California’s massive housing shortage relative to population and job growth is only getting worse, and the state’s senate will be examining the issue today at a joint hearing of the Housing and Governance & Finance committees at 1:30pm in the Capitol. I’ll be testifying regarding the link between housing and greenhouse gas emissions.
The hearing comes as the San Francisco Chronicle ran a front page story this morning on the vast number of bills introduced this session to address the crisis. Most of the bills are aimed at high-cost, low-growth, job-rich areas, which are predominantly white and high income, filled with vocal residents who don’t want new growth in their exclusive communities.
Yet if California is to have any hope of reducing greenhouse gas emissions by decreasing driving miles, not to mention addressing the extreme segregation and economic inequality, the state will have to intervene in the face of these restrictive local land use policies.
You can tune in to the hearing and watch live here
The controversy over the Trump Administration’s effort to claw back billions from the California High Speed Rail project riled up the media, including Fox News, which featured a brief comment from yours truly:
I also spoke with KPCC radio’s AirTalk program yesterday about the fiasco, along with Los Angeles Times reporter Ralph Vartabedian and USC engineering professor James Moore. While both guests have been consistent critics of the project, even they sounded surprised by the Trump move and doubtful that it would hold up.
Finally, StreetsBlog USA weighed in, noting that highway projects don’t get this level of funding scrutiny and that media reports have been slanted against the project in this spate of recent coverage. I offered some comments to them about the unprecedented nature of this attempted funding rollback.
Now we’ll have to stay tuned to see how California responds to this federal move, including potential litigation.
I’m doing a double-shot of call-in radio show hosting today, both on KALW 91.7 FM in San Francisco (and streaming live for those out of the area). First up, I’m guest hosting Your Call at 10am, subbing in for regular host Rose Aguilar. We’ll discuss the prospects for keeping oil in the ground, with guests:
- Kassie Siegel, Senior Counsel and Climate Law Institute Director for the Center for Biological Diversity, one of the organizations that collaborated with Oil Exchange International on their latest report titled, “Drilling Towards Disaster: Why U.S. Oil and Gas Expansion Is Incompatible with Climate Limits.”
- Antonia Juhasz, a leading author and investigative journalist covering the oil industry. She has written extensively on the influence of Big Oil and the intersection between oil companies and the U.S. government. She is the author of three books, including her most recent Black Tide: The Devastating Impact of the Gulf Oil Spill.
You can stream the show here (and the audio will be posted here as well after the show).
Then at 7pm, I’ll be hosting City Visions to discuss the impact of the PG&E bankruptcy on ratepayers, wildfire victims, and California’s clean energy goals. For those not following the story to date, PG&E is California’s largest utility and a key partner in the state’s climate agenda, from renewable energy to electric vehicle infrastructure deployment. But the utility claims that liability from its potential role in sparking devastating wildfires across the state over the past few years is forcing it to declare bankruptcy.
Joining me to discuss the ramifications:
- Supervisor Hillary Ronen, representing San Francisco’s District 9.
- Severin Borenstein, Professor of Business Administration and Public Policy at the Haas School of Business and Faculty Director of the Energy Institute at Haas.
- Catherine Sandoval, Associate Professor of Law at Santa Clara University and former Commissioner at the California Public Utilities Commission
You can tune in at 91.7 FM or stream it live. Hope you can join these conversations today!
On Friday, California sued Huntington Beach over the city’s NIMBY rejection of new housing and overall non-compliance with state housing laws. But it turns out the city was already suing California over its housing streamlining law, SB 35 (Wiener, 2017), in a suit filed on January 17th (City of Huntington Beach v. State of California, Case No. 30-201-01044945-CU-WM-CJC). The lawsuit could be important for resolving a significant question about how much the state can intrude on local land use authority. And my guess is that it will not end well for Huntington Beach’s NIMBYs and their elected official allies.
SB 35, the state law that Huntington Beach is suing over, requires streamlined permitting for certain housing projects in jurisdictions like Huntington Beach, which are behind on meeting state-derived housing targets. Huntington Beach alleges that because it’s a “charter city” under the state constitution, SB 35 shouldn’t apply to it (and others like it).
So what’s a “charter city”? The California Constitution allows cities to become charter cities in order to pass local laws that supersede state laws under certain conditions. Of California’s 478 cities, 108 are charter cities.
Specifically, Huntington Beach officials allege that SB 35’s housing streamlining regime interferes with their “municipal affairs” of land use decision-making, which are otherwise protected from state preemption absent certain circumstances.
As a result, the case will hinge on how the court interprets “municipal affairs,” as defined in the state constitution. As the League of California Cities helpfully describes, charter cities have sovereignty over at least these four areas of “municipal affairs” under the constitution:
- “city police force”
- “subgovernment in all or part of a city”
- “conduct of city elections”
- “the manner in which . . . municipal officers [are] elected.”
Notably, “land use” is not included in the list. And yet Huntington Beach’s attorneys allege in the complaint that their land use sovereignty should be considered a “municipal affair.” Historically, it’s been left up to the courts to determine if land use counts, and they have typically ruled that land use does in fact constitute a “municipal affair.”
But there’s a big exception: when there’s a strong state interest requiring local preemption. In this case, it’s hard to argue that the housing shortage is not a matter of serious statewide concern requiring state intervention. Furthermore, local NIMBY restrictions on development have been a central factor in the lack of production statewide, including restrictive zoning and byzantine permitting processes.
Given the overriding importance of housing production to stabilize prices across the state, my guess is that Huntington Beach leaders will have a hard time making their case in court that this housing streamlining law shouldn’t apply within their borders. And an adverse decision for them would solidify the law’s applicability to the other 107 charter cities in the state.
If they lose this fight, NIMBYs and their allies will still have a few other means to push back against state laws to boost housing production. But they will lose an important judicial avenue with an adverse decision. If so, those seeking more affordable places to live in the state will be better off as a result.
Huntington Beach, a non-compliant city on state housing goals.
California’s new governor is coming out firing on housing. First, Gov. Newsom’s proposed budget threatened to deprive cities of gas tax money if they don’t allow more housing to be built. And now today he’s suing Orange County’s Huntington Beach, population 200,000, for lack of compliance with state housing laws.
Technically, he’s not actually filing the lawsuit. Instead, he’s referring the case to the state’s Attorney General, Xavier Becerra, thanks to a relatively new state law, AB 72 (Santiago, 2017), which empowers such a lawsuit to be filed over local government intransigence on housing.
So why the need for the lawsuit? According to the San Francisco Chronicle, NIMBY influence on Huntington Beach’s city council caused the city to fall more than 400 units behind its state targets on housing, after city leaders scaled back approval of a high-density development in 2015. That proposal that would have otherwise allowed the city to comply with its housing target.
According to the state, in the three years since the rejection, the city has “taken no action to bring the housing element into compliance.” The city must now build 533 low-income housing units by the end of 2021 to meet updated state quotas.
In the old days, this lack of compliance would have been met with…nothing. There was essentially no penalty for non-compliance, and even when cities or counties complied, they often negotiated down their requirements to trivial amounts of housing or gamed the system in other ways to avoid having to make meaningful changes to their land use rules. But starting with SB 375 (Steinberg, 2008), which linked transportation funding to compliance, up through AB 72, the state has gotten more serious.
Which brings us to today’s lawsuit. It is a big deal, and not just for the potential impact on Huntington Beach’s land use policies, which will have to change if the suit is successful. More significantly, this lawsuit will be a wake-up call to cities across the state, motivating them to action on housing and also providing political cover for municipal leaders who know they need to do more to allow housing but are fearful (and captured by) their NIMBY constituents.
Furthermore, this probably won’t be the end of the lawsuits. According to the California Department of Housing and Community Development, at least four dozen other California cities also have not received state approval of their housing elements, as of the beginning of the year. Newsom is reportedly considering additional litigation against them.
So we can expect Newsom and Attorney General Becerra to be busy on housing in the coming months and beyond, ushering in a more combative era in the state’s effort to get local governments to allow new homes in their communities.
Governor Newsom is making housing a top priority. His proposed budget devotes significant resources to housing production and homelessness, including:
- $500 million for local governments to address homelessness
- $500 million (from $80 million originally) for the state’s low-income housing tax credit
- $500 million for “moderate-income” housing production
- $25 million for homeless Californians to access federal disability programs
But public cash alone won’t solve the problem, given the scale of the need. Along these lines, Gov. Newsom correctly identified local restrictions on new housing as a key barrier. To address the intransigence, he proposed the revolutionary step of limiting local government access to gas tax funds if the jurisdiction is behind on its housing production.
But how do you define a local jurisdiction “not meeting” housing production? Right now, it’s a bureaucratic threshold, set by the state for each region, which then in turn sets housing targets for each city and county in the region. Historically though, these “regional housing needs allocations” have been weak and easily gamed (though this process will become more stringent going forward, based on recent legislation like AB 686 and AB 72).
So if Gov. Newsom relies on an opaque and uncertain state-derived metric, his policy may not be that effective in actually encouraging new housing production. And cities and counties are somewhat limited anyway in how much housing actually gets built in their jurisdictions, particularly if they’re in areas without much housing demand.
A better metric would involve assessing local zoning and permitting processes near major transit stops or in “low vehicle miles traveled” areas (if a local jurisdiction doesn’t have much transit). Cities and counties can certainly control those two aspects of land use. For example, cities that have upzoned and streamlined permitting near transit would maintain their gas tax funding. Cities and counties that restrict what can be built or require multiple layers of discretionary review would then lose access to dollars.
Sen. Scott Wiener’s proposed SB 50 would get the state far down that path already, but Gov. Newsom’s use of that kind of budget mechanism would add political heft to the approach.
And as an added bonus, it might actually work in encouraging responsible local land use policies to boost housing production in the right places.
Nathaniel Rateliff is an itinerant guitarist and songwriter who’s made a name for himself in his hometown of Denver. He’s now teamed up with a band named the Night Sweats and gotten some national radio airplay with the tune “Hey Mama.” It’s a surprising paean to tough maternal love, along with one of my favorite lines that he repeats three-quarters of the way in.
Here’s the lyric video for your Friday enjoyment:
As 2018 nears its end, here are my Top 6 developments in climate & energy policy this year:
-
- Worldwide greenhouse gas emissions increase. Let’s start with the bad news for 2018: emissions are rising like a “speeding freight train,” primarily due to more coal-fired power coming on line for India and China, plus more energy use in the United States. Emissions are expected to increase 2.7 percent in 2018, according to research published by the Global Carbon Project. Meanwhile, a U.N. report in October indicated that the world may have just about a dozen more years to get emissions under control enough to avert disastrous warming. These reports should be concerning to everyone.
- Solar PV hits policy and deployment bumps but with long-term growth potential. With declining policy support worldwide, including costly tariffs on solar PV in the U.S., solar PV leaders have seen a downturn in 2018, for the first time in recent memory. Globally, according to the Frost & Sullivan (F&S) report Global Renewable Energy Outlook, 2018, the world saw 90 gigawatts (GW) of new solar installations for 2018, which was a slight year-on-year decrease. Overall though, renewable capacity will see 13.3% annual growth in 2018. The report authors expect global investment in renewable energy for the year to be $228.3 billion, a slight increase of 0.7% over 2017. In the U.S., according to latest industry figures, the third quarter saw installed solar PV capacity experience a 15% year-over-year decrease and a 20% quarter-over-quarter decrease. However, total installed U.S. solar PV capacity is expected to more than double over the next five years. Overall, the picture is concerning but with a potentially positive long-term outlook.
- EV sales increase worldwide, with 1 million in the U.S. and the Tesla Model 3 finally unveiled. The chart below tells the largely encouraging story:
China leads the pack with 40% of all sales. Here in California, sales just reached half a million, with one million nationwide. Prices continue to fall, and the Tesla Model 3 became the #6 top-selling car in the U.S. in November. Of all the climate change news, this progress on vehicle electrification may be the most hopeful, although we’ll need to see even more rapid deployment over the next decade to get growing worldwide transportation emissions under control. - Electrification of transportation spreads to trucks, buses and scooters. The EV revolution has spread, with cheaper, more powerful batteries now making electric “micromobility” options feasible, such as e-bikes and e-scooters. 2018 was truly the year of the e-scooter, when it comes to city streets. And on the heavy-duty side, companies are unveiling previously unheard of electric models, such as Daimler Trucks North America making the first delivery of an all-electric delivery truck, the Freightliner eCascadia, while the California Air Resources Board last week enacted a new rule requiring transit buses to be all-electric by 2040. All told, it’s a positive development for low-carbon transportation.
- Movement to legalize apartments near transit in California and across the U.S. All the electrification we can muster on transportation won’t matter much if we don’t decrease overall driving miles. It’s a particular problem in the U.S., with so many of our major cities built around solo vehicle trips. So it was encouraging to see California attempt to legalize apartments near major transit with Scott Wiener’s failed SB 827 earlier this year (which started a productive conversation) and now a potentially viable version in SB 50. The movement is catching on around the country, as Minneapolis just voted to end single-family zoning. It’s long overdue and our only real hope to decrease driving miles.
- Trump rollback proposals increase but face judicial setbacks. Trump’s attack on environmental protections made news all year, particularly his attempted rollback of clean vehicle fuel economy standards. The only bright spot is that many of his regulatory rollbacks are sloppy and getting shot down in the courts, as my colleague Dan Farber noted in a report and recent Legal Planet post. And with Democrats set to control the House of Representatives next month, pro-environment legislators are set to have more negotiating power on everything from the budget to enforcement to policy oversight.
So the trends overall are uneven, with a lot for concern and also promising technology and policy momentum still in effect. 2019 could also greatly change this picture, with a potentially slowing economy and more private sector innovation on clean technology.
Overall, those who care about these issues have a lot to digest and ponder this holiday season, along with the cookies. See you in 2019!
California’s major urban regions are falling behind in getting people out of their solo drives in favor of walking, biking, transit and carpooling, according to a major report last month from the California Air Resources Board. In short, the state will not meet its 2030 climate goals without more progress on reducing vehicle miles traveled (VMT):
This result comes despite the decade-old passage of SB 375 (Steinberg, 2008), which promised to reorient land use and transportation around reduced driving. The lone exception appears to be the San Francisco Bay Area, which has seen steadily increasing transit ridership and decreasing solo driving to work as a percentage, according to the report.
What are the stakes if California can’t start solving this problem in the next decade? A U.N. report on climate change recently concluded that limiting global warming to 1.5 C would “require more policies that get people out of their cars — into ride-sharing and public transportation, if not bikes and scooters — even as cars switch from fossil fuels to electrics.” In order to keep the world on track to stay within 1.5 Celsius, the report stated that emission reductions would have to “come predominantly from the transport and industry sectors” and that countries couldn’t just rely on zero-emission vehicles alone.
Yet as the report shows, California’s current land use policies are not helping with this goal. We need to discourage development in car-dependent areas while promoting growth close to jobs, as SB 50 would allow. And at the same time, we need to invest in better transit service. Otherwise, California and jurisdictions like it around the world will fail to avert the coming climate catastrophe.
The current proposed California high speed rail route.
High speed rail has been in the news lately for all the wrong reasons, with a scathing state audit indicating that hundreds of millions of dollars — if not billions — may ultimately be wasted by starting construction too early to meet political deadlines, as well as other mismanagement.
I debated the future of the system last week on KPCC radio in Los Angeles, on the program Airtalk with Larry Mantle. Sparring with me was James Moore, civil engineering professor at the University of Southern California (and longtime anti-rail academic).
You can listen to the first part of the show on the Airtalk website, but the full audio (including my last rebuttal to Prof. Moore) is available here.
The short story? Some of the mismanagement is due to the complicated politics of building such a controversial system through the heart of Tea Party California opposition, while the system in general will still be needed to serve a growing population and connect the Central Valley cities to the prosperous coastal economies.
