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The next target should be CEQA, the California Environmental Quality Act. NIMBYs can endlessly delay new construction by requesting CEQA assessments. I am hugel
by GalenErso 4y ago
The next target should be CEQA, the California Environmental Quality Act. NIMBYs can endlessly delay new construction by requesting CEQA assessments. I am hugely pro-environment, mind you, but an environmental assessment for a new development should be relatively fast and easy to complete, and it shouldn't prevent new builds wholesale except in the direst cases.
- klooney 4y agoEspecially infill. There are no endangered animals living in SOMA.
- asdff 4y agoJust wait for the SOMA sewer rat to become a protected species
- ecf 4y agoSome millimeter sized shrimp completely altered expansion plans for an entire UC campus. https://www.sfgate.com/green/article/MERCED-UC-expansion-plans-again-run-up-against-2647615.php https://www.sfgate.com/green/article/MERCED-UC-expansion-pla...
- bb611 4y agoThe shrimp were an impediment to a small fraction of the planned build, the build was modified with minimal impact on the project, and an even more aggressive expansion of the campus was completed in the last 5 years without impact. If anything, that appears to be a successful use of CEQA, where a large and important building project was effectively balanced with the need to protect wildlife without major disruption to the final buildings.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- shuckles 4y agoExempting infill housing from CEQA is on the YIMBY agenda. That said, CEQA only applies to discretionary decisions, so if permitting residential development is a ministerial decision (i.e. anyone who meets certain criteria is approved), then the CEQA review for it is incorporated into the Housing Element. That is itself a huge step forward.
- jeffbee 4y agoI don't think that is current law or jurisprudence. There is a bill introduced in this session that will make any project consequent to an adopted general, area, or specific plan be "not a project" under CEQA. But that's not where we are now, which is why cities have to EIR their general plans and then every project has another EIR. Personally, I think they should just write down that anything inside the boundary of an incorporated city, built on a site that previously had something on it, is not a project.
- shuckles 4y agoYes it is: private projects are only subject to CEQA if permits are discretionary cf https://ohp.parks.ca.gov/?page_id=21723 https://ohp.parks.ca.gov/?page_id=21723. In San Francisco and some neighboring cities, every permit is discretionary either directly or through ambiguity (https://law.ucdavis.edu/sites/g/files/dgvnsk10866/files/media/documents/CEQA_Housing_Presentation-Elmendorf.pdf https://law.ucdavis.edu/sites/g/files/dgvnsk10866/files/medi...), but it doesn’t have to be that way.
- jeffbee 4y agoThanks. I was thinking about projects like UC housing. I believe the new bill is meant to exempt public agencies from this problem.
- shuckles 4y agoYeah the UC has the great blessing of not being subject to local zoning and the great curse of being a public project subject to CEQA no matter what.
- Lammy 4y ago> NIMBYs can endlessly delay new construction by requesting CEQA assessments. This is my favorite graph for explaining how I can be pro-environment without necessarily being pro-Environmentalism™ https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=gentrification%2Csegregationist%2Clocal+control%2Cneighborhood+watch%2Cenvironmentalism%2Cenvironmentalist%2Cintegrationist&year_start=1950&year_end=2000&corpus=en-US-2012&smoothing=2 https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=gentrification...