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The Latest Breaking News from CEQA

An initiative that would streamline California's development-killing environmental review law appears to be headed to the ballot.

Reason · May 5

California Urban Housing Development Exempted From CEQA: A Game Changer?

In a landmark move, California’s lawmakers have exempted most urban housing development from the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA), potentially transforming the landscape of housing development in the state.

Benzinga · Jul 6, 2025

With Environmental Regulatory Reform, California Gov. Gavin Newsom Finally Does Something Substantial

Without Newsom's efforts, major reforms to California's stifling environmental laws would have died on the vine.

Reason · Jul 4, 2025

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California Passes Important New YIMBY Housing Law

The new legislation exempts most new urban housing construction from the previously often stifling CEQA law. YIMBY ("yes in my backyard") advocates are cheering.

Reason · Jul 3, 2025

California's Environmental Regulations Are a Mess. Why Won't Lawmakers Fix Them?

The California Environmental Quality Act has created a regulatory nightmare.

Reason · May 2, 2025

The First Amendment Right To 'Greenmail' Developers

Plus: The Montana Supreme Court rescues zoning reform, and a new challenge to inclusionary zoning.

Reason · Sep 10, 2024

California Forever, Forever

The company needs a lot of government permission slips to build its planned new city in the Bay Area. It's now changing the order in which it asks for them.

Reason · Jul 30, 2024

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Commentary: Newsom says California’s anti-housing environmental law is ‘broken.’ So why won’t he fix it?

In February, after yet another court decision stalling sorely needed housing development, Gov. Gavin Newsom declared that California’s landmark environmental law is “broken.”

Los Angeles Times · Jul 18, 2023

California lawmakers, Gavin Newsom hammer out $311 billion budget — without major water project

California lawmakers and Gov. Gavin Newsom agreed on a $310.8 billion budget deal Monday, a compromise reached by dropping the governor’s proposal to move forward with a 45-mile Delta water tunnel that would pump water from the Sacramento River to other parts of the state.

Tribune News Service · Jun 27, 2023

Is This the Year California's Development-Killing Environmental Review Law Sees Serious Reform?

Yet another court decision stopping a U.C. Berkeley housing project is getting California's policy makers to think bigger about reforming the infamous California Environmental Quality Act.

Reason · Mar 10, 2023

Commentary: How California came to treat UC Berkeley students’ ‘noise’ as a dire environmental threat

In an era of upheaval and protest at People’s Park and across the country, the University of California, Berkeley admitted its first significant wave of Chicano students in response to student pressure in 1969. Even then, the university had a housing shortage, prompting a successful effort to acquire a house…

Los Angeles Times · Mar 6, 2023

Berkeley's People's Park is again in a fight for the ages, now over UC student housing

People's Park — among California's most contested and colorful patches of public land and a '60s era symbol of free speech and community power — is again embroiled in a battle for the ages, this time involving the University of California, Berkeley, a key environmental law and the acute student…

Los Angeles Times · Jan 13, 2023

California's Landmark Environmental Law Finally Comes for the Legislature Itself

Golden State lawmakers have refused to fix the California Environmental Quality Act. Now it could cost them a brand new office building.

Reason · Dec 14, 2022

California's Housing Crisis Hasn't Spared the State's College Students

A new law would make it harder for NIMBY neighbors to obstruct new dorms with bogus environmental complaints.

Reason · Sep 30, 2022

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Reason · Aug 26, 2022

Environmental Lawsuits Tried To Block 50,000 Homes From Being Built in California in One Year

The California Environmental Quality Act gives everyone the right to delay the approval of new housing. The Golden State's NIMBY activists are happy to exercise that right.

Los Angeles Times · Aug 23, 2022

George Skelton: Newsom tries to have it both ways on fighting climate change and California's housing shortage

SACRAMENTO, Calif. — Top priorities often conflict. Enjoy a vacation or advance at work? Save money for retirement or your kids' college education?

Reason · Jun 23, 2022

California's Competitors

Miami and Austin lured people away from California. But the new tech hubs could end up repeating San Francisco’s mistakes.

Reason · May 31, 2022

County Where It Took 50 Years To Approve New Subdivision Bans New Airbnbs

Officials in Marin County, California, argue a temporary moratorium on new short-term rentals in western portions of the county is necessary to preserve the area's limited housing stock.

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Los Angeles Times · Mar 20, 2022

‘The law that swallowed California’: Why the much-derided CEQA is so hard to change

LOS ANGELES — The landmark 1970 law for preserving California’s beauty has a long history of backfiring.

Reason · Mar 14, 2022

California NIMBYs Are Ruining U.C. Berkeley. Stop Them Before They Kill Again.

A California Supreme Court decision freezing enrollment at the state's flagship university is focusing the public's fury on the normally obscure, but incredibly consequential, California Environmental Quality Act.

Reason · Mar 4, 2022

Berkeley NIMBYs Are Taking Advantage of California's Flawed Environmental Regulations

Liberal Berkeley officials might be coming around to the view held by conservative business leaders, who have long argued that California's Environmental Quality Act needs an overhaul.

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