California Dismantles Landmark Environmental Law to Tackle Housing Crisis

California Kills Environmental Reg Strangling Home Construction

California Governor Gavin Newsom signed a pair of bills Monday night rolling back parts of a landmark environmental law to remove barriers to tackling the state’s housing shortage.The California legislature with bipartisan support voted last week to exempt certain projects, such as some high-density housing plans, from onerous California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA) reviews and approvals. Newsom pushed the legislation forward, threatening to…

Editorial | Finally, CEQA will no longer be a housing impediment

Housing, not environmental obstacles. That’s the takeaway from the surprising move by state legislators Monday night who rolled back one of the most stringent environmental laws in the country to deal with California’s housing affordability crisis. The move, pushed through by Gov. Gavin Newsom as a condition of his signing the 2025-2026 budget, reins in the California Environmental Quality Act, which for more than a half-century has been used by…

How major new housing reform will affect homebuilding in California

Gov. Gavin Newsom and California legislators passed a major reform of the California Environmental Quality Act on Monday. The new laws remove a key point of leverage for project opponents that has been embedded for more than a half-century in California's development regime.

California just overhauled its main environmental law. Here’s what it means for San Diego

California’s landmark environmental law was overhauled in Sacramento this week, and it could mean more housing for San Diego. Gov. Gavin Newsom signed two bills on Monday that will weaken the California Environmental Quality Act, or CEQA, to make building housing easier. The law was praised by environmentalists across the nation when it passed in 1970, but critics have argued it had since became a tool for stopping residential construction. CEQA…

CEQA, one of the biggest obstacles to new housing in California, gets sidelined

By Ben Christopher | CalMatters A decade-spanning political battle between housing developers and defenders of California’s preeminent environmental law likely came to an end Monday with just a smattering of “no” votes. With the passage of a state budget-related housing bill, the California Environmental Quality Act will be a non-issue for a decisive swath of urban residential development in California. In practice, that means most new apartment…

California approves most significant environmental law rollback in decades

Gov. Gavin Newsom, lagging far behind his campaign pledge to build millions more homes, signed Monday evening the most significant rollback in decades to California’s core environmental law that’s long been blamed for construction delays and soaring prices that have increasingly put housing out of reach for the state’s residents. Assembly Bills 130 and 131 shield a slew of projects — from new apartments to rail stations and advanced manufacturin…