CEQA
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
Measure HHH: LA’s Homelessness Reduction Bond
A Case Study of What’s Wrong with California Government In 2016, generous Angelenos approved Measure HHH, the $1.2 billion Homelessness Reduction and Prevention, Housing and Facilities Bond aimed at combatting Los Angeles’ homeless crisis. At the time, there were more than 30,000 people living on city streets or in shelters. ...
California
CEQA: The high cost of good intentions
By Chris Carr and Ken Broad California is in a quagmire due in no small part to the weaponization of CEQA, the California Environmental Quality Act. We are not providing the physical infrastructure befitting the world’s 5th-largest economy and leading crucible of innovation. Too often, critical projects don’t get built, ...
California
New Report Shows How “CEQA Gauntlet” Hinders Housing, School, Infrastructure, Climate Projects
With 3,000 prospective UC Berkeley students facing rejection due to a California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA) lawsuit, the nonpartisan Pacific Research Institute today released “The CEQA Gauntlet,” a new research project detailing how CEQA adds expense and delay to – and in some cases halts – critical California projects including ...
California
Watch Videos from 2022 PRI California Ideas in Action Conference
Conference Theme: Saving California As PRI’s new book Saving California suggests, market-based reforms can help solve California’s biggest policy problems and even advance the goals of the state’s most progressive legislators. Come hear policy experts and real life changemakers discuss reforms that could push the state onto a better track and ...
Blog
California Continued to Shrink in 2021
In 2021, as in 2020, the Golden State only continued to shrink. According to new data from the Department of Finance, California lost a startling 173,000 residents last year. As reported in the Los Angeles Times, 55,000 of those lost residents were victims of the pandemic, while a further 53,000 ...
Blog
Single-Family Zoning Is Dead In California. Now What?
In late September, something big happened: SB 9 was signed into law, effectively ending single-family zoning in California. Depending on where you get your news, it was big for one of two very different reasons. To some, it heralded the end of the suburbs, an assault on the “suburban lifestyle ...
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 ...
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 ...
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 ...
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 ...
Measure HHH: LA’s Homelessness Reduction Bond
A Case Study of What’s Wrong with California Government In 2016, generous Angelenos approved Measure HHH, the $1.2 billion Homelessness Reduction and Prevention, Housing and Facilities Bond aimed at combatting Los Angeles’ homeless crisis. At the time, there were more than 30,000 people living on city streets or in shelters. ...
CEQA: The high cost of good intentions
By Chris Carr and Ken Broad California is in a quagmire due in no small part to the weaponization of CEQA, the California Environmental Quality Act. We are not providing the physical infrastructure befitting the world’s 5th-largest economy and leading crucible of innovation. Too often, critical projects don’t get built, ...
New Report Shows How “CEQA Gauntlet” Hinders Housing, School, Infrastructure, Climate Projects
With 3,000 prospective UC Berkeley students facing rejection due to a California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA) lawsuit, the nonpartisan Pacific Research Institute today released “The CEQA Gauntlet,” a new research project detailing how CEQA adds expense and delay to – and in some cases halts – critical California projects including ...
Watch Videos from 2022 PRI California Ideas in Action Conference
Conference Theme: Saving California As PRI’s new book Saving California suggests, market-based reforms can help solve California’s biggest policy problems and even advance the goals of the state’s most progressive legislators. Come hear policy experts and real life changemakers discuss reforms that could push the state onto a better track and ...
California Continued to Shrink in 2021
In 2021, as in 2020, the Golden State only continued to shrink. According to new data from the Department of Finance, California lost a startling 173,000 residents last year. As reported in the Los Angeles Times, 55,000 of those lost residents were victims of the pandemic, while a further 53,000 ...
Single-Family Zoning Is Dead In California. Now What?
In late September, something big happened: SB 9 was signed into law, effectively ending single-family zoning in California. Depending on where you get your news, it was big for one of two very different reasons. To some, it heralded the end of the suburbs, an assault on the “suburban lifestyle ...
