Street
Local Government Discretion Has Powerful Political Support
Eric’s post the other day about CEQA and local land use regulation states an important and often-overlooked truth: environmental review can only hold up a project if it is discretionary. If local land use regulations state clearly what a developer can and cannot do, then no amount of environmental review could change a decision, and …
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CONTINUE READINGCEQA and Local Land-Use Regulations
California gubernatorial candidates debate the role of CEQA and local land-use regulations in the state’s housing crisis
The first (and probably only) debate in the California governor’s race happened earlier this week between Democratic nominee Gavin Newsom and Republican nominee John Cox. Appropriately enough both candidates were asked how they were going to address the state’s housing crisis. Newsom’s response was an ambitious target of 500,000 new homes/year through 2025 (far higher …
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