CEQA and housing production: 2018 survey of California cities and counties

ABSTRACT California is facing a severe housing shortage and needs to substantially increase housing production above current production levels to dampen soaring prices. Legislators have considered legal and policy changes to support increased production, including a range of incremental to sweeping changes to the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA) regarding its application to housing projects. There has been limited empirical analysis of how CEQA affects housing production. This study, which seeks to build empirical data, presents results from a survey of California municipalities about the choices made to conduct CEQA environmental review for housing projects proposed between 2015 to 2017, including the use of several types of streamlining and exemptions. The survey, sent to all 541 of California’s cities and counties, yielded 46 responses (9% response rate). These participating jurisdictions accounted for 54% of all multi-family residential (5+ units) building permits issued between 2010 and 2017. Survey responses indicated the Streamlining/Exemptions category was the predominant category of environmental review followed by Mitigated Negative Declarations. Only 6% of projects were reviewed by Environmental Impact Reports. Respondents selected CEQA relatively infrequently among factors constraining new supply, with high development costs, neighborhood opposition, lack of sites, and lack of affordable housing funding as more common constraints to expanding supply.