Gov. Gavin Newsom even held up passage of the state budget until lawmakers approved two reforms to the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA). Assembly Bill 130 exempts a broader number of environmentally friendly infill housing projects from CEQA. Senate Bill 131 exempts nine types of projects from CEQA. These include health centers, advanced manufacturing facilities, child-care centers, wildfire-mitigation projects, parks and others.
The YIMBYs are, justifiably, ecstatic about their success. In a recent article in The Argument Magazine, David Schleicher declares, “The intellectual fight over liberalizing land-use regulations is over. The YIMBYs have won. … Only a decade or so ago, arguing that private developers needed a freer hand to build housing was an unpopular take.” And now it’s a widely popular position.
That’s a fair point—and his broader point is even better: “But winning this fight on paper was never the point. The point was to build more housing.” Schleicher focused on the continuing obstacles from judges and local governments, which is accurate. But my concern are the obstacles from YIMBYs themselves, whose agenda is too narrow. They admirably call for more housing, but too often it comes with an asterisk: *only of the high-density type they prefer.
Sen. Scott Wiener, the San Francisco Democrat who is the Legislature’s indisputable YIMBY leader, described AB 130 and SB 131 as “the most significant reforms to CEQA ever considered by the Legislature.” They are more significant than anything the Legislature has passed previously, but are they sufficient? Will these laws actually result in more housing—or at least enough additional housing to make a dent in the crisis?
I fear YIMBYS are suffering from the same problem that’s endemic throughout the California Legislature: an eagerness to cheer political victories while neglecting whether the new laws are actually accomplishing the stated goals. It’s encouraging that many YIMBYs are asking those honest questions.
After detailing some of the many housing deregulation bills that California has passed over several years, CalMatters concluded: “Fast-forward to 2025 and this spate of recent California laws, and others like it intended to supercharge the construction of desperately needed housing, have had ‘limited to no impact on the state’s housing supply.’ That damning conclusion comes from a surprising source: A new report by YIMBY Law, a pro-development nonprofit that would very much like to see these laws work.”
The culprits are easy to identify: lax state enforcement; remaining local regulatory impediments; and the costly mandates and other barriers included in the new laws, which reduce the financial feasibility of these streamlined projects. NIMBY opponents describe each new proposed measure as an assault on the quality of their neighborhoods, but the real problem is the bills might not do much at all at jump-starting housing construction.
To be clear, I’m fully on board most of these laws. They all have flaws but that’s life in the give-and-take world of legislative sausage-making. My basic test is simple: Do they increase freedom and reduce regulations? In every case, the answer is yes, although some are a closer call than others. Senate Bill 9, for instance, allows property owners to build duplexes on their property. Senate Bill 423 extends CEQA exemptions to the Coastal Zone. And SB 79 makes it easier for property owners to build higher-density projects around transit stops.
As I wrote about that legislation in my column in the Free Cities Center: “The bill doesn’t stop property owners from doing anything, but instead allows them to do more things on their land. The other key term is ‘by right,’ which means a property owner could build a project as a right rather than a privilege granted by the municipality.” I was rebutting those who argue that they have a “right” to protect the character of their neighborhood. No one owns something as ill-defined as a neighborhood’s character. You own your property and I own mine.
But the key question isn’t whether it’s a good idea to reform CEQA, remove permitting impediments and let specific types of projects more easily move forward. It is whether these laws that aim to do so actually are creating the results that are intended. California’s home prices and rental costs remain at near record highs. And if these laws are not achieving the desired results, what policies will get us there?
My long-standing conclusion: YIMBYs and their legislative supporters are too wedded to the concept of density. They say “just build housing” and speak a good game about empowering markets, but they often act as if the only acceptable type of new housing is the high-density, multi-family, transit-oriented variety. Most Californians prefer single-family homes. Suburbia gets a bad rap in academia and the Legislature, but it’s the preferred choice for most of us.
Does this mean we should oppose laws that carve out additional CEQA exemptions? Of course not. I will applaud the passage of every bill that makes it easier to build any type of housing. I join with my YIMBY colleagues in celebrating the passage of SB 79, AB 130 and SB 131, but I’m not going to get off my hobby horse: Just deregulate every type of housing and let the market provide measurable victories (numbers of new homes built) and not just political and intellectual ones.
Steven Greenhut is director of the Pacific Research Institute’s Free Cities Center.
