Ten months after California voters rejected a rent control ballot initiative by more than 2.3 million votes – 59 percent to 41 percent – the state is on the brink of enacting a rent control measure approved by the Legislature and backed by Gov. Gavin Newsom.

Proposition 10 failed last year after two political action committees backed by apartment owners, real estate agents and others in the rental business paid for tens of millions of dollars in TV ads that depicted the measure as being a threat to seniors – a tactic that was effective but criticized as manipulative. This view that they didn’t lose a fair fight is one reason that Prop. 10’s main backer – the AIDS Healthcare Foundation – and other advocates plan a 2020 ballot measure on rent control.

This belief that rent control was a political winner despite Prop. 10’s result was also on display in Sacramento with Assembly Bill 1482. Assemblyman David Chiu, D-San Francisco, and other Democrats barely acknowledged Republican complaints that the bill amounted to an end run around the will of voters. Instead, they said Californians demanded relief from soaring rent.

Newsom opposed concessions made by bill author

But Chiu was worried enough about winning support for AB1482 that he weakened some of its provisions to get business groups to remain neutral on the bill. This led to an unusual scenario over the last month in which a high-profile, controversial measure actually was strengthened – not weakened – as final votes neared. That came after Newsom and his staff told Chiu he shouldn’t have compromised.

The Assembly passed AB1482 on the strength of 48 Democratic vote. It was opposed by a bipartisan group of 26 members. It passed the Senate 25-10 on a close to party-line vote.

The version that reached Newsom’s desk this week limits most annual rent increases to 5 percent plus inflation, with the law sunsetting in 2029. It doesn’t supersede local rent control laws in place in Los Angeles and about 20 other cities in the Golden State, with many in the Bay Area. Apartments built within the last 15 years are not covered. Nor are rented-out single-family homes – with the exception of those owned by investment groups or corporations. 

The passage of the rent control measure comes amid evidence that despite three years of new laws meant to ease the housing crisis, homebuilding in the state is actually declining in 2019. Capitol watchers said now at least lawmakers who backed it can tell their constituents they got something big done on housing.

Will California again be a national trendsetter?

But the steady advance of AB1482 was also treated as a national story by the New York Times and many other major news outlets because of California’s long history as a national trendsetter.

Cea Weaver, campaign coordinator of Housing Justice for All, told the Times that the bill’s likely enactment could be a game-changer. “Any victory helps to build a groundswell,” Weaver said. “There is a younger generation of people who see themselves as permanent renters, and they’re demanding that our public policy catches up to that economic reality.”

California became the second state after Oregon to adopt statewide rent control. Chiu’s bill was modeled on one that Oregon lawmakers enacted in February.

Many economists believe rent control ends up being counterproductive because it discourages construction and adequate maintenance, among other problems.

In 1992, when the American Economic Association surveyed its members on the topic, 93 percent agreed that “a ceiling on rents reduces the quality and quantity of housing.”

The May decision of state Senate Appropriations Chairman Anthony Portantino, D-La Cañada Flintridge, to kill a sweeping bill making it far easier for developers to build four- or five-story condominium and rental projects near mass transit led many disappointed pundits to complain that the Legislature still hadn’t done enough to spur housing construction. Senate Bill 50, by Sen. Scott Wiener, D-San Francisco, was seen as crucial to getting local communities to meet housing needs.

But officials and residents of the San Francisco suburb of San Bruno don’t want to hear that the state hasn’t done enough to pressure local governments. Thanks to a 2017 housing law – also crafted by Wiener – and another bill recently signed by Gov. Gavin Newsom, the city of 43,000 residents could eventually face fines of as much as $600,000 a month for failing to meet housing mandates, according to a report in the San Francisco Chronicle.

At issue is the San Bruno City Council’s July 10 decision to reject a 425-unit housing project proposed by the Signature Development Group. Zachary Olmstead, a deputy director at the state Department of Housing and Community Development, warned city officials in a letter last week that under the 2017 law, they were legally compelled to approve the project since it met all planning and zoning requirements without imperiling public safety or health. Olmstead noted that state law compels San Bruno to approve construction of 1,155 new housing units by 2023, but so far it had approved just 118 units – with none for low-income families.

Gov. Newsom sees lawsuits as way to fight local NIMBYs

The formal notice from the state clears the way for the Newsom administration to eventually sue San Bruno if it doesn’t reverse its decision on the project or otherwise approve new housing. The governor already made it clear he considers such lawsuits as a powerful tool to force housing construction, suing Huntington Beach in January because the Orange County city had made little progress toward the requirement that it add 533 low-income housing units by the end of 2021.

Huntington Beach officials, who believe that their state constitutional protections as a charter city are being violated, are suing the state over its housing edict.

San Bruno officials have reacted with much less defiance. That may be partly because as a general law city, San Bruno can’t claim constitutional cover. It’s also because there is far more support for the 425-unit project in San Bruno than there is for low-income housing in Huntington Beach.

According to the Chronicle, the Signature Development Group worked to firm up support for its project by accepting city officials’ request that its plan add 64 more low-income units and include a grocery store, among other concessions. But while four of the five council members backed the project, two of those members recused themselves because of perceived conflicts of interests, since they live within 1,000 feet of the proposed project site. That meant there weren’t the necessary three votes for approval.

Unlike Huntington Beach, San Bruno is conciliatory

Even before the state’s warning arrived, San Bruno City Manager Jovan Grogan posted a statement on the city’s website about the controversy late last month that acknowledged the City Council’s decision might not stand. 

Grogan’s conciliatory remarks presented a sharp contrast with Huntington Beach officials’ reaction to the state’s pressure. There, City Attorney Michael Gates blasted Newsom and suggested that Huntington Beach’s history as a Republican stronghold was why it was singled out first instead of the 50-plus other cities in California that also failed to meet state housing mandates.

Meanwhile, there were reports this week that the San Bruno City Council would meet soon to review its limited options. An opinion from the city’s legal advisers saying the two council members who recused themselves from conflicts could vote because of the unusual circumstances could be a tidy way out of the problem.

The need for less expensive housing in the Bay Area and Silicon Valley has been so plain for so long that many of those on the outside of California looking in wonder why local governments, developers and voters can’t get on the same page and get things done. A January story in the New York Times about the unexpected backlash to San Jose Unified’s attempts to prevent an exodus of teachers by offering subsidized housing reflected this sense of puzzlement.

But a story unfolding at the University of California’s Berkeley campus shows the complexity and difficulty of adding housing in urban areas of the Golden State. Housing development is seen by some communities and interest groups as a zero-sum game – if one side wins, then the other side or sides must have lost.

To address a lack of affordable housing that UC Berkeley says has made it difficult to attract and retain professors, Chancellor Carol Christ last year launched an aggressive push to replace a four-story campus parking building with 350 vehicle spaces with a $126 million complex that included 150 faculty apartments, 170 parking spots and a relatively small academic building.

But the plan to tear down the Upper Hearst parking building has faced steadily increasing criticism from faculty members. Their concern is that building the project would add to the heavy debt load borne by the university because of the $474 million cost of recent stadium renovations and the construction of a new student athletic center.

Yet coverage by the San Francisco Chronicle earlier this month of the Berkeley faculty Senate’s 174-69 vote asking Christ to suspend the project noted that the most pitched criticisms of the proposal came from engineering faculty members who stood to lose their access to convenient parking. Their criticism of the project continued even after Christ presented documents that she said showed the developer and property manager bore the financial risks if the project had cost overruns or other problems – not the university.

City says campus minimized enrollment growth

Meanwhile, a new front in this fight emerged in late April when the Berkeley City Council voted to sue UC Berkeley and the UC system over the apartment complex – even though city leaders praised Christ for seeking to add on-campus housing.

Council members cited planning documents previously filed with the city under which the university forecast it would have a student enrollment of 33,450 by 2020. Instead, as of January, enrollment already stood at about 41,000 – more than 25 percent higher than what UC officials had predicted.

Since under state law, the UC campus doesn’t pay local property taxes, city leaders say Berkeley taxpayers are the ones who are saddled with the cost of this fast growth.

This enrollment spurt has led to “increasing burdens on our streets, police and fire services,” Berkeley Mayor Jesse Arreguin said in a news release.

But Christ has been conciliatory to city officials, suggesting the university sees a path to addressing City Hall’s concerns about campus enrollment growth.

Yet the Berkeley chancellor isn’t deferring to the faculty Senate. She’s moved ahead with plans to tear down the Upper Hearst parking structure. The building could be closed next month, and construction work could begin this September, according to stories in the Daily Californian student newspaper. UC Berkeley officials hope the new complex can be finished by summer 2021.

Over the past dozen years, the California environmental lobby has never seemed more powerful in the Legislature and in state government. Under Govs. Arnold Schwarzenegger and Jerry Brown, the Golden State has passed

But a bracing report from the California Air Resources Board shows that environmentalists’ clout can’t shake the complete control that NIMBYs have over local planning in most of the state – to the detriment of the environment. It found that a 2008 state law – Senate Bill 375 – had been an abject failure. The law requires the state’s 18 regional intergovernmental agencies to push to put new housing near transit stations and to add new transportation options so as to decrease pollution from vehicle commuting.

Not only are three out of four workers still commuting alone to work, carpooling and transit ridership are down. As a result, vehicle greenhouse gas emissions have actually risen in recent years – and the decline from 2007-2011 seems likely to have been a function of the Great Recession, not the state push to reduce emissions associated with climate change.

The air board sees no chance that the SB375 goal of reducing statewide vehicle emissions 10 percent by 2020 will be met.

The report was met with dismay by environmental groups and journalists concerned with progress against climate change. The most common response to the air board’s finding was the call for the Legislature to take more steps to limit the ability of local governments to block projects that met certain criteria – starting with being near transit stations.

69% of Californians want local control of housing

But the appetite of state lawmakers to take on NIMBYs may be limited in the wake of new evidence that NIMBYism isn’t just espoused by activists who see every new housing project as detrimental to quality of life. Instead, it’s a core belief of state residents. A USC Dornsrife/Los Angeles Times survey released in October showed 69 percent of Californians preferred local control of housing decision-making.

And the fate of a bill to reduce local control over housing showed that even poor people – those who in theory would be most helped by adding housing stock, which likely would push down sky-high rents – are skeptical.

Senate Bill 827, by Sen. Scott Weiner, D-San Francisco, would have made it much easier to build four- or five-story apartment buildings within a half-mile of transit centers. The prospect of apartment buildings springing up in poor neighborhoods with single-family homes – such as in the Los Angeles County cities of Inglewood and Carson – led to an outraged reaction from 36 housing and transit “justice groups” led by the Alliance for Community Transit – Los Angeles (ACT-LA). Instead of seeing the bill as leading to cheaper housing, these groups saw it as likely to lead to home renters being ousted in favor of more lucrative apartment buildings, and to new waves of gentrification.

The opposition to Weiner’s bill from activists and from local governments – including every member of the Los Angeles City Council – was so intense that SB827 died at its first committee hearing in April.

Weiner has since met with ACT-LA leaders and other activists and plans to reintroduce SB827 next year with provisions that address concerns that poor neighborhoods would be upended by much laxer housing rules. But such provisions could end up leading to trading old rules giving local governments power to limit construction for new rules with similar effects.

State Sen. Steve Glazer, D-Orinda, and 16 co-sponsors have introduced legislation that sounds like a bold move to address the high cost of housing. Glazer’s

The last time the rental tax credit was increased, in 1979, it set the credit at $10 per month for an individual filer and $20 a month for joint filers, with eligibility capped by total income. Senate Bill 1182 would increase the cap to $20 per month for individuals and $40 per month for joint filers. To be eligible, individuals have to have gross incomes of $40,078 or less and joint filers have to have incomes of $80,156 or less.

One-bedroom apartments routinely go for $1,700 or more per month in most metropolitan areas and the average home sale is above $500,000 in most of Southern California and over $1 million in the Bay Area. Glazer’s credit would mean that joint filers paying the average rent go from spending $20,160 in a year to spending $19,920 – a 1.2 percent savings. Individual filers paying the average rent would drop from $20,280 a year to $20,160 – a 0.6 percent savings. The percentage savings on a typical mortgage would be much lower.

In his news release announcing the legislation, Glazer noted attempts by the Legislature on many fronts to make it easier to build more housing, starting with streamlining regulations and giving qualified projects guaranteed approvals. He said these efforts could take years before they began helping Californians.

“None of those measures directed relief to the monthly budgets of struggling renters,” Glazer said. “The renter’s tax credit does.”

Three Republicans among co-sponsors

The news release listed these lawmakers, including three Republicans, as co-authors: Sens. Jim Beall, D-San Jose; Steve Bradford, D-Gardena: Bill Dodd, D-Napa; Cathleen Galgiani, D-Stockton; Jerry Hill, D-San Mateo; Ben Hueso, D-San Diego; Connie Leyva, D-Chino; Josh Newman, D-Fullerton; Janet Nguyen, R-Fountain Valley; Richard Pan, D-Sacramento; Anthony Portantino, D-Glendale; Richard Roth, D-Riverside; Nancy Skinner, D-Berkeley; Bob Wieckowski, D-Fremont; Scott Wilk, R-Santa Clarita; and Assemblyman Tom Lackey, R-Palmdale.

Glazer’s office said the higher renters’ tax credit would cost the state $230 million in annual revenue.

There are other restrictions on eligibility for the renters’ tax credit besides income caps, the Franchise Tax Board’s website notes. They include:

  – Tax filers need to have paid rent for at least six months for shelter that served as their principal residence.

  – The rented property was not on a parcel exempt from state property tax.

  – The property was not shared for more than six months with a parent or a guardian or any individual who could claim the tax filer as a dependent.

  – The tax filer was not a minor living with a legal guardian, parent or foster parent.

Glazer, 60, a former political and development consultant and aide to Gov. Jerry Brown, won a May 2015 special election to fill the final 19 months of Mark DeSaulnier’s state Senate seat after DeSaulnier was elected to Congress in 2014. He won a full four-year term in 2016.

Nationally, the focus has been on the numbers illustrating the extent of the disaster – 200,000-plus acres charred, at least 40 dead and hundreds missing, perhaps more than 10,000 structures burned. But for those most directly affected, there are much more long-term fears. After Hurricane Katrina hammered New Orleans in 2005, Louisiana officials said it led to a “lost decade.”

It’s clear that dozens of wineries suffered some damage, and several were destroyed or badly damaged, including White Rock Vineyards, Ancient Oak Cellars, Paradise Ridge and Signorello Valley. The city of Santa Rosa suffered body blows to its visitor industry with the destruction of the Hilton Sonoma Wine Country hotel, Willi’s Wine Bar, the Cricklewood steakhouse, the Fountaingrove Inn and several other tourist mainstays.

This weekend, in small towns and unincorporated areas west of the main fire damage, about two dozen hotels and hundreds of private rentals were in good condition and remained open. But in hard-hit communities, with the focus remaining on firefighting efforts, it’s not clear yet how bad the damage has been to popular tourism centers, wine facilities and more. The idea that rebuilding might be quick and relatively easy is tough to square with grim images from Napa and Sonoma counties.

Authorities also emphasize that while they are optimistic, it is not a sure thing that the current fires will be contained in coming days, and they warn that windy, dry conditions could spur new infernos.

The concern about the wildfires’ economic toll is well-grounded. According to wine industry research, in 2014, tourism and wine production were responsible for about 100,000 jobs in Napa and Sonoma counties, generating $26 billion annually for the regional economy.

The region’s tourism-wine industry has already faced recent disruptions. In 2015, nearly 2,000 homes in Lake, Napa and Sonoma counties were torched by the Valley Fire.

Area already had shortage of skilled construction workers

But the latest wildfires mean another headache for the industry may only worsen: the high cost of housing, which can make it difficult to find workers for modest-paying hotel and restaurant jobs and often complicates efforts to bring in agricultural laborers.

Last month, according to realtor.com statistics, the median home price was $876,200 in Napa County and $750,000 in Sonoma County.

Average rents for modest single-family homes in the Napa area were about $2,400 before the blazes, with comparable figures in Sonoma County. Still, earlier this year, a real-estate blogger wrote that it was possible to find monthly rentals of $1,500 or even a little less.

But that claim could be ancient history in the wake of the fires taking nearly 6,000 homes – so far – out of an already-tight market. While many will be rebuilt, real-estate agents see an even-tighter market ahead, especially in Sonoma County, which has so far lost about 2,800 homes. That’s 4 percent of the county’s 67,000 housing units.

A Bay Area News Group report offered a downbeat take on how quickly the region’s housing stock might bounce back. With insurers paying for the rebuilding of homes, there will be a massive demand for skilled construction workers – and the region already had a shortage of such workers before this month’s fires, the article noted.

One expert offered hope that the wine country price shock would be limited – but for a reason that’s troubling in its own right.

“Pricing can go down, possibly, because the area is burned out and not an attractive place to live,” economics researcher Randall Bell told the Bay Area News Group.

Both cities cite the same reasons they are epicenters for homelessness: mild climates and extremely expensive housing. But knowing what’s driving the problem isn’t the same as having an answer for it.

In Los Angeles, Mayor Eric Garcetti and City Council leaders in 2015 declared a “state of emergency” over the homeless crisis and announced $100 million in funding for homelessness relief in 2015-16, a big increase over previous years. In 2016, city voters followed up by approving a $1.2 billion bond to ramp up plans to build housing for the homeless, and in fiscal 2016-17, homeless funding went up to $138 million.

But since the emergency declaration, the average number of those homeless on a given night according to city tracking has gone up by nearly two-thirds. In 2015, the average number was 21,338. In 2016, it was 28,464. In 2017, with half the year still to go, the number has grown by 18 percent to 34,189.

Not only are efforts to get more homeless into shelters failing, a Friday report in the Los Angeles Times concluded that a $14 million program to clean up homeless encampments was ineffective because as soon as one camp area was closed and cleaned, another popped up nearby.

City officials argued they were making progress in addressing an immense problem. Residents weren’t buying it.

“[Work crews] clean up and they come right back. It’s just a never-ending cycle,” a North Hills hair salon owner told the Times. “You’d think they would come and find a place for them, but they don’t. They just tell them to move.”

Heavy spending producing weak results

In San Francisco, residents – and elected officials – face even worse frustrations. The city spends far more than Los Angeles to deal with a smaller number of homeless people, without the gains one might expect.

In 2015, Mayor Ed Lee was re-elected to a second four-year term after a campaign in which he promised to tackle what was unanimously seen as a humanitarian and civic crisis. But eight months later, the San Francisco Chronicle ran a rare front-page editorial declaring city efforts to have failed.

The number of homeless people on an average night was estimated at about 7,500 in January 2015. By late 2016, city officials’ estimate had jumped to about 10,000, with some homeless advocates saying the number was closer to 12,000. Different counts have different methodologies, leading to disputes over whether the problem is significantly worse than it used to be. But the Chronicle’s front-page editorial came down squarely on the side of those who argue some official counts are much too low.

Meanwhile, as in Los Angeles, attempts to clear homeless encampments that San Francisco voters had blessed by approving a measure prohibiting tents on public sidewalks in November 2016 were depicted by news coverage as more symbolic than substantive. Mayor Lee agreed with the assessment.

City spending on homelessness has gone from $241 million in fiscal 2015-16 to $275 million in 2016-17 to $305 million in the fiscal year that began Saturday. In May, a local nonprofit group also promised to provide a $100 million grant to tackle homeless.

But this may not affect the problem except on the margins. Local governments have long noticed that a relative handful of homeless people – those with serious mental illness – consume a disproportionate share of homeless funding with constant trips to emergency rooms and confrontations with police and residents. In San Francisco, this category of homeless people makes up 3 percent of total homeless but uses one-third of resources. A June 2016 Chronicle story suggested the tab for this group alone could eat up far more than one-third of all funds if its severe problems were addressed with the comprehensive approach that advocates want.

That would leave little to go around for the most common category of homeless person – those who lost shelter after losing a job or after a rent increase or a life emergency such as heavy medical bills.

This harsh state of affairs was on L.A. voters’ minds in November, when 65 percent approved Measure JJJ, an initiative launched by the L.A. County Federation of Labor that ended up winning a fair amount of business support. It creates an unusually strong affordable housing mandate that affects all projects with 10 or more units that need a zoning change, general plan amendment or height-district change to proceed.

Such projects are required to include construction of below-market-rate rental units — the term some prefer to the more vague “affordable housing.” With single-family housing, duplex and condo projects, developers could be forced to have up to 40 percent of the units be below-market-rate. With apartment projects, the mandate is up to 25 percent of units. Builders have the option of building the cheaper units elsewhere or paying into a city housing trust.

Measure JJJ’s de facto project labor agreement controlling construction pay caused considerable griping in some business circles. But in a city where housing stock has lagged behind population growth for decades — driving the average rent to nearly $2,500 and forcing one-third of residents to pay more than half their income toward housing — its victory was celebrated as progress on a huge issue.

2-year moratorium on planning exceptions called catastrophic

Now, less than four months later, Los Angeles voters are again being asked to vote on a housing proposal — Measure S, the Neighborhood Integrity Initiative — that could negate what Measure JJJ hopes to accomplish.

Its critics say the measure would make the housing crisis in Los Angeles even worse. Defenders say it’s needed to respond to what they depict as shady City Hall approvals of zoning exceptions which allow for construction of large, high-impact projects that aren’t in neighbors’ interest.

If approved in a March 7 vote, it would ban for two years the granting of special project approvals to allow development contrary to what’s now permitted in Los Angeles’ 35 neighborhood planning documents.

No one disagrees that the documents are often badly out of date, reflecting the needs and concerns of the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s. The Measure S moratorium would end if all 35 documents were updated before the two-year ban came to an end.

But city officials say the process of revising the plans is cumbersome and will take years. From Mayor Eric Garcetti on down, they depict Measure S as a disaster for a city with an acute housing shortage. Garcetti has also warned it will make it far more difficult for the city to deal with its homeless crisis.

Local labor unions are also alarmed. “Measure S will block much of the affordable housing that voters just voted for when they approved Proposition JJJ,” Rusty Hicks, executive secretary-treasurer of the Los Angeles County Federation of Labor, said in a statement issued last week.

Zoning exception / donation link drives corruption argument

Garcetti and other city officials say suggestions of corruption in the way Los Angeles grants exceptions to its neighborhood plans are unfounded. But this argument is countered by the Yes on S campaign pointing to heavy campaign contributions to officeholders from developers who benefited the most from the planning waivers.

The AIDS Healthcare Foundation has been the most prominent face in the Yes on S campaign effort. Founded 30 years ago this month by Michael Weinstein, the foundation has long been active in health care issues, most recently with Proposition 60, the failed November state ballot measure that would have required adult film performers to wear condoms.

Weinstein’s prominence in the Yes on S campaign suggests the Hollywood-based foundation now hopes to make its mark on a broader range of issues.

But old assumptions that Brown’s main foes would be environmentalists and trial lawyers have been undercut repeatedly in recent weeks. Instead, perhaps his most formidable obstacles to making the Golden State more hospitable to new construction are local officials eager to maintain control over what their communities look like. Across California, they’re preparing or considering ordinances that require local voter approval of projects of a certain size or density or otherwise put hard limits on certain types of development — measures that would block key provisions of Brown’s plan.

A recent Voice of San Diego article noted such efforts in Del Mar, Costa Mesa, Los Angeles, Santa Monica, El Dorado County, Cupertino and Gilroy. Among the requirements that those communities may impose: requiring voter approval of most new construction higher than two stories and creating zones in which any construction required ballot OKs.

NIMBYism popular in many communities

Critics claim this would worsen the California housing crisis, not help it. But in city after city, officials say they are responding to local sentiment.

This gets to a key weakness of Brown’s strategy: While there is a growing understanding that the best way to relieve California’s housing crisis is by adding more stock, people are often only enthusiastic about the idea in the abstract. When it comes to one’s own community, enthusiasm usually wanes as part of a “not-in-my-backyard” attitude.

A classic example of this NIMBYism is now playing out in Millbrae, just south of San Francisco, in the region with the highest housing costs in California. A proposal to build 300-plus homes with office buildings and retail space next to a Bay Area Rapid Transit station — a prototypical “smart growth” project — is facing growing opposition.

The project would be on 116 acres already owned by BART. It complies with local housing policies and comes after years of complaints from area residents that their children can’t afford to live near them.

But at a July 12 City Council meeting, residents jammed the chambers to warn the project would worsen crime and traffic and harm quality of life. According to a local newspaper account, one resident even said the BART effort amounted to a criminal enterprise — “like the Wild West for outlaws to come and take stuff.”

Former San Francisco mayor touts status quo

That same day, the San Francisco Chronicle printed an op-ed by former Mayor Art Agnos blasting Brown’s housing proposal and offering a defense of the status quo of strong regulation. Agnos challenged the idea that adding more housing stock is the best way to bring down housing costs and said “rent stabilization” — i.e., rent control — should be an option for every city.

Agnos also called for more government funding for affordable housing programs that critics say amount to lottery programs which only help a relative handful of families.

From 1993-2001, Agnos was the western regional director for the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development. On his personal website, he depicts his efforts to help poor people find housing in San Francisco with government subsidies as a rousing success story.

Agnos doesn’t mention this claim in the Chronicle op-ed.

The governor’s plan, unveiled last month, came after months of coverage about spiraling housing costs in urban areas, starting with San Francisco, where average monthly apartment rents have soared past $3,500 over the past year. Brown wants to modify the California Environmental Quality Act to give pre-clearance to high-density projects that meet certain standards, including having a portion of units that are deemed affordable. He also wants to reduce the obstacles to obtaining building permits.

The strategy reflects an approach that has worked fairly well in New Jersey and Massachusetts. Its basics were recommended in a 2003 Public Policy Institute of California report, which emphasized the need for a statewide approach, given how ineffective local housing policies were in creating housing stock.

Brown’s initiative passed the Assembly on a 46-7 vote on May 27 — perhaps reflecting that state lawmakers were hearing it from their constituents over the cost of rent and homes. But environmentalists are now loudly opposing the measure, and its passage in the state Senate is far less assured. Labor unions and trial lawyers, which have a history of using CEQA to force concessions or settlements from developers, also are opposing the plan.

A joint letter sent to every state lawmaker by unions, the Natural Resources Defense Council and other green groups last month warned that if adopted, Brown’s plan “would be a disaster for local government, local communities, the environment and the citizens of California.”

Brown laments difficulty of changing CEQA

In an interview with a UCLA publication, Blue Print, the governor addressed the difficulty of amending CEQA, something supported by all living California governors.

“The unions won’t let you because they use it as a hammer to get project labor agreements. The environmentalists like it because it’s the people’s document that you have to disclose all the impacts,” the governor said. “And, of course, the developers have a problem because ‘impact,’ boy, that’s a big word. Everything’s an impact.”

But as the Los Angeles Times recently reported, CEQA is not the only obstacle in San Francisco or Los Angeles.

In 1978, San Franciscans approved a ballot measure limiting changes in neighborhood density. In 1986, city voters backed a strict growth control initiative that capped commercial office construction.

In L.A., a 1987 court ruling limiting city officials’ discretion in approving building permits for projects with more than 50 units has had the effect of “preventing construction until city officials prepare an environmental impact report or declare one unnecessary, until a full trial is held in the case, or until the Supreme Court changes the ruling,” if a project faces challenges under state environmental laws.

Brown’s proposed CEQA changes, if approved, would override the San Francisco laws and the Los Angeles court precedent. A Brown aide has called the local laws “micromanaging” that would prevent an adequate response to the housing crisis.

The League of California Cities, while acknowledging the seriousness of the issue, has joined unions and greens in opposing the governor’s plan.

Dan Carrigg, the league’s legislative director, told the San Francisco Business Times, “We support local decision-making. When you have one of these one-size-fits all policies … sometimes what works in one spot doesn’t work well in another.”