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I support this change, but it applies to the zoning that exists. If it passes, NIMBY efforts will shift to down zoning. Down zoning has already happened in many cities (including San Francisco), but it could be taken further.

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> If it passes, NIMBY efforts will shift to down zoning.

For once, CEQA would actually protect the environment: Nowadays, downzoning requires an impact study. There's no way any credible study could conclude that promoting sprawl is good for the planet.

Unfortunately, environmental review is often a vehicle for ensuring that people get as many chances to complain and obstruct as possible, even if the environmental impacts are minimal. An example of absurd objections in this vein can be found in the Virginia Avenue Tunnel replacement project, where residents objected because:

a) It would lower their home values (note that the railroad tunnel predates the houses by a few decades, and the railroad has talked about doing this project for 2 decades)

b) Extra train traffic means more pollution. Seems reasonable, until you realize that the tunnel is almost literally in the shadow (it's on the south side, not north, so not quite literally) of an interstate. Guess who's responsible for most of the air pollution.

c) The project calls for railroad to temporarily run in a exposed trench while building the tunnel. Residents are worried about what would happen if an oil tanker car caught fire. Unfortunately, a glance at the map indicates that this is not on the routes between oil supply centers and oil demand centers, and, as Baltimore found out (see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Howard_Street_Tunnel_fire ), fires in tunnels are much worse than fires in the open air.

> Unfortunately, environmental review is often a vehicle for ensuring that people get as many chances to complain and obstruct as possible, even if the environmental impacts are minimal

Yes, but this time instead of an individual development being up for CEQA obstruction (which favors NIMBYs), proposed rezoning would be subject to environmental review. This means pro-growth people could use the NIMBYs' own favorite tool against them, preventing down zoning. Poetic justice.

Generally speaking, the downzoning already happened decades ago.

In CA, various state laws require that cities zone some parcels for new housing. Often, that housing never happens because cities can disapprove even zoning-compliant projects on those parcels. The by-right law is intended to fix that problem.

Unfortunately, the by-right law does not seem likely to pass the legislature. If you support it, you should call and email your state reps.

If as-of-right passes, and NIMBYs shift to downzoning, we can pass another law to deal with that. After all, if as-of-right passes, the legislators who voted for it would probably also be willing to vote for restrictions on downzoning -- especially when downzoning is done in direct opposition to the intent of the as-of-right law they just passed.

There already is a law[1] that prevents downzoning: the Housing Element law. Every 7 years, local governments are required to create a document (the Housing Element) that demonstrates that they have zoned enough housing for their share of the estimated regional population growth (Regional Housing Needs Allocation (RHNA)). But almost every locality (especially San Francisco) routinely falls short of the allocated housing production[2]. The housing by-right bill is the Governor’s attempt to fix the perceived flaw with the Housing Element law that localities promise that they will allow a certain number of housing units but break their word by rejecting the actual projects during discretionary review.

[1] https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/codes_displayText.x....

[2] http://www.abag.ca.gov/planning/housing/datasets.html#report...

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