It’s been two and a half years since Gov. Jerry Brown jolted the debate on California’s housing crisis by saying much more private-sector construction was the only realistic way to address the crisis, not the old Democratic recipe of building a relative handful of subsidized housing units that help a small percentage of those in need. “We’ve got to bring down the cost structure of housing and not just find ways to subsidize it,” he said in January 2017 in criticizing previous state policies.

Brown sought to make it much easier for home-builders to clear regulatory hurdles. In September 2017, Senate Bill 35 by Sen. Scott Weiner, D-San Francisco – which reflected the governor’s priorities – was enacted. It holds that cities could not put up new obstacles to projects with proper zoning so long as they contained at least 20 percent of units at lower price levels.

And in the last two months, Brown has signed a series of new housing measures with similar goals – most notably Assembly Bill 2923, which will make it much easier for the Bay Area Rapid Transit authority to follow through with its plan to build 20,000 new housing units by 2040 on 250 acres BART owns nears its transit stations.

Legislature renews emphasis on subsidized housing

But when it comes to Tuesday’s election and major housing initiatives, it’s back to the old Democratic playbook. Both the key measures meant to increase housing – placed directly on the ballot by votes of the Legislature – involve government-subsidized construction.

Proposition 1 authorizes the issuance of $4 billion in general obligation bonds. The biggest chunk – $1.8 billion – would go toward building apartment-type residences. $1 billion would go to loans to veterans. Both infrastructure and homeownership programs would receive $450 million each. And $300 million would go to build housing for farm workers.

The official state voting guide’s analysis estimates that this will create access to housing for 55,500 families.

Proposition 2 would allow the state to divert funds from 2004’s Measure 63 – which generates about $2 billion a year for mental health programs from an income tax surcharge on the very wealthy – to pay back over 30 years up to $2 billion in bonds to build housing for the homeless and those at risk of being homeless.

The official state voting guide’s analysis doesn’t estimate how many people would gain housing as a result. But based on Proposition 1’s estimate that $1.8 billion could create about 30,000 apartment units, $2 billion should be able to provide around 33,000 units.

Bonds would fund 88,500 units; 2 million needed

The combined net effects of the two measures: providing housing to about 88,500 families over the life of the two bond measures in a state that a 2016 McKinsey consulting group report said has a shortage of 2 million housing units.

The small increases in housing that Proposition 1 and 2 would create are consistent with the criticisms that have been made of California’s state housing policies since at least 2003. That’s when the Public Policy Institute of California released a report that said affordable housing programs focused much more on establishing a process for such housing than on actual results. It said it was “unrealistic” to think such an approach could have a significant effect in increasing affordable housing.

No recent polling has been done on Propositions 1 and 2, but they’re widely expected to pass easily. That’s in keeping with the record of bonds placed directly on the ballot by the Legislature.

The California Water Commission’s recent

Yet after harsh droughts for much of this century, state voters were ready for a new direction in 2014. They approved Proposition 1, a measure placed on the ballot by the Legislature which allowed for the issuing of up to $7.1 billion in state bonds for water infrastructure projects. After a lengthy review process, nearly 40 percent of these funds were allocated by the water commission last week for eight projects with the potential to add enough water capacity to serve more than 5 million households a year.

But skeptics have already made the case that by far the single biggest project – the Sites Reservoir in rural Colusa County north of Sacramento – actually suffered a setback in the water commission’s deliberations.

If built as envisioned, the project by itself would have been responsible for more than 60 percent of additional water storage statewide. Yet after the complex “public benefit” assessments that water commissioners used to decide how much each proposal got in bond funds, only $816 million was designated for the $5.2 billion Sites project – much less than advocates hoped. This means at the least that local water agencies and their ratepayers will have to pony up more more than they had hoped for construction.

This led Jim Watson, general manager of the Sites Project Authority, to tell the Sacramento Bee that it was possible that major changes lay ahead. If participating water agencies balk at higher costs, in the “worst case, we could build a smaller reservoir,” he said.

Commission, regulators differ on water availability

Yet the Sites Reservoir’s prospects are complicated by other factors as well. Key details of the reservoir’s construction plan have so far faced little direct criticism from environmentalists – perhaps surprising for what would be the biggest new reservoir to be built in California since the 1970s.

But as a Bee analysis noted, some environmentalists question the basic wisdom of the project. They cite the schism between the Water Commission’s conclusion that Sites could divert 500,000 acre-feet of water from the nearby Sacramento River each year and warnings from some state regulators that less water – not more – should be diverted from the river and the ecologically fragile Sacramento–San Joaquin River Delta (pictured).

One more obstacle also has less to do with Sites itself than the state’s fraught water policy fights. Critics of Gov. Jerry Brown’s California WaterFix plan – meant to shore up the state’s north-south water conveyance system – see Sites as an integral and thus objectionable part of Brown’s proposal.

The $17 billion project would build two 40-foot-wide tunnels to pump water from the Sacramento River some 35 miles south, where it would reach the water distribution network that allows wetter Northern California to provide much of the water used in desert-like Southern California.

The project appeared to be on the ropes until April, when the giant Metropolitan Water District of Southern California voted to commit its member agencies to covering $10.8 billion of the WaterFix tab – nearly two-thirds the total cost.

Brown is trying to win final approval of the project before leaving office in January. But Northern California environmental groups, local water agencies and farming industry groups are in a pitched battle to stall any final decision until after a new governor is elected.

Both remaining gubernatorial candidates – heavily favored Lt. Gov. Gavin Newsom, a Democrat, and Republican businessman John Cox of Rancho Santa Fe – are highly unlikely to embrace WaterFix if elected. Newsom thinks a smaller project makes more sense, and Cox is flatly opposed, according to the Restore The Delta website, which tracks candidates’ remarks on Delta issues.

Despite substantial labors on both sides of the aisle, legislators in the House and the Senate alike have failed to agree on a drought relief package for California, deepening a dispute over where water should flow that seems to have no end in sight.

Dueling bills

In Washington, D.C., Golden State lawmakers have struggled to push a bill through Congress. Last month, Rep. John Garamendi, “whose district abuts 200 miles of the Sacramento River,” had introduced legislation “that would specifically align with Proposition 1, the water bond recently passed by California voters,” the Woodland Daily Democrat reported. “This would allow federal, state and local agencies to coordinate on the implementation of the projects funded and authorized by the bill.” 

Previously, the paper noted, Sen. Dianne Feinstein had “proposed legislation to provide drought relief, but faced so much opposition that she pulled her support.” But Garamendi’s bill in the House, which was identical to Feinstein’s latest effort, drew immediate fire from within his own party; “eight Bay Area Democrats, along with members from Oregon and Washington, released a statement saying they have major concerns with the bills,” the Los Angeles Times reported. House Republicans had passed a bill written by GOP Rep. David Valadao, but, as Feinstein suggested, that piece of legislation would fare poorly in the Senate. Unfortunately for Feinstein, however, the Members attacking the Garamendi bill also announced their opposition to reconciling the House Valadao bill with Feinstein’s in the Senate: “any legislation that emerges from a conference would not be acceptable to many of the diverse stakeholders in our home states,” they concluded, according to the Times. 

Different approaches

The Valadao bill would not go down to defeat for lack of trying. Republicans “successfully put key pieces of Valadao’s bill into an energy bill, to get it into conference negotiations with the Senate — over the objections of nearly all of the state’s Democrats,” as The Hill observed. Valadao’s bill would set “minimum pumping volumes and new standards for when endangered species concerns can override pumping — something the Democrats say amounts to gutting the law.” By contrast, “Feinstein’s bill doesn’t dictate volumes, but gives federal officials more flexibility in how they make water and species decisions.”

Nevertheless, Feinstein did fill the legislation with big budget items. “It authorizes $1.3 billion for desalination, water recycling, storage and grants,” as McClatchy noted. “The money provided includes $600 million for projects that could include constructing Temperance Flat or Sites Reservoir, in the Sacramento Valley, and raising Shasta Dam.”

But the first hearing her bill encountered largely served only to spotlight the intractable differences between water’s opposing camps. “The Senate subcommittee hearing itself, while laying the procedural foundation for legislation to advance, did nothing to resolve any of the conflicts,” McClatchy went on. “No more than one or two senators on the 13-member committee were generally present during the hearing, and of some 18 questions asked of the witnesses, only two touched on California.”

Presidential posturing

While Donald Trump flatly declared “there is no drought” at a recent Fresno rally, the Democrats’ own presidential contenders have failed to do much better on the California campaign trail. “Bernie Sanders’ campaign did not respond to repeated requests for the candidate’s position on California water issues,” as the San Francisco Chronicle reported, while Hillary Clinton’s camp merely referred to a prior response she had “made to a Southern California television reporter asking whether she thinks more water should be sent from the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta to farms and cities in the south.”

Neither Democrat, however, has shied away from making broad promises. “Both Sanders and Clinton have proposed hundreds of billions of dollars in new infrastructure spending that could update the West’s water systems, as well as aggressive plans to battle climate change, which intensifies Western droughts,” the paper added. 

The main races to watch are:

• Superintendent of public instruction, between union ally Tom Torlakson and reformer Marshall Tuck.
• Several California races for U.S. Congress, which will help decide the size of the expected Republican majority in the House.
• Several state Senate and Assembly races, which will decide if the Democrats regain their two-chamber supermajority, allowing them to massively increases taxes willy-nilly.
• Ballot initiatives, including Proposition 1, the $7.5 billion bond measure.

Remember: This is a democracy, so as they say in Chicago, vote early and vote often.

This week, however, one of the relatively few think tanks that specializes in water issues came out with a 26-page analysis that in low-key fashion suggests Prop 1’s merits are being exaggerated. The Pacific Institute, based in Oakland, says it is neutral on the measure. But its concluding chapter strongly  suggests that the bond is likely to disappoint anyone who sees it as a game-changer for state water policy:

We note that nothing in this proposition will provide immediate relief from the current drought or offer short-term assistance to those suffering the consequences of current water challenges. If Proposition 1 passes, if the funds are designated for effective projects, and if those projects are well-designed and well-implemented, the long-term benefits could include a reduction in the risks of future droughts and floods as well as improvements in the health of California’s aquatic ecosystems. A key priority of the bond is to augment the state’s water supply and improve water supply reliability, with more than $4.2 billion in taxpayer funding dedicated to that priority.

As was the case with the 2010 bond, there is substantial funding in the 2014 bond for the public benefits portions of surface water or groundwater storage projects. The 2010 bond included $3.0 billion directly for water storage; the current language includes $2.7 billion. Because the total size of the 2014 bond is smaller than the 2010 bond, the proportion of total funding committed for storage increased from 30% to 36%. Beyond the eduction in the total allocation from $3 billion to $2.7 billion, the water storage language in the proposed 2014 bond is almost identical to the language in the original 2010 bond.

Far less of the bond funds are available for other water supply and demand management options, including recycled water, stormwater capture, and efficiency. Yet, these options can typically provide more water at lower cost than most storage projects. Funding for water conservation and efficiency is especially low, at only $100 million, or about 1% of the bond.

 A down payment on water future “at best”

The think tank also worries that once the bond money is in hand, allocation decisions may be poorly handled.

Ultimately, the effectiveness of Proposition 1 funds in addressing California’s overall water problems will depend on how the funds, if passed by the voters, are actually allocated and spent. If Proposition 1 passes, the Institute recommends that the California Water Commission develop a rigorous, independent, and transparent evaluation of the process governing the evaluation and quantification of the public benefits of proposed storage projects. It also recommends that decisions about the rest of the funds be made with a focus on meeting public and ecosystem needs for safe and reliable water, improvements in efficient use, and reductions in the risks of future droughts and floods.

If good projects are identified and supported, these funds can help move the state forward in the broader effort of designing, building, and managing a 21st century water system. But voters should not expect immediate relief from Proposition 1 for the impacts of the current drought; nor should they expect these funds to be the last investment that is needed for better institutions, smarter planning, and more effective water management strategies. It can be, at best, a down payment on our water future.

The obvious solution that may someday be forced on us

I’ve always thought that California’s water problems are seen through a distorted lens — one which doesn’t acknowledge that if water use is prioritized, genuine nightmares harming our quality of life are easily avoided.

The U.S. EPA says one-third of residential water use goes to maintain lawns. That’s nearly 9 billion gallons a day. And much of that is wasted.

If we ever had a water shortage so severe that it threatened our economy, stopping the use of water for what might be called cosmetic purposes would be an obvious step. Sorry, but using precious water so folks can have a green lawn should be the lowest water priority of all if the megadrought some expect for the Southwest comes to pass.

Brown lawns or dead lawns, in the grand scheme of things, are not genuine nightmares.