This week, Governor Gavin Newsom signed into law one of the most significant overhauls of the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA) in decades. The reforms—passed with surprisingly overwhelming bipartisan support—reflect a growing consensus in Sacramento: while CEQA was originally designed to protect the environment, the system as it has evolved has become a major roadblock to solving California’s housing crisis.
There are still debates over how much new housing these reforms will actually unlock. But there is little doubt that the status quo was broken. CEQA had increasingly been used not to protect air or water, but to stall or kill desperately needed infill housing through lawsuits, procedural traps, and legal threats that had more to do with labor negotiations, aesthetic preferences, or outright obstructionism than with environmental impact.
One recent case in Santa Monica lays bare exactly how this dynamic has played out in cities across the state.
The project in question—an 18-story, 172-unit apartment tower at 1437 6th Street—includes 26 affordable units and sits in the heart of downtown, close to jobs and transit. It complies with state density bonus laws, went through multiple rounds of public design feedback, and was granted ministerial approval. In other words, it checks every box for what California says it wants in housing: tall, dense, and equitable.
Still, it was hit with a CEQA-based appeal by a group called Supporters Alliance for Environmental Responsibility (SAFER), a Sacramento-based organization with well-documented ties to labor unions. SAFER argued the project required full environmental review under CEQA. But the Santa Monica Planning Commission swiftly and unanimously denied the appeal, with Commissioner Shawn Landres noting that the commission didn’t even have jurisdiction to consider it. “It’s not in the right zip code,” he said flatly.
Attorney Dave Rand, representing the project, was more blunt: the appeal was “a smoke and mirror exercise,” he told the commission. And he was right.
According to those familiar with SAFER’s tactics, this kind of CEQA appeal isn’t about environmental harm—it’s about leverage. SAFER and similar groups often use CEQA litigation as a tool to extract Project Labor Agreements (PLAs) from developers. The pattern is familiar: file a CEQA appeal, offer to drop it in exchange for union labor concessions, and walk away the moment an agreement is signed. The message to developers is clear: pay up or get sued.
This is not a theoretical concern—it’s a structural problem. And it’s one that has undermined CEQA’s legitimacy while choking off housing production across California for decades.
The original purpose of CEQA, passed in 1970, was to ensure transparency and accountability in assessing the environmental impacts of major public and private development. But as infill housing became more common, and as the urgency of the housing shortage grew, CEQA’s broad language and open-ended procedural tools became ripe for manipulation.
Instead of protecting wetlands or endangered species, CEQA became a weapon against apartment buildings, student dormitories, and supportive housing for low-income residents. According to a UC Berkeley study, more than 80% of CEQA lawsuits today target infill projects in already-developed areas—projects that are environmentally beneficial and crucial to reducing car dependency and urban sprawl.
This is where the newly passed bills—AB 130 and AB 609—come in.
These laws don’t abolish CEQA. They preserve its essential purpose while closing loopholes that allowed bad-faith actors to hijack the process. AB 130 streamlines judicial review for certain housing projects and sets clearer timelines for resolution. AB 609 creates clean CEQA exemptions for environmentally beneficial infill housing in areas already zoned for residential use. Together, they reinforce a simple principle: if a project complies with local and state housing law, and if it’s in an urbanized area near transit, it shouldn’t be stopped by procedural tricks.
These changes also limit the kinds of discretionary decisions that can trigger CEQA lawsuits. That’s critical. In the Santa Monica case, the appeal argued that the Architectural Review Board’s design oversight gave the city enough discretionary authority to require a full CEQA review. But state law, especially post-reform, is increasingly clear: design elements like colors, facades, and balcony railings are not environmental decisions. They don’t justify litigation.
To be clear, this isn’t about undermining organized labor, environmentalism, or local control. It’s about restoring integrity to a process that was meant to weigh genuine environmental impacts—not act as a negotiating tool or ideological bludgeon. If a labor group wants to make the case for union labor on the merits, it should do so openly—not under cover of a faux environmental lawsuit.
Santa Monica deserves credit for handling the appeal with professionalism and transparency. The city has been a good-faith actor in meeting its housing element obligations and implementing state housing law. And in this case, it protected both the rule of law and the principle that housing shouldn’t be held hostage.
The broader lesson is that CEQA reform was not just a technical adjustment—it was a moral and political imperative. For too long, California has allowed legal ambiguity and interest-group tactics to override public need. In the middle of a statewide housing crisis, where the cost of inaction is homelessness, displacement, and climate failure, that is no longer acceptable.
The passage of AB 130 and AB 609 marks a turning point. It won’t fix everything. But it sends a message: housing is a priority. And environmental review must serve the public good—not private leverage.
If California is serious about solving its housing crisis, this can’t be the end of the story. But it is a long-overdue beginning.
I would oppose the high-rise depicted in the image (in the context of what’s around it), and would encourage any community to do so.
It’s unfortunate that residents were put into a situation in which they were COMPELLED to rely upon CEQA – which has now been taken-away by officials who are fighting their own constituents. (The fact that the political system ensures that these types of politicians are the only choices on the ballot is perhaps an indicator of an even bigger problem.)
But the REAL problem with all of this noise is that there isn’t a housing shortage in the first place, for the reasons already discussed many times (e.g., the country built “too much” housing in the prior decade, people aren’t having kids at replacement levels, the net exodus from the state, the clampdown on immigration, etc.).
Again, it’s business interests (in many forms) which aren’t happy when a community stops growing. That’s the source of the fake “housing shortage” claim. You can even see this type of thing in action in regard to the local school district’s underlying push for more sprawl – entirely driven by self-interest.
From article, below:
“How did such a powerful consensus come together? As the saying goes, follow the money. Government subsidies and tax breaks for housing construction makes real estate developers fabulously wealthy. Banks, realtors, and corporate builders prosper from new construction, too. These industries’ fingerprints are all over the reams of reports and articles claiming that we must build our way out of the housing crisis. As Politico reported in November, “Lobbyists are scrambling to get help from Washington to goose the housing market.”
“Maybe we should listen instead to the housing experts whose bank accounts don’t get a boost every time a crane goes up. Take Alex Schwartz and Kirk McClure. Schwartz, a professor at the New School, literally wrote the book on U.S. housing, Housing Policy in the United States, now in its fourth edition from Routledge Press. McClureis professor emeritus in urban planning at the University of Kansas. Like Schwartz, he is a widely-published, highly-decorated expert on housing markets.”
https://www.commondreams.org/opinion/affordable-housing-crisis