Abundance Part 1: Rethinking CEQA to Build More Homes

Summary

Boiling Point: Abundance Part 1 – Rethinking CEQA to Build More Homes
Released July 24, 2025 | Host: Sammy Roth, LA Times Studios

---

Introduction to CEQA and Its Impact on California Housing

In the opening segment of this episode, Sammy Roth and co-host Liam Dillon delve into the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA), a pivotal piece of legislation that has significantly influenced the state's housing development landscape. CEQA, enacted in 1970 under Governor Ronald Reagan, mandates that any development project disclose and mitigate its environmental impacts before approval. While ostensibly straightforward, CEQA has become a complex tool that both protects environmental interests and, inadvertently, hampers housing growth.

Sammy Roth [06:27]:
“CEQA passed, signed into law by Ronald Reagan... All it really says is that any proponent of any particular development project must disclose and if possible, lessen the environmental effects of a project before being approved.”

Recent Legislative Reforms and CEQA Exemptions

The episode highlights recent legislative changes aimed at reforming CEQA to address California's housing shortage. Governor Gavin Newsom recently signed two bills that introduce CEQA exemptions for certain housing projects, particularly low-rise and mid-rise developments in urban areas.

Sammy Roth [15:05]:
“...there is a clean exemption from the CEQA rules that we had just talked about earlier for that kind of housing.”

These reforms remove the requirement for detailed environmental reviews for qualifying projects, streamlining the approval process and reducing the associated risks and costs for developers.

Debating the Risks and Benefits of CEQA

A significant portion of the discussion revolves around the dual nature of CEQA as both a protector of environmental and community interests and a barrier to necessary housing development. While statistics suggest that only a small percentage of housing projects face CEQA-related lawsuits, the perceived risk of litigation creates substantial hesitation among developers.

Sammy Roth [10:24]:
“Developers have told me it’s really impossible to quantify the threat of litigation.”

The conversation underscores how CEQA serves as a leverage point, allowing various stakeholders—from environmental groups to large developers—to influence development outcomes beyond standard city council approvals.

The Concept of Abundance and Its Relevance to Housing and Climate

Central to this episode is the concept of "abundance," popularized by Ezra Klein and Derek Thompson in their book Abundance. The idea posits that to achieve Democratic goals such as affordable housing and renewable energy, it is imperative to reduce regulatory barriers that impede construction and development.

Sammy Roth [30:50]:
“This has been really popularized in Democratic circles... It argues that Democrats have, in blue states, gotten in their own way when it comes to producing the things that we say we need... more affordable housing, more clean energy... you have to build more houses, you have to build the solar fields... you have to build high-speed rail.”

Governor Newsom leverages this concept to justify the recent CEQA reforms, aiming to make it easier to develop housing and, by extension, support climate goals by promoting denser, more sustainable urban living.

Labor Requirements and Union Influence in Housing Development

Another critical aspect discussed is the role of labor requirements in the newly exempted housing projects. For 100% affordable housing developments, developers must now adhere to union-level wages, a stipulation intended to ensure fair labor practices without using CEQA as a bargaining chip.

Sammy Roth [27:04]:
“Developers of those 100% affordable projects will have to pay construction workers union level wages in order for that exemption to take effect.”

This change removes one of the traditional leverage points for organized labor, potentially reshaping the dynamics between developers, unions, and affordable housing initiatives.

Environmental Concerns and Future Implications

The episode does not shy away from the environmental criticisms of the CEQA reforms. Critics argue that exemptions may lead to insufficient environmental oversight, allowing projects that could harm ecosystems, increase pollution, or exacerbate climate risks to proceed unchecked.

Liam Dillon [20:57]:
“This bill is the worst anti-environmental bill in California in recent memory.”

Despite these concerns, supporters argue that the urgent need for housing and the broader benefits of increased urban density for climate mitigation justify the reforms. They contend that more housing, even if not entirely affordable, can alleviate price pressures and reduce the carbon footprint associated with sprawling development.

Sammy Roth [22:24]:
“A lot of the modeling... shows that you’re still not going to meet the climate goals... without a significant reduction in driving. The only way that happens... is to have people live closer to where they work.”

Balancing Growth and Environmental Protection

The conversation ultimately centers on finding the right balance between fostering housing development to address affordability and ensuring that such growth does not come at the expense of environmental integrity. The "abundance" strategy represents an attempt to recalibrate this balance, promoting development where it can be most beneficial while maintaining necessary protections.

Sammy Roth [21:11]:
“What are we gonna do? It has to go somewhere.”

Looking Ahead: Potential for Further CEQA Reforms

As the episode concludes, Roth and Dillon ponder the future of CEQA and housing policy in California. While the recent reforms mark significant progress, the piecemeal nature of these changes suggests that more comprehensive reforms may be on the horizon as the state continues to grapple with housing shortages and climate challenges.

Sammy Roth [39:30]:
“...there are still octaves of CEQA reform efforts to try to spur housing production in the state for sure.”

---

Notable Quotes

1. Ezra Klein [00:27]:
   “The problem is the rules and the laws and political cultures that govern construction in many blue states.”

2. Sammy Roth [12:38]:
   “...they could sort of phenomenally about the environment, but like, not really, if we're really being honest...”

3. Liam Dillon [37:23]:
   “...why not study the environmental consequences of them?”

---

Conclusion

This episode of Boiling Point provides a comprehensive exploration of how California's CEQA is being rethought to address the state's acute housing shortage. By examining the legislative reforms, the interplay between environmental protection and development, and the broader implications for climate policy, Sammy Roth and Liam Dillon offer listeners a nuanced understanding of the challenges and opportunities in building a more abundant and sustainable California.

For those interested in the intersection of housing, climate, and policy, this episode is an essential listen, offering critical insights into one of California's most pressing issues.

Transcript

[Sammy Roth]

This is an LA Times Studios podcast.

[Liam Dillon]

My name is Sammy Roth and I'm.

[Ezra Klein]

The climate columnist for the Los Angeles Times.

[Liam Dillon]

This is boiling Point. It's possible you've heard of the book.

[Ezra Klein]

Silent Spring by Rachel Carson. It came out in 1962 and it exposed the devastating health consequences of the toxic pesticide ddt. The book's publication was one of several key events that brought on the modern environmental movement, a movement that gave us the U.S. environmental Protection Agency, the Clean Water act, and here in the Golden State, the California Environmental Quality Act. Half a century later, that law, the California Environmental Quality act, or ceqa, has made a lot of enemies. And now another book has mobilized the state legislature to say, hey, maybe all these environmental protections in CEQA haven't always been so good for the environment. The book is called Abundance. It was published in March, written by the journalists Ezra Klein and Derek Thompson. Basically, it's an argument that for Democrats to compete against President Trump and Republicans at a national level, they need to make it easier to build stuff that makes life better. As Klein wrote in the New York Times, and I'm going to quote a bit at length here, it has become too hard to build and too expensive to live in the places where Democrats govern. It is too hard to build homes. It is too hard to build clean energy. It is too hard to build mass transit. The problem isn't technical. We know how to build apartment complexes and solar panel arrays and train lines. The problem is the rules and the laws and political cultures that govern construction in many blue states.

[Liam Dillon]

Close quote.

[Ezra Klein]

That's especially important, according to Klein, because of the Republican Party's anti immigrant policies. Those policies, and I'm going to quote here again, are powered by scarcity. When there is not enough to go around, we look with suspicion on anyone who might take what we have. That suspicion is the fuel of Trump's politics. Which brings us to Abundance. Make it easier to build apartments and solar and wind farms and public transit. Give everybody enough. It's an idea that's enchanting to a lot of Democrats in Sacramento, including Governor Gavin Newsom. Last month, Newsom signed two bills that in theory, will make it easier to build housing. They'll do that by rolling back portions of. Drumroll, please. The California Environmental Quality act. Specifically, they'll roll back portions of the law requiring detailed environmental review of certain housing projects. And at the signing ceremony for the bill, Newsom credited none other than the journalist Ezra Klein.

[Sammy Roth]

Thank you for your abundant mindset. It's a plug to Ezra, and it really is about abundance.

[Liam Dillon]

The question is, is abundance the right idea?

[Ezra Klein]

Can fewer environmental regulations really lead to more housing and more renewable energy and more public transit? And even if the answer is yes, are there negative side effects that would make the whole thing just a bad.

[Liam Dillon]

This episode of Boiling Point is part one of a two part series on abundance.

[Ezra Klein]

Our guest is Liam Dillon, a colleague of mine at the LA Times. He covers housing and he wrote about.

[Liam Dillon]

Those controversial bills that Newsom signed last month.

[Ezra Klein]

Next week's episode of the podcast will be all about abundance and renewable energy. But first, let's talk housing and of course, climate.

[Liam Dillon]

Because housing, like everything else, is a climate story.

[Southern California Edison Representative]

During one of the most severe windstorms Southern California experienced in more than a decade, the Palisades and Eaton fires ignited, leaving heartbreaking losses in our communities. Now, as we build back, we're building stronger, cleaner and more resilient in communities most vulnerable to dangerous weather conditions and wildfires. Southern California Edison is placing power lines underground, hardening the electric system by installing wires with protective coating and adding advanced technology to help keep communities safe. So when Southern California faces the next storm, the next most severe event, helicopters.

[Liam Dillon]

Structures adjacent here at Pipe Road.

[Southern California Edison Representative]

We'll be ready. Learn [e-mail] disasterrecovery Today is the worst.

[Abby]

Day of Abby's life. The 17 year old cradles her newborn son in her arms.

[F]

They all saw how much I loved him. They didn't have to take him from me.

[Abby]

Between 1945 and the early 1970s, families ship their pregnant teenage daughters to maternity homes and force them to secretly place their babies for adoption in hidden corners across America. It's still happening.

[F]

My parents had me locked up in the godparent home against my will. They worked with them to manipulate me and to steal my son away from me.

[Abby]

The godparent home is the brainchild of controversial preacher Jerry Falwell, the father of the modern evangelical rite and the founder of Liberty University, where powerful men, emboldened by their faith, determine who gets to be a parent and who must give their child away. Follow Liberty Lost on the Wondery app or wherever you get your podcasts.

[Liam Dillon]

Liam, thanks very much for being with us on the podcast.

[Sammy Roth]

Thanks for having me.

[Liam Dillon]

So we're going to be talking about a lot of stuff today. Housing in California, abundance, what that means for climate change. But sort of running beneath it all.

[Ezra Klein]

The California Environmental Quality act, or ceqa.

[Liam Dillon]

Which I'm guessing you've learned way more about in your career than you probably ever dreamed.

[Sammy Roth]

Yes, indeed, yes.

[Liam Dillon]

Talk a little bit about. I mean, I'M guessing plenty of listeners to this are familiar with ceqa. Some are probably less so. What is ceqa? Give us a little bit of background. Where did it come from? What does it do in practice? And why on earth is it so deeply related to the housing situation in California?

[Sammy Roth]

Yeah, so there's a lot there. CEQA passed, signed into law by Ronald Reagan, which many people note for good or for ill, in 1970 when he was governor of California. And it is, I guess, deceptively simple given the sort of the mythos around this law and what it actually says. All it really says is that any proponent of any particular development project must disclose and if possible, lessen the environmental effects of a project before being approved. And that's it. Now, granted, we're going to talk about all the things it actually means in practice, but the reality of what the law says is pretty straightforward.

[Liam Dillon]

Okay, so when you try to build housing in California, what does that mean for you? You're a developer, you want to build. I think it doesn't apply to single family housing is what I understand. But if you want to build an apartment building or a duplex or a fourplex, what do you actually have to do in terms of ceqa?

[Sammy Roth]

So it applies in some context for single family housing, like a big greenfield development somewhere, you're going to have to do some sort of sequel analysis. There are other limited effects, but like your, say, a rebuild of a home in the Pacific Palisades or Altadena, there are a wide variety of exemptions where that seeker would not really be impacted. What it essentially says is for say, an apartment project, you would have to do all these environmental analyses, different levels of them, to potentially examine all of these potential effects of it. And again, sounds simple, but, you know, maybe that would involve soil testing, maybe that would involve testing how much noise that the project is going to create during construction. Obviously there's traffic studies are involved. There are all these sorts of studies that you have to do at sort of the highest level for these projects to, to, you know, to allow them ultimately to be, to be approved. And then what happens is, what can happen is that there are lawsuits that say, hey, you didn't study the soil appropriate, or you didn't study the traffic appropriately. And then if a judge agrees, that could sort of throw the approval process out entirely. And all of a sudden you're kind of set back a couple years. And so really what development lawyers and developers tell me the biggest concern or one of the biggest concerns about CEQA and how it operates with respect to housing is the risk that is involved. Right. It's not necessarily the studies themselves, although they can be, you know, a thousand pages and time consuming and potentially burdensome. But really the risk that you did all this work for a couple years to try to get your six story apartment complex approved and then all of a sudden it's thrown out and you're back at square one.

[Liam Dillon]

So that risk that you're describing, I think that was at the crux of a lot of this debate that just took place in the legislature. And I want to talk about, get the details of these two bills that were just passed with all of these CEQA exemptions. But that's one of the arguments that I hear all of the time from environmental groups and from folks who don't want to see CEQA changed is they point at statistics and say, not trying to discredit it, but they point at statistics and they say, hey, only something like 3% I think is a number I've seen used a lot and maybe even in your stories, only 3% of housing developments actually have lawsuits filed against them. And correct me if I'm wrong on that, but as an argument that CEQA isn't really the main barrier to housing and what you've reported is that developers are saying, no, it's not so much the lawsuits themselves, it's the risk that we're going to get sued that's really the obstacle here. Could you talk about what you found in your reporting there and how big an issue is CEQA and this housing shortage and how housing prices in California?

[Sammy Roth]

That's a really good question. The stats that you quoted. Yes, there are studies I've reported, the studies that you mentioned, about 3% of developments or housing developments are challenged under CEQA. There are some other studies that show perhaps a little bit being more robust. What developers have told me too though, is it's really impossible to quantify the threat of litigation. But all this really centers around what I think is the central element to CEQA and how it plays into development in California and why this change, which I know we're going to talk about in terms of what it does really is in my view and a lot of the experts I've spoken with, pretty profound. And that is CEQA has really embedded itself as this point of leverage in any and all development in California. And what it means is that there's sort of an extra political, if you will, like process that goes into beyond just getting a project voted up or voted down at a city council. Now this can Be used for sort of good or bad, Right. Depending on your perspective. Say there is a warehouse project that you don't like in a community that has a significant amount of warehouses already. They're not great projects for the environment. Right. If the city council happens to be friendly to the warehouse industry, then maybe you don't have a voice there. And CEQA gives you a voice to engage on the specific warehouse project where you wouldn't have been able to otherwise.

[Liam Dillon]

Well, that's why there are a lot of environmental justice groups that are very fierce defenders of ceqa, because that's one of their best tools for preventing more air pollution from increasing spread of warehouses in the Inland Empire, for instance.

[Sammy Roth]

Absolutely. Yeah. But then you could also see that being used in sort of ways that I think aren't. You know, they're sort of phenomenally about the environment, but like, not really, if we're really being honest, you know. And there's a ton of classic examples. One of my favorite is about 15 years ago in San Jose, there was a gas station that wanted to add a few pumps and it turned out that they were sued by a rival gas station across the street under ceqa. And this sort of embedded leverage has really been around forever. I have a couple other really good examples, if you allow me.

[Liam Dillon]

The Rick Caruso one was interesting to me that you've seen, right?

[Sammy Roth]

Exactly. Yes. So I did an interview with Mayor Karen Bass right after she took office in 2022, asked her about CEQA, whether it should be changed, and she said, well, yes, but. And this is what a lot of people have said over the years. She talked about that as a community organizer in South LA in the 90s, she was taught by west side lawyers who represented homeowner group that you can use CEQA to stop the proliferation of liquor stores being built in south la. And so this was not about the environment. Right. I mean, even though nominally that's what these were about, this is really about the leverage that she could use as a community organizer to stop something that she thought was harmful to her community. And so that's sort of one bucket. And again, going Back to the 90s, right, Rick Caruso, her opponent in the most recent mayor election, big time developer, right. Owns these shopping malls, owns development stores, criticizes secret.

[Liam Dillon]

Constantly.

[Sammy Roth]

Constantly. And yet. And yet this year, when the redevelopment of Television City near his Grove Mall was approved by the city Council, his company sued under CEQA because he wants different traffic patterns or all these sorts of things. But the CEQA was the leverage tool that was used that is available to big billionaire developers like Rick Caruso and environmental justice groups in the Inland Empire to tackle projects sort of outside of the straight regular city council or otherwise approval process.

[Ezra Klein]

So this seems like a good moment.

[Liam Dillon]

To stop beating around the bush and get at what the legislature did a couple of weeks ago. Talk about these two bills and what's in them, one in the assembly, one in the Senate, and that Governor Newsom pretty much forced the legislature to pass. And we don't have to get into the logistics of how he did that. But what has changed now? What is different than it was a month and a half ago?

[Sammy Roth]

So I think it's easy to talk about the urban housing. It's sort of cleaner. And so what that did was a straightaway exemption for all low rise and mid rise urban housing projects. So not your sort of greenfield development, but like developments in urbanized areas already. The technical term is infill. Right. And so for those projects there is a clean exemption, which means no other sort of rules you have to follow.

[Liam Dillon]

No environmental review, you don't have to go through the environmental impact report process or anything like that.

[Sammy Roth]

Correct. So a clean exemption from the CEQA rules that we had just talked about earlier for that kind of housing. And importantly, this is another sort of important note about how CEQA politics has worked over the years is that there is no tying of that to anything else. Right. So that means that there is no requirement that you have to dedicate a certain number of units as low income housing and also that there are no requirements to pay construction workers or otherwise use union labor. Whereas previous reforms that have attempted to streamline the housing development process or touch SEQA have included additives like that. So for instance, if you were to use this exemption or use this sort of streamlining mechanism, you'd have to add things like inclusionary housing, dedicating a certain a part of the development to low income or some sort of union requirement. And that no longer exists. So that's a totally clean exemption for housing that's sort of mid rise and low rise for 100% affordable housing. And for high rise housing, there are some labor pay requirements tied to that.

[Liam Dillon]

Yeah, the labor pay requirements, just to deal with that briefly. So that was. You talk about the leverage point. So labor organized labor has traditionally used. CEQA is one of these leverage tools. Right. That they won't gum up the works as long as they get a requirement that housing gets built with union labor.

[Sammy Roth]

And union level wages.

[Ezra Klein]

Union level wages.

[Liam Dillon]

Okay. So now for these types of infill projects, mid rise and high rise buildings.

[Sammy Roth]

For the most part, mid rise and low rise.

[Liam Dillon]

Excuse me, mid rise and low rise. Thank you. It's a lot of words to keep track of mid rise and low rise.

[Ezra Klein]

That's not the case anymore.

[Liam Dillon]

Union labor no longer has that leverage point through.

[Sammy Roth]

Yes.

[Liam Dillon]

Okay, so this makes it easier to build low rise and mid rise buildings in cities, in developed areas, yes. Okay, so that's one of the bills. What's the other one?

[Sammy Roth]

So the other one was sort of this mishmash of things. This was the Senate version of this sort of their SECA reform. And it goes back, it does a lot of different things. One of the things that sort of rather than a blanket exemption like you have now for urban housing, what it did was sort of pick this kind of grab bag of things that over the years CEQA has been used as kind of highest profile cases, bases to sort of challenge. So for instance, there was a Planned Parenthood clinic that was challenged years ago in South San Francisco by pro life protesters or pro life group. And under ceqa. Right. And now there's an exemption in the law for health clinics. They are not subject to ceqa. There was a food pantry, a food bank that also in Northern California a few years ago that was challenged under ceqa. And so this law now exempts food banks from the CECPA process. And there's a few other of these. I think the most controversial is what's known as advanced manufacturing facilities.

[Liam Dillon]

Right. That's basically like semiconductor plants, right?

[Sammy Roth]

Yeah, things like that. And I think the motivating factor by the authors of this, of this exemption was to try to allow for things that was projects that were anticipated or were supported by the Biden administration sort of infrastructure bills. Want to make sure that the idea is that California, California would be able to accept some of that money and build projects. And so like that was where that idea came from. Right. But I do know there's been significant pushback among the environmental community in particular for that exemption that was written into this sort of grab bag of CEQA exemptions that got passed.

[Ezra Klein]

Right.

[Liam Dillon]

Because there's a question of whether these big industrial facilities, like why, why not study the environmental consequences of them? I think that's the question that's been raised.

[Sammy Roth]

Yeah. This bill, in many ways this kind of grab bag continues what, you know, some CEQA observers have called over the years Swiss chees. So that means that you're not actually reforming CEQA wholesale. What you're doing is poking these holes to say, well, this specific project, this specific case, this specific thing that we actually want, we don't want CEQA to hold that up anymore. And so this sort of continues that kind of Swiss cheese ceqa, just with.

[Liam Dillon]

More holes, if you will, on infill housing. In particular, the bill that makes it easier to build housing in cities and developed areas, low rise and mid rise.

[Ezra Klein]

You know, the argument against this bill.

[Liam Dillon]

From environmental groups, from a lot of environmental groups, not all, is, you know, you're just continuing to erode ceqa. You're continuing to erode, you know, this foundational environmental law that gives the public the right to, you know, understand the impacts of and challenge negative environmental impacts. Even if, you know, there are cases where this bill has clearly been used for non environmental purposes. You know, I want to just bring up here on my screen the story that one of our colleagues, Hailey Smith, wrote about the reaction to this bill from environmental groups. And there's a quote in here from a coalition of more than 100 environmental or 100 organizations, many of them environmental groups, who wrote, quote, this bill is the worst anti environmental bill in California in recent memory. It represents an unprecedented rollback to California's fundamental environmental and community protections at a time in which the people of California grapple with the unprecedented federal attacks to their lives and livelihoods, basically saying that, one, this is bad to begin with, two, especially when the Trump administration is gutting federal climate science and efforts to study the environmental reviews of projects, why is California doing the same thing? I guess my question for you is are there projects that might legitimately really need environmental study now that are not.

[Ezra Klein]

Going to get them?

[Liam Dillon]

I mean, you talked about all of the facetious ways in CEQA that CEQA is used. What about the advanced manufacturing stuff? Are there other ways here in which we're now not going to know things environmentally that we should know potentially?

[Sammy Roth]

I think, to be perfectly frank, the answer is yes, right? And I think even the supporters of this, if you got them in a room and kind of held it over them, I think they would also say yes. But I think, I think the argument though, to walk that back a little bit is what's the correct balance, right? I mean, if in fact we stop under the current regime, totally hypothetical, right? Under the current regime or pre reform regime, we're able to stop one bad project, bad project, but also stop five good projects because of the way that the law had worked. Is that a better outcome than say those five good projects and one bad project, Right? Like getting through under a reform outcome. And I don't think that there's an exact clear answer to that. But I think the supporters of this would say, look, we don't have enough housing in California. That's a huge problem for affordability and homelessness, which are two of the chief issues that people care about and people talk about and are affecting people's quality of life, causing people to move, you know, to Texas and to Arizona and to other areas of the country which are actually worse for people to live there than in California from a climate perspective.

[Liam Dillon]

Right, because they're going to drive more miles and use less.

[Sammy Roth]

They're going to drive more miles, use more air conditioning in Arizona. Right. Like, than coastal California, you know, and so that's sort of this balancing act.

[Liam Dillon]

Is there a potential here for a positive climate impact? Because, you know, people who work in climate talk all the time about how we need to have more, you know, dense infill housing in cities to make it easier for people to drive fewer miles. You know, you, you know, rather than building sprawling subdivisions out into the hinterlands where people have one, which destroys wildlife habitat, but two, and, you know, even more important from a climate perspective, so that people aren't driving long distances into city centers to work.

[Sammy Roth]

Plus the wildfire impacts especially acute now. Right. Of that kind of development?

[Ezra Klein]

Oh, yeah, for sure.

[Liam Dillon]

Building in the wildland urban interface. I mean, is this realistically, is there a chance that this bill helps with that if you make it easier to build? Absolutely. In developed areas? Absolutely. Okay.

[Sammy Roth]

Absolute. Been sort of targeted and talked about. I mean, for over a decade now. Fifteen getting on 20 years, the state has attempted, as part of its climate policy, attempted to incentivize development in urban cores more than development on the fringes. That's been a key plank of climate policy. And in fact, as you do the modeling, the Air Resources Board does, the California Air Resources Board, which is in charge of the states getting climate goals, and they do their modeling. You could put all the electric cars you want on the road, do all these sorts of solar and whatever, like all the things. Right. But you're still not going to meet the climate goals that the state has going forward without a significant reduction in driving. And the only way that that happens, or one way that that happens or you can incentivize that to happen is you have people live closer to where they work, closer to where they shop and have stuff around them.

[Liam Dillon]

We'll be back after a quick break.

[Southern California Edison Representative]

During one of the most severe windstorms Southern California experienced in more than a decade, the Palisades and Eaton fires ignited, leaving heartbreaking losses in our communities. Now, as we build back, we're building stronger, cleaner and more resilient in communities most vulnerable to dangerous weather conditions and wildfires. Southern California Edison is placing power lines underground, hardening the electric system by installing wires with protective coating and adding advanced technology to help keep communities safe. So when Southern California faces the next storm, the next most severe event, helicopters.

[Sammy Roth]

Structures adjacent here, we'll be ready.

[Southern California Edison Representative]

Learn [e-mail] disasterrecovery Today is the worst.

[Abby]

Day of Abby's life. The 17 year old cradles her newborn son in her arms.

[F]

They all saw how much I loved him. They didn't have to take him from me.

[Abby]

Between 1945 and the early 1970s, families shipped their pregnant teenage daughters to maternity homes and forced them to secretly place their babies for adoption in hidden corners across America. It's still happening.

[F]

My parents had me locked up in the godparent home against my will. They worked with them to manipulate me and to steal my son away from me.

[Abby]

The godparent home is the brainchild of controversial preacher Jerry Falwell, the father of the modern evangelical rite and the founder of Liberty University, where powerful men, emboldened by their faith, determine who can gets to be a parent and who must give their child away. Follow Liberty Lost on the Wondery app or wherever you get your podcasts.

[Liam Dillon]

What is this bill going to mean for the affordability of the housing that does, you know, in theory, more of it get built because of this? Because you'd made two points earlier that I didn't understand how they related to each other. One about, you know, waiving requirements for 100% affordable housing. But then you also said something else about a requirement for a percentage being affordable getting waived. And I just wasn't sure how those two things comported with each other. So could you explain the implications here?

[Sammy Roth]

Absolutely. It's two separate things. The simpler is that for projects that are 100% affordable, they will, under this new law, will get a CEQA exemption. But developers of those 100% affordable projects will have to pay construction workers union level wages in order for that exemption to be to take effect. And the argument is that is? Well, many of the funding requirements for 100% affordable housing projects require that level of union wages anyway. So that's one. The other issue you raised is in a lot of previous bills that attempted, there have been hundreds, right, that have passed in the last decade or so at the state level that have attempted to spur construction of housing across the state A lot of those bills, if a developer wanted to take advantage of that sort of streamlined process or easier process to get approved, they would have to dedicate a certain percentage of their development to low income housing. And in this case, that's not the case. So for this, you know, the low rise and mid rise CEQA exemption, the low rise and mid rise housing CEQA exemption, there is no requirement to dedicate a certain percentage of any development for affordable housing. And the argument for why that is a better, both from a development and affordability perspective is that requirement to set aside a percentage for affordable housing raises costs. And when it raises cost of the cost of building, that is the cost of building. And so it ends up being that the project doesn't get built. And so the argument is that the consensus among studies is that more housing growth, even just straight market rate housing growth, helps ameliorate rent increases, price increases in a region, sort of writ large, no matter what kind of housing gets built.

[Liam Dillon]

So more basically, you're increasing supply and therefore you're putting pressure down in prices. Okay, I imag. I imagine that's still contentious to make that argument.

[Sammy Roth]

It is indeed. Studies at a regional level, though, is a fairly high consensus that, that, that that is true. When you get to more of a granular level, like a block level or a neighborhood level, then a lot, there's a lot more dispute over, say you put a, you know, a new development in a gentrifying neighborhood, that's market rate, what does that mean, you know, for displacement? And that is a bit more contentious of an argument from a, from a research perspective. Yes.

[Liam Dillon]

So you spoke a moment ago about union level wages on 100% affordable housing projects. And I want to, I want to talk a little bit more about the role of labor and sort of the split in lab underneath this whole fight. But let's do a whole breakout session on that. We've been doing a new feature every week. We're calling it the Rabbit Hole. At least I'm informally calling it the Rabbit Hole. So, you know, for subscribers to the LA Times, look in your podcast feed for a separate segment where Liam and I talk separately about the interesting labor splits in the CEQA debate and in climate policy debate and housing in general. And so, you know, look for that separately. Thank you for everyone who's subscribing. But for now, I promised that this was gonna be nominally an episode on abundance. So let's talk about abundance a little bit. It's this idea that has clearly animated the governor, Gavin Newsom, in terms of the thinking underlying this whole set of legislation and why he pushed this through in the way he did. Liam, explain this abundance concept and where it came from. First of all, what does that word even mean? Why are we talking about it?

[Sammy Roth]

Yeah. So I think this has been really popularized in Democratic circles. It's based on a book that was written by New York Times opinion journalist Ezra Klein and another journalist, Derek Thompson. I believe he recently left the Atlantic magazine that essentially. And this came out either the beginning of this year or the end of last, essentially argues that Democrats have, in blue states have gotten in their own way when it comes to producing the things that we say we need or we meaning, I guess in this case, the Democratic establishment says that we need for a better future. Right. You know, more affordable housing, more clean energy, all these sorts of things that to realize it as well, I think public transit. Yeah. To realize these, these, these, these dreams, you actually have to build them. Right. You have to build more houses, you have to build the solar fields, you have to build the wind turbines, you have to build the high speed rail. Right. You can't just sort about why these are good things. Right. And the argument that Klein and Thompson make in their book Abundance is that a lot of these rules, and they actually do call out CEQA fairly prominently in the book. Environmental rules that have passed, say, 50, 60, 70 years ago, have strangled these investments and this infrastructure that states need to have, have transitioned to a green economy, ensure that people can live in their communities affordably and they can get around.

[Ezra Klein]

Why do you think the abundance concept.

[Liam Dillon]

Resonated with Gavin Newsom and more broadly has resonated with a segment of the. I don't want to try to sound like I'm using this term disparagingly, but like the neoliberal left the way that it has.

[Sammy Roth]

Yeah, yeah, yeah. So some grounding, as I've been saying, these kind of like housing reform stuff or housing changes or streamlining that's been going on at the state level in California for close to a decade. Right. There have been hundreds of bills that have been passed in this vein. And it kind of corresponds with the rise of the YIMBY or Yes. In my backyard movement, which began in San Francisco and it's sort of now extended all over the country. And essentially it argues that zoning regulations, things like CEQA have been barriers to development that is needed to help ameliorate affordability problems in Los Angeles, San Francisco, California, the rest of the country. And so this is abundance is, I think, an extension of that. But the long way of saying the groundwork in California has long been laid for this kind of discussion. It's just a little bit of a reframe. And I think that this reframe, particularly in this sort of national concept, I think, also is attractive to the governor, frankly, because he, by a lot of accounts, wants to run for president and likes the idea and have the support of folks who are arguing that blue states, blue state leaders need to do more to tear down some of these barriers to the growth that that is needed to ensure that the future that many liberals promise can be delivered on.

[Ezra Klein]

Yeah.

[Liam Dillon]

I mean, it annoys me frequently when journalists try to act as prognosticators instead of sort of just describing what's going on and analyzing them. But do you think there's potential for this to work? I guess. What do you think needs to happen for this to work as a strategy for Newsom? Like. Like between now and 2028, it's not probably like there's going to be, I don't know, could there be a lot of housing growth between now and then to the point where it really propels a presidential run? I guess I'm just trying to game out what could happen.

[Sammy Roth]

Yeah, I don't. I mean, as we've been saying, there's a lot. I mean, I don't know what tariffs are going to look like. I mean, there's that interest rates, I mean, all these things, Right. Are really predictive of what and when housing gets built. Right. But I think. I think sort of the argument, the counterargument to that is, well, can California's home production rate look something more, get closer to something more like what it is in Texas. Right. Because the interest rates are the same in Texas, the material prices are the same in Texas. And so can you have growth in California? Because people want to live here. I mean, people want to live in la, they want to live in San Francisco, they want to live San Diego, they want to live all over the state. And they would come if you let there be more housing. Right. And so, like, it's not like the demand isn't there. And so I think sort of the idea is, you know, he could potentially argue, well, look, we're now, you know, growing on a margin faster than we were. And that's because I've gotten rid of some of these things that have been in our. That have been in our way.

[Liam Dillon]

Yeah. You know, what it reminds me of at a national level, since I focus on energy as a climate journalist, is these debates over permitting reform which are energy focused. There's this left and right sort of center leaning bipartisan consensus of we need to make it easier to build energy infrastructure. And you've got folks on the right who care mostly about building fossil fuel infrastructure, and you've got folks on the left who mostly want to make it easier to build solar and wind and transmission lines. And the folks on the left are essentially willing to say, well, if we make it easier to build all energy infrastructure, the good stuff will win out. Solar and wind is cheaper. We'll just mostly end up building good stuff. And I'm sympathetic to that point of view. I'm also sympathetic to environmental activists who are frustrated and say, look, why do anything that's going to make it easier to build an oil pipeline or a liquefied natural gas terminal? Some of that bad stuff is going to get built to and hurt people. And I think of the formulation you used a few minutes ago of maybe it's a worthwhile trade off to build five good things even if one bad thing gets through. But sometimes I also just wonder, instead of doing these procedural reforms, reforming CEQA or reforming nepa, the national or National Environmental Policy act, which comes up in permitting reform conversations, is there not some way to just try to pass laws at the national level? This is impossible because of Congress. But even in California, couldn't we just say here, let's just make it easy to do good things and hard to do bad things? I know that probably sounds really dumb to someone who works in state policy, but I don't know, it just, it always seems to come down to how do we get the process right and not like, well, what do we want to do? You know, let's do this and not do that. I don't know. I just don't quite get it.

[Sammy Roth]

Well, let me just reflect on that a little bit. I mean, in some sense that's what these bills try to do, right? I mean, this is exempting the urban infill housing, right. Which is the quote unquote good thing, while also saying kind of the Greenfield sprawl suburban single family sprawl development is not subject to this, these same waivers. Right? So that's fair.

[Liam Dillon]

That's fair.

[Sammy Roth]

And then second, that's basically what sort of the Swiss cheese sequa reality has been, which is that we find a thing that everyone's like, oh my God, we have to do this. I think most famous recently there was enrollment at UC Berkeley. Increased enrollment was threatened under a CEQA lawsuit. And so the state said, oh my God, that's ridiculous. We have to let more people come to one of the flagship universities in the state. So we're just going to write one quick bill, which they passed in three days, and have the governor sign it, that said enrollment at UC Berkeley not subject to ceqa. Right. And so that's what has been happening. And unfortunately, that kind of piecemeal kind of approach, which gets you to the point where every year or two there's some new outrage, and then they respond to the one outrage by passing the one law, but the underlying mechanisms are not changed.

[Liam Dillon]

No, that's a good point. Maybe that's exactly what I'm talking about. And I'm just confused why semiconductor plants were in there.

[Sammy Roth]

But I think that's. I think even the supporters of this have expressed some openness to perhaps revisiting the advantage of manufacturing facilities exemption. But also, I want to be clear that there are times when you can't just have a game where there's all winners, right? I mean, is it better? I know you've reported and written about this a lot, right? But probably having a solar farm or transmission line next to you, probably not the best thing in the. Probably not pleasant in some ways to literally have that next to your property or next to your farm or next to your whatever. But the reality is they have to go somewhere. And what are we gonna do?

[Liam Dillon]

You make a fabulous point, and it's especially good because it cites my reporting. So how can I argue with that? William, I appreciate your talking us through all of the details of this, because I know it's monstrously complicated and you've got all the details down. What do you think's gonna happen next? Is the legislature gonna go and revisit any of this, or are we done with CEQA reform for a while?

[Sammy Roth]

So I think there may be some changes around the margins as it relates to perhaps some of the advanced manufacturing facilities are some of the things that have gotten the most heat. But I think I was talking to one of the drivers of this, assembly member Buffy Wicks, who represents a Democrat from Oakland. And this is before this passed. And I was like, hey, talking to people. No one seems to tell me this is going to unleash the flood of construction that you say you need. So, yeah, leverage point, great. And yes, big deal, white whale, third rail, all those sorts of things. Great. But, like, what are you going to do? And she's like, well, we need to figure out how to get more housing built. This is a key plank, a key thing. And so they're going to she is going to keep driving on that point. I know that there are others. And so I'm not sure how much more legislation, high profile legislation may be attempted or may get through. But I think yes, for now this is a major, probably the biggest change that has happened to CEQA and since it passed and in 1970. But I don't think you've seen the end of efforts to try to spur housing production in the state for sure.

[Liam Dillon]

Well, we will just have to keep writing about it and talking about it. And Liam, thanks very much for being on Boiling Point. Really important conversation.

[Sammy Roth]

Thanks. Thanks again for having me.

[Liam Dillon]

Like I said earlier, that was part one of a two part series on abundance.

[Ezra Klein]

Check back next week for our episode on renewable energy.

[Liam Dillon]

We're going to have a conservation activist.

[Ezra Klein]

And a representative from the solar industry debating abundance. And for LA Times podcast subscribers, don't forget we've also got a rabbit hole this week talking with Liam about the role of labor in the CEQA debate.

[Liam Dillon]

Thank you as always for listening.

[Production Team]

Thank you for listening to Boiling Point. I'm your host, Sammy Roth. My producers are Mary Knoff and Jonathan Shiflet. Sound design and original music by Jonathan Shiflett. Elijah Wolfson is our editor. Denise Callahan is our studio manager. Ben Church is our Production manager. Nick Norton is our engineer. Special thanks to LA Times Studio President Anna Magzanian, President and Chief Operating Officer of the Los Angeles Times, Chris Argentieri and Executive Editor of the Los Angeles Times, Terry Tang. Boiling Point is executive produced by Darius.

[Liam Dillon]

Derekshon and created by me, Sammy Roth.

[Abby]

Today is the worst day of Abby's life. The 17 year old cradles her newborn son in her arms.

[F]

They all saw how much I loved him. They didn't have to take him from me.

[Abby]

Between 1945 and the early 1970s, families shipped their pregnant teenage daughters to maternity homes and forced them to secretly place their babies for adoption in hidden corners across America. It's still happening.

[F]

My parents had me locked up in the godparent home against my will. They worked with them to manipulate me and to steal my son away from me.

[Abby]

The godparent home is the break brainchild of controversial preacher Jerry Falwell, the father of the modern evangelical right and the founder of Liberty University, where powerful men, emboldened by their faith, determine who gets to be a parent and who must give their child away. Follow Liberty Lost on the Wondery app or wherever you get your podcasts.