CEQA

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Permanent Solutions or Band-Aids: Solving the Decades-Old California Homelessness Crisis

California’s budget last year contained $12 billion, a record number, to address homelessness. Yet, California has the largest homeless population in the nation with, as of January 2020, around 161,500 individuals. California is one of the few states that experienced one of the largest homelessness increases between 2019-2020 with a ...
CEQA

Chris Carr Highlighted For His New Study “The CEQA Gauntlet” and Quoted in Bloomberg

Chris Carr’s new study “The CEQA Gauntlet” was featured and quoted in the Bloomberg piece “Berkeley Housing Battle Revives Debate Over Environmental Law”. Carr discusses the problems CEQA poses today with Bloomberg. “You can be sure the authors of CEQA didn’t think about the Boschian hellscape we have today,” said ...
Blog

Can California Tackle Zoning Run Amok in 2022?

The numbers are in on the cost of living in California, and it ain’t pretty: According to an analysis by the real estate listing service Zillow, as reported in the New York Times, home prices went up by a startling 12.3 percent between November 2020 and 2021. In suburban areas ...
Blog

Rent Control Can’t Stop Soaring Housing Rents

California’s “Been There, Done That” California’s sky-high rental housing rates are now being felt by the rest of the country.  Apartment List’s most recent report in February showed that rents grew 17.6 percent annually for all housing types and increased 0.6 percent over the month.  This tracks the Bureau of ...
CEQA

UC Berkeley Case Shows Why Comprehensive Reform Badly Needed to End CEQA Abuse

By Chris Carr The California Supreme Court last week declined to stay a lower court order in a case involving a housing and classroom complex under construction on the UC Berkeley campus. This will effectively shut the door to one of America’s finest public universities for thousands of prospective students. ...
California

Chris Carr Featured in Nor Cal Record in Article on UC Berkeley Case

By Sarah Downey Last week’s legislative action to exempt the University of California at Berkeley from a long-standing state environmental law, is raising questions about how the statute could be further reformed to help not just schools but a host of infrastructure, housing, wildfire protection, and other projects. What’s clear ...
Blog

What’s Next for CEQA Reform After Berkeley Vote?

Responding to the public outrage, California lawmakers took unusually swift action in passing CEQA reform legislation this week. Senate Bill 118 responds to a CEQA lawsuit filed by a neighborhood group challenging a housing and classroom project under construction on the UC Berkeley campus.  Earlier this month, the California Supreme ...
Blog

Here’s Something to Inspire A CEQA Overhaul

The California Environmental Quality Act, often used as a blunt instrument to crush needed housing development, has become a “Swiss cheese” law due to all the carveouts that have been created to allow favored construction projects to go forward while others are mired in bureaucracy and legal limbo. It’s another ...
Business & Economics

The Problems with CEQA – with Chris Carr

The California Environmental Quality Act, or CEQA, is a 50-year-old law responsible for holding up many projects in the state due to its labyrinthian process and its vulnerability to lawsuits. Across the state, housing developments, schools, hospitals, even bike paths and wildfire mitigation efforts have been stymied by CEQA. Chris ...
California

How NIMBYS and CEQA Undermined a World-Class California University

Recently, Bay Area NIMBYs made international headlines when they convinced an Alameda County judge to order UC Berkeley to freeze enrollment. Casting students as an environmental nuisance, the decision could result in 5,100 fewer admission letters going out next month, and nearly $60 million in losses for the University of ...
Blog

Permanent Solutions or Band-Aids: Solving the Decades-Old California Homelessness Crisis

California’s budget last year contained $12 billion, a record number, to address homelessness. Yet, California has the largest homeless population in the nation with, as of January 2020, around 161,500 individuals. California is one of the few states that experienced one of the largest homelessness increases between 2019-2020 with a ...
CEQA

Chris Carr Highlighted For His New Study “The CEQA Gauntlet” and Quoted in Bloomberg

Chris Carr’s new study “The CEQA Gauntlet” was featured and quoted in the Bloomberg piece “Berkeley Housing Battle Revives Debate Over Environmental Law”. Carr discusses the problems CEQA poses today with Bloomberg. “You can be sure the authors of CEQA didn’t think about the Boschian hellscape we have today,” said ...
Blog

Can California Tackle Zoning Run Amok in 2022?

The numbers are in on the cost of living in California, and it ain’t pretty: According to an analysis by the real estate listing service Zillow, as reported in the New York Times, home prices went up by a startling 12.3 percent between November 2020 and 2021. In suburban areas ...
Blog

Rent Control Can’t Stop Soaring Housing Rents

California’s “Been There, Done That” California’s sky-high rental housing rates are now being felt by the rest of the country.  Apartment List’s most recent report in February showed that rents grew 17.6 percent annually for all housing types and increased 0.6 percent over the month.  This tracks the Bureau of ...
CEQA

UC Berkeley Case Shows Why Comprehensive Reform Badly Needed to End CEQA Abuse

By Chris Carr The California Supreme Court last week declined to stay a lower court order in a case involving a housing and classroom complex under construction on the UC Berkeley campus. This will effectively shut the door to one of America’s finest public universities for thousands of prospective students. ...
California

Chris Carr Featured in Nor Cal Record in Article on UC Berkeley Case

By Sarah Downey Last week’s legislative action to exempt the University of California at Berkeley from a long-standing state environmental law, is raising questions about how the statute could be further reformed to help not just schools but a host of infrastructure, housing, wildfire protection, and other projects. What’s clear ...
Blog

What’s Next for CEQA Reform After Berkeley Vote?

Responding to the public outrage, California lawmakers took unusually swift action in passing CEQA reform legislation this week. Senate Bill 118 responds to a CEQA lawsuit filed by a neighborhood group challenging a housing and classroom project under construction on the UC Berkeley campus.  Earlier this month, the California Supreme ...
Blog

Here’s Something to Inspire A CEQA Overhaul

The California Environmental Quality Act, often used as a blunt instrument to crush needed housing development, has become a “Swiss cheese” law due to all the carveouts that have been created to allow favored construction projects to go forward while others are mired in bureaucracy and legal limbo. It’s another ...
Business & Economics

The Problems with CEQA – with Chris Carr

The California Environmental Quality Act, or CEQA, is a 50-year-old law responsible for holding up many projects in the state due to its labyrinthian process and its vulnerability to lawsuits. Across the state, housing developments, schools, hospitals, even bike paths and wildfire mitigation efforts have been stymied by CEQA. Chris ...
California

How NIMBYS and CEQA Undermined a World-Class California University

Recently, Bay Area NIMBYs made international headlines when they convinced an Alameda County judge to order UC Berkeley to freeze enrollment. Casting students as an environmental nuisance, the decision could result in 5,100 fewer admission letters going out next month, and nearly $60 million in losses for the University of ...
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