With statewide median home prices hovering around $750,000 and costs in sought-after coastal areas soaring above $1 million, the situation destroys homeownership opportunities for the non-wealthy, sends young families to other states and exacerbates homelessness.
A group called Californians for Home Ownership is gathering signatures for a statewide initiative campaign that deals directly with two major cost drivers — the California Environmental Quality Act and developer fees that localities impose on new projects. None of that is how CEQA was intended to be used, yet it is routinely how CEQA is abused. This is why, for many years, you can find elected officials from both the Democratic and Republican parties acknowledging the problems of CEQA. As this editorial board frequently recalls, Gov. Jerry Brown called CEQA reform “the Lord’s work.”
One of the reason that builders focus on luxury homes is because outsized fees make it cost-prohibitive to build more affordable places.