Permitting Reform Ramps Up in California With Introduction of ‘Housing Package’

For years, California has often been held up as the poster child for enervating environmental regulation. A primary target of this criticism has been the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA), the landmark legislation signed into law by Gov. Ronald Reagan in 1970 that in recent decades has frequently been weaponized to stymie development of housing and other important infrastructure. CEQA horror stories and calls for the law’s reform abound in the popular press.

California’s Laws Have Failed to Keep Pace With the State’s Ambitious Goals

For nearly a decade now, the California Legislature has passed numerous revisions to CEQA to try to streamline environmental review for specific types of projects, from housing (such as in-fill development) to large community-based projects (such as professional sports stadiums), and even certain types of large infrastructure projects that advance climate change and greenhouse gas reduction goals (such as renewable energy projects). But each of these efforts were relatively narrow and largely intended to provide solutions to the immediate needs of the moment. The recent University of California, Berkeley student housing saga is illustrative. To nationwide perplexity, the Legislature in 2023 had to pass a bill to counter a decision out of the Court of Appeal holding that UC Berkeley had failed to analyze the “social noise” generated by students if housing for them were constructed on “Peoples’ Park.”

Despite the introduction of bills each legislative session to “fix” CEQA with respect to specific projects or types of projects, to date there has been no serious discussion of root-and-branch CEQA reform. The consequence is that lawmakers have been struggling to play catch-up as CEQA has been increasingly weaponized to frustrate the housing, renewable energy and other infrastructure projects critical to the achievement of California’s policy priorities. This inaction has not been due to the absence of meaningful reform proposals. For example, we authored “The CEQA Gauntlet” in 2022, analyzing CEQA’s impacts on housing, renewable energy and transportation infrastructure. And in May 2024, the Little Hoover Commission issued its report titled “CEQA: Targeted Reforms for California’s Core Environmental Law.” Rather, the problem has long appeared to be the absence of any serious legislative appetite, with many lawmakers viewing significant changes to CEQA to be a political third rail. Even former Gov. Jerry Brown called CEQA reform “the Lord’s work” but failed to advance any fundamental revisions to the law through the Legislature.

At the same time, Gov. Gavin Newsom has taken steps to try to address permitting bottlenecks for important infrastructure projects. In 2023, the governor proposed an “infrastructure package” consisting of bills to streamline CEQA review and permitting for large renewable energy projects, semiconductor fabrication plants and other critical infrastructure. The Legislature ultimately passed that package, but only after making amendments to narrow and limit its application. In summer 2023, the Legislature passed another bill proposed by the governor to provide a process for expedited permitting of impacts to the western Joshua tree, a plant species widely distributed throughout southern California. Once again, the Legislature narrowed and limited the bill. Thus, California has fallen into a pattern of the governor proposing reforms which the Legislature then waters down — often at the urging of environmental groups, unions and other politically powerful constituencies that have become adept at using CEQA and California’s byzantine permitting processes to delay or stop projects, or to leverage concessions from developers.

CEQA and Permitting Reform in 2025: A Bold New Vision or Politics As Usual?

Now, with the issuance of the “Final Report of the California Assembly Select Committee on Permitting Reform” in March 2025, there is reason for optimism that the Legislature may finally consider fundamental CEQA and permitting reform. Established by Speaker Robert Rivas in early 2024, the select committee, chaired by Assembly Member Buffy Wicks (Oakland), held hearings throughout the state. Its report recognizes the magnitude of the challenge facing California if the state is to address what the select committee calls both “a housing crisis and a climate crisis”:

To address these interconnected crises, California will need to facilitate new construction at an unprecedented scale. This includes millions of housing units, thousands of gigawatts of clean energy generation, storage, and transmission capacity, a million electric vehicle chargers and thousands of miles of transit, and thousands of climate resiliency projects to address drought, flooding and sea level rise, and changing habitats. Each of these projects will require a government-issued permit before they can be built — and some will require dozens! Therefore, only if governments consistently issue permits in a manner that is timely, transparent, consistent, and outcome-oriented, will we be able to address our housing and climate crises. Unfortunately, for most projects, the opposite is true. They face permitting processes that are time-consuming, opaque, confusing, and favor process over outcomes. (Page 3.)

Reflecting what appears to be a new zeitgeist in California, on March 26 a sold-out auditorium of nearly 2,000 San Franciscans erupted in applause and cheers when Ezra Klein (co-author of “Abundance”) called for major reforms to CEQA to facilitate construction of new housing. The very next day, Chair Wicks and a bipartisan group of colleagues held a press conference announcing 22 housing bills presented as a “Fast Track Housing Package” that would address a range of impediments by standardizing and speeding up the application process, imposing timelines for agency review and otherwise improve the nuts and bolts of housing development. The centerpieces of the package, and likely the most controversial proposals, are Wicks’ AB 609 and Senator Scott Wiener’s (San Francisco) SB 607. AB 609 will provide a CEQA exemption for a broad category of in-fill housing, while SB 607 will exempt housing projects requiring rezoning from CEQA if the project is consistent with a city’s state-mandated housing plan. In introducing the Housing Package, Wicks explained that other legislators would be introducing bills to address the need for reforms in the electricity and transportation areas. These bills, along with a number of the bills in the Housing Package, will be analyzed in future blog posts.

2025 may finally be the year when the California Legislature passes bills that go beyond narrow CEQA fixes and exemptions. This year should also see the Legislature devote increased attention to streamlining (and even consolidating) permitting processes. In the meantime, California local governments and agencies concerned to see their powers limited can be expected to find ways to pick up the pace of environmental review and permitting when it comes to getting much-needed housing and other infrastructure built.