Assembly Select Committee on Select Committee on Permitting Reform

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Hello. Hello. Can everyone hear? Whoa. Hello. Can you all hear me? Great. Perfect. Okay, we will be in. We don't have a gavel, so I just did a little clap, clap to gavel us in. Felt a little not appropriate, but whatever, we're going to roll with it. Good afternoon, everyone. My name is Buffy Wicks.

I am an Assembly Member and I am chair of the Select Committee on Permitting Reform. Thank you for joining us today on our third hearing of this Committee. Our first hearing was held in June in Sacramento, and it was really like a primer on the need for permitting reform to address our state's housing and climate goals.

Our second hearing last month in San Francisco focused on permitting reform to facilitate climate resiliency. This hearing is focused on permitting reform to facilitate in house, sorry, infill housing and sustainable transportation investments. And we have a fourth hearing scheduled next Wednesday in Palm Desert focusing on clean energy.

For those of you that have followed my time in Sacramento, you know that the issue of housing is very near and dear to my heart. I find it absolutely unconscionable that we have nearly 200,000 folks experiencing homelessness in this beautiful state and the fifth largest economy of the world.

I also find it absolutely ridiculous, in our great state, almost all lower income renters struggle to pay the rent and only the wealthiest households can buy a home. Housing is a fundamental human need, and yet we as government are failing to ensure that that need is met. And it really is on us to fix this problem.

In a democracy, when the government fails to meet the people's needs, the people go into a different direction. So we want to make sure we're doing everything we can to meet the needs of our citizens.

I think last week's election results showed us that sent us a very clear message that those of us at every level in government need to take this seriously and that failure to deliver quality of life for our residents will not be tolerated.

Now, of course, government does not actually build much housing, but our rules and our regulations overwhelmingly influence when, where, and how much housing will be built. In those places that make it easy to build there isn't a housing crisis.

If you look at a state like Texas, Georgia, Florida, they don't have the same housing crisis that we do here in California. And I'm really proud of the work that we've done in the Legislature since I took office and before I was in office.

I think state Senator Scott Wiener and others, Nancy Skinner, many others before me, were really leading the charge, looking at substantial reforms around zoning approval and building Permits in addition to other things ADUs. So we've had certainly some wins, but we still have work to do.

And really the results are still not there in the way that we want to see them, in part because market conditions soared over the last couple years, but in large part because we spent decades placing impediments to housing production. And it's going to take a while to undo a lot of that.

More than the individual impediments, we continue to have a mindset that it's okay to slow down projects, to jump through a myriad of hoops, and to downright get to no. And it's that mindset that I'm trying to transform through this Select Committee.

How do we get to yes on building all the things that we need to build in the State of California to continue to be a modern economic state with a strong economic engine and a place that's inclusive and welcoming of all people. Let's err on the side of too much housing on affordable home ownership and rents.

Let's err on the side of ensuring housing for all of our homeless individuals and ensure that those at risk of displacement from their current homes have another opportunity awaiting them.

And while we're at it, let's err on the side of having more transportation options for people, moving them quickly through our growing cities in ways that don't leave a carbon footprint. Because if we aren't ready to move people around in cities, we're not really meeting their needs, even if we ensure that they have abundant housing.

So the transportation housing link I think is very critical, which is why we paired these two topic matters together today. So I'm excited to hear from our transportation panelists today to hear about their permitting reform needs to facilitate a shift in sustainable transportation.

But before that, we'll hear from our housing panelists on permitting reform to facilitate infill housing. And we're going to lead it off by hearing from UCLA's own Professor Michael Manville, who will provide an overview of housing affordability and permitting.

Before we hand it over to Professor Manville, I'd like to open it up to my colleagues to make some opening remarks. Mr. Carillo.

Thank you, Madam Chair. Assemblymember Juan Carrillo represented the 39th Assembly District, which is about 45 miles north from here, about a three-hour drive getting from Palmdale to LA and even longer getting back home. Really excited to have these conversations. Thank you for committing this and looking forward to the conversation.

Housing and transportation have to be interconnected. Public transit needs to be part of that Housing Production because we need to mobilize our residents to where they want to work. Really excited to be here. Looking forward to the participation in this Committee. Thank you, Madam Chair.

Thank you, Mr. Carrillo. Mr. Alvarez.

Thank you to our chair. Thank you all for participating today. Certainly, looking forward to this conversation which we began a few months ago when the Committee first kicked off. And I think we spent a little bit of time at that Committee talking about some of the challenges that we identified with housing as it comes to regulatory matters.

I think certainly no surprise to any of you who've followed some of this work that some of us have been doing. There's so much more that needs to be done. And I'm hopeful that out of today we identify some more solutions. I think that's what this conversation is about.

Whether it's continuing to make changes to CEQA as it is today, looking at regulatory bodies such as Coastal Commission, which sometimes can get in the way of creating housing opportunities, or other regulatory bodies.

I think we need to be identifying all those barriers to, to making sure that we actually deliver results to Californians which want to make sure that California is an affordable place to live. Today it is not. We have these challenges. They are real.

And I'm looking forward to today's conversation helping us evolve and make the right decisions again to prepare for the changes that we need to implement in California. Thank you, Madam Chair.

Thank you, Mr. Alvarez. With that we will go to our first guest, Professor Manville from UCLA Luskin School Department Chair of Housing. Woo. A little woo. Woo. I like that.

This is not my usual. As a Professor, I'm accustomed to board silence. So I appreciate the opportunity to speak to you guys per the request that came to me.

I'll try to just kind of sketch the contours of the crisis, how it relates to housing permitting reform, and offer some thoughts on how I think permitting reform at the state level has worked and where maybe there's room for some improvement.

And so to just step back, I think, you know, the Los Angeles region and California in general, a useful way to think about our housing crises is that it's actually two distinct but overlapping problems. And the first problem is just, it's not new.

It's just that we have a lot of Low income people, often people who have come here from other places seeking opportunity, which is a good thing. But because of their Low incomes, it's difficult for them to afford housing. That again, it isn't new. It was true in 1970, it was true in 1980.

It was true 20 years ago, and it's true today. This is a real problem, but it is a problem primarily about Low incomes. The second crisis is newer, and while it exacerbates the first problem, it has a different source.

This is a problem that's arisen not because incomes are too low, but because the actual price of housing is too high. And that has occurred because we have not built enough housing going back decades. And this is the main source of the current housing crisis.

And it is what is responsible for most of the hardship that we associate with it. This underbuilding of housing. How much have we failed to build housing? I am not, for reasons I can explain later if people are interested, not a huge fan of these various methods for calculating an exact shortfall of housing.

But let me illustrate the problem this way. In the 1950s, during the immediate post war boom, California built 4 million housing units. From the early 1960s to the late 1980s, the size of the state's economy doubled and California added another 4 million housing units.

In both of these booming times, most of the housing units were built where demand was high along California's coast. From 1997, after the early recession of the early 1990s to 2017, the state's economy doubled in size again. But California added only 3 million housing units.

And a much larger share of those were not along the coast where demand was high, but were instead in inland areas where it was a little bit easier to build. The trend since 2017 has been similar.

So put simply, for almost 30 years now, California and especially its urban coast have been in the midst of an economic renaissance and building housing like they were in a recession.

When you do that, and you combine that under supply with a massive demographic shift that occurred in the early 2000s, which was the Millennials the largest birth cohort since the boomers leaving their households, leaving their parents households and forming households of their own, you get demand far outstripping supply and the price of housing going up.

And that's how you would arrive at a situation where not just Low income people, but people who have objectively pretty good incomes can't afford housing. And of course, if they can't afford housing, then the situation is devastating for the many Low income people we do have. Right?

And that's most evident, I think, as Assemblymember Wicks pointed out in her introductory remarks, in the many homeless people we have on any given night in Los Angeles County, 70,000 homeless people. And in the many rent, burdened renters we have, again, just using statistics from Los Angeles, about 60% of our renters are rent burdened. Right?

And so this brings us to the need for permitting reform. One reason California could add a lot of housing rapidly in the past was because the state had a lot of vacant land. And it was not. It was relatively easy to build on vacant land and build detached single family homes. Today we don't have as much land.

We also have environmental and climate goals that make us want to build more densely, but our regulatory system is not equipped to make that easy. Right. So hence the need for permitting reform in too much. Especially again in coastal California, where prices are highest.

Building multifamily dense apartment infill development has been obstructed by height limits, density restrictions, parking requirements, lengthy approval processes. We probably all know the roll call.

And an important thing to remember is that these impediments, when they block multifamily housing, they are an obstacle to market rate multifamily housing and to affordable housing, because most affordable housing is multifamily housing. Right? So if it's hard to build apartments, it's hard to build any kind of apartment.

And since 2017, the Legislature really has kind of focused on eliminating or reducing these regulatory problems with a lot of different efforts. I think upwards of 100 different bills have been passed in one form or another. And some of these reforms have been very successful. I think the clearest success is with respect to accessory dwelling units.

After a few sort of concerted bites at the Apple, California has made it much easier to build ADUs. And in a typical year now, we build about 20,000 ADUs and add them to the stock of our housing. This is great. An advantage of ADUs is that they're a gentle form of density.

They also can provide rental options in higher opportunity areas that otherwise would be restricted to owner occupants. So ADUs are an important part of the solution. An important disadvantage of ADUs to remember is that they are the type of new housing that is least likely to actually find their way into the rental housing supply.

A lot of people build ADUs simply for the option value. They build them as a place to keep their kids entertained. They build them in anticipation of perhaps an in law moving in. And a lot of people build them thinking they will be a landlord and then discover they actually don't like being a landlord.

They don't like having a stranger in their backyard. Right? So there is no one for one relationship between building ADUs and seeing housing find its way into the supply. And so for that reason, it's really important actually to target reforms that are going to help people who are professional housing providers build housing.

And these efforts have been a little bit less successful and for a variety of different reasons.

But one reason for that, I think I'm an outsider to Sacramento, but it seems to me watching this happen is that the conditions required to get a bill of this nature through Sacramento are also conditions that make it harder to actually use that bill to build housing once it is passed. Right.

There's a number of what we've done is we have layered a lot of conditions onto permitting reform. And there's a bunch of different conditions. There's labor rules, there's rules that say you can only do permitting reform in close proximity to public transportation. There's owner occupancy requirements and so forth.

But the one I'll focus on just illustratively is affordability restrictions using inclusionary zoning or linkage fees or things like that and having requirements that say a certain number of new units, if you're going to take advantage of permitting reform, must be set aside at below market prices. These requirements are misguided.

The most common criticism of them, which is an accurate criticism of them, is that they're extremely difficult to calibrate and that as a result they can render some parcels that might profitably hold some housing infeasible for development.

And so the criticism is that if you force market rate developers to provide below market rate housing and you're not careful, you will often get less of both kinds of housing and less housing overall. I think that criticism is valid and the research backs it up.

But the bigger issue is that a continued insistence on inclusionary provisions betrays a fundamental misunderstanding and underappreciation of the nature of the housing crisis.

Implicit and sometimes explicit in the logic of inclusionary zoning is the idea that building new housing actually undermines affordability, that the developer is therefore obligated to mitigate the impact they have on affordability by providing below market housing.

A related idea is that because the developer is getting private benefits by being able to build more, he or she owes the public social benefits and the form of market rate housing. These ideas don't make a lot of sense conceptually or empirically. Conceptually, we have a housing shortage and building housing reduces that shortage.

As a result, there is a public benefit simply to building more housing. Empirically, there is no credible evidence that building new housing increases the price of existing housing nearby that's either in its immediate neighborhood or in the region overall.

If you do the research properly and control for the fact that development is more likely to occur in the first place, in places where rents are rising, you find the opposite, which is that new housing reduces rent appreciation both in its immediate neighborhood and in the region overall.

So I think this misconception arises from a natural concern that new market rate housing is too expensive for lower income people to live in. And that's true, but I'll make two points about that. The first is that lower income people have almost never been able to live in new construction.

They live in older housing, which has always been cheaper. But the important thing to remember is that what keeps older housing cheaper is new housing. If you don't build new housing, the older housing becomes more expensive. In places like Los Angeles and San Francisco, most new housing is expensive. Most expensive housing is not new. Right.

The hallmark of a place that has a housing crisis is not that when it builds new housing, that housing is expensive. It's that because it builds so little new housing, it's old housing, which used to be cheap and which we relied on to house our more vulnerable residents, becomes more expensive.

The second point I'll make about this hearkens back to the very first thing I said, which is that we have two interrelated but distinct problems. Low incomes and insufficient housing supply. The optimal solution to low incomes is money. The optimal solution to scarce housing is housing abundance.

It may seem tempting to blend these two and try and do both at once, but it doesn't work. And I hope years in we have learned that fact. You cannot subsidize your way out of scarcity and you cannot build your way out of poverty. We have a serious problem that is caused by insufficient housing supply.

And the solution to that problem is to make it easier to build housing of all kinds. Anything that gets layered on top of an effort to make it easier to build housing risks undermining our ability to get at the biggest root cause of the housing crisis.

So the ideal permitting reform as a result is a law that simply makes it easier to build multifamily housing almost anywhere, and especially in places where prices are highest. And I might add, that is what we did with ADUs, and that has been our most successful reform.

Now, saying this does not imply that income assistance or transit ridership or worker welfare are unimportant. But it's important to remember that these are different problems, and trying to solve them through the housing permitting process is going to have relatively few benefits because it is so roundabout and indirect and it's going to have relatively high costs.

It's also important to remember that expensive housing makes almost every other problem in California worse. Simply increasing the supply of housing will by itself help solve the problems that are faced by our transit agencies, our lower income residents, our workers, and so forth.

Complicating the housing approval process out of a desire to make it solve these problems directly, in contrast, is not going to be very helpful.

So in closing, let me just say that I do think the California Legislature has done great work in trying to tackle these issues and I hope it continues to do so and that the University of California stands ready to help.

But I do think that the next step is a reform that is sort of unencumbered by these well-meaning desires to solve other problems through the housing process. The housing problem by itself really is hard enough. Thank you.

Thank you very much. Round of applause. You're used to this every time you walk into class, right? Yeah.

Wake up, everybody.

I have some questions, but I want to defer to my colleagues first to see if they have questions. Or I can start if you guys. Okay.

One of the points you made was the conditions that are put on the permitting reform laws that we've passed. And you spoke specifically about inclusionary zoning. Can you just elaborate on from your perspective the challenges around inclusionary zoning?

There's an obvious opportunity around inclusionary zoning in that obviously we want some of the housing to be built for below market rate. Right, that's the whole intention behind it. I just would love for you to extrapolate on that and just give us a more sense of what you mean there, because you talked it through pretty quickly. But I'd love more data.

So I think part of the issue is what I touched on at first, which is to say that it's that there's only a certain number of areas, even in an expensive place like Los Angeles, where you're going to make a large amount of housing pencil. Right.

And so it can be difficult to really design a linkage fee or an inclusionary zoning policy in such a way that you're going to get the most out of that land. Because what happens is every parcel is a little bit different. Every development situation is a little bit different.

I'm sure the developers in the room could speak to this much more eloquently than I could. But like, what works in one building is going to make another building, not pencil as well.

And so what you end up with is just sort of, you know, the joke is sort of like, well, you'll get, you know, 15% of nothing.

Of nothing.

Yeah. And I do think that's a bit glib, but it's also there's something to it. And the other issue is that once these get built, oftentimes they just sort of vanish into the ether. That's to say, like who's living in the 10% of units that are set aside by this developer 15 years on.

Oftentimes no one knows, right, that what you've done is you've taken someone who is in the business of market rate development and you've told them, well, now you're also an affordable developer. But those are two different businesses. And I'm sure we've all heard the stories of like, well, how do I get someone into my set aside?

Well, I got the, you know, my friend's daughter was a grad student so technically she has no income, so she fits the Bill and this and that. I think that, you know, mission driven affordable housing developers can provide a lot of affordable housing if we make it easier for them and they can do it at scale.

And that may be a better way to do this, particularly because again, the nexus that's implied in the inclusionary doesn't make a lot of sense to me.

And is there a. And I've obviously run bills that have an inclusionary component in them. You know, and we've put a lot of thought around trying to figure out what's the most we can kind of demand while still making it a useful tool and actually getting the housing built.

And it's, there's a lot of, I think, pontification around what that number is. Do you have a sense of a number that you think makes sense or is it too hard to say depending on the market?

I would say you'll never know. Yeah, I mean it's just, you know, it's particularly when you get into sort of these infill situations where it's like, we really do want to have infill housing.

And in the ideal situation that means I can tuck a building onto an oddly shaped lot, I can do something with a small parcel and you know, so that the number you come up with based on a five over one on Venice Boulevard is not going to be the same depending on these different things.

And again, I mean, I do want to emphasize like it's. I'm going to borrow a line from somebody. We don't expect farmers to solely fund food stamps. Right. And so there is a sense where it's like, you know, you're just someone going and building some housing. It's very helpful. California needs a lot of housing.

And so when someone says they're willing to do that and you say that's not enough. This is why that's where we're at. This is why there are people living in tents.

And this, the inclusionary zoning piece is. It's a politically fraught conversation, as you can imagine. So if you could wave a magic wand and write your best Permitting Reform Bill for the Legislature, what would the contours of it look like?

I think it might look. It might just look like a more expansive version of SBA27.

I assume you wouldn't put the conditions on it, though.

Right. And that would include.

No.

So some of the conditions. Right. I mean, I think if you're taking down an existing apartment building, things like that, and taking care people who are in that building, that makes sense to me. But the set asides. No.

Which would be inclusionary zoning and labor standards.

That's right. Hey, this is why I'm not in the Legislature.

Kept building. It passed.

I mean, yes, for sure. I can't speak to that.

Yeah, yeah. Okay. Thank you.

But I'm just saying the trade off.

But conceptually that would be this. Right?

Yes.

Okay. Thank you, Mr. Alvarez.

Thank you. More along the sort of just big picture items, you used a phrase which I took interest to the California's coast is building as if we're in a recession, meaning we're not building enough.

Right.

Would that be one of the. If you were to rank the underlying problems on housing.

I understand, like the first one is just allow things to get built. Right. Building housing is just good in terms of the specific barriers which we have allowed through legislative and maybe through regulatory.

Authority for the coast to behave in this way. Where would you rank this in order of importance and significance given the disparity in where we've seen the last seven years or so building of housing, which is inland versus on the coast?

Yeah, I think, you know, it's. And we have some research on this at UCLA that I'm happy to share. It's really important to make it easier to build in places where rents are higher. Because that's where the reform is actually going to trigger building. Right.

That again, you know, it doesn't matter if it's very easy to build in a place. I'm going to simplify a little bit where no one wants to live because a developer won't build there. Right.

But making it easier to build in a place where rents are high or prices are high, that leads to actually a lot of development.

And so I think it's an extremely important part of the problem, especially when you factor in that the places where the prices are high, the prices are high there for a reason, they're close to jobs, they tend to be places that have nicer climates, have more opportunity, better schools and we don't.

The extent to which the built environments in those places in California have not changed. We don't notice it because they haven't changed. But it's really remarkable.

If I look out the window of my office at UCLA, I see a bunch of detached single-family homes and they're the same detached single-family homes that have been there for 60 years. But you know, if we lived in a slightly less regulated environment, I would be looking out my window at four story apartment buildings.

Like there's just so much demand to be in Westwood for good reason. And we have bottled that up. And the important point is when you suppress that demand, it does not necessarily reappear in Riverside because you've made it easier to build in Riverside. They're just different places.

Yeah. And you talked about research. I'm going to plug this book that I picked up not long ago. I was listening to a story on NPR and it's on the housing crisis and there's a couple of research and I happened to bring it with me in my backpack. I'm almost complete with reading it.

But a couple of research points that you brought up that I think are important. There's this assumption that you, in places, particularly where housing is expensive and you allow more housing to get built, that that's just going to raise the price of all the rents. Can you talk more about the research that you've done in that regard.

Yeah. And we've done some of it. And people across the country have examined this question as well. And let me say that that belief is very intuitive, right? And the idea that building more can reduce prices is very counter intuitive, right?

I mean, you have an area where things are very expensive and you say, okay, here's the solution. Some guy motivated entirely by profit is going to show up and build a fancy new building and richer people are going to move in.

It's understandable that that doesn't sound like a recipe for affordability, but what you have to account for is the fact that one. And then on top of that.

Excuse me, on top of that, when you look at that building and then look at that neighborhood, what you see is, well, the building went in and actually the rents have gone up.

And so what you have to account for if you're going to study this is that first the developer probably built there because the rents were going up, right? That's what developers look for. This is how they get funding. How do we know we're going to make money while rents are rising in this area?

So if you can account for that, then what you see is that the nearby rents do either go down or their appreciation is slowed, right? That they go up by less than in other places where there hasn't been as much building. And the reason for that is simply that the supply effect is real. It softens that.

If you are in a neighborhood where there's enough demand to build a brand new building, then you are in a neighborhood with a lot of market pressure. And if you didn't build that building, the market pressure would not go away.

What would happen is that the same people who wanted to be in that neighborhood would move in and they would push up the rents in the existing building. Right? So one way to think about these new buildings is that they are just, you know, they're just big yucky diversion machines, right?

That when we get richer people moving into these neighborhoods, we have a decision to make.

Do we want them to go into new buildings that we put up and absorb their demand that way, or do we want them to crash through the doors of these buildings built in the 1950s and 1960s that right now are our naturally occurring affordable housing and push the rents up?

And if you build, you do the first, and if you don't, you do the second? Yeah.

Last thing. I'll just ask the other premise in this book, which I think I've learned from experience being a local elected official voting on inclusionary housing, local ordinances and all these things is there's a premise in here that you cannot solve this on a city by city basis.

This is really a state problem because things like approving a four-story building in your neighborhood is very unpopular and so no local official will ever support that.

Have you done any research on that that you can point us to as to why decision making on housing really needs to be done at the state level and we can't really wait for locals to act on this issue?

Oh absolutely, yeah. I mean, this is a classic collective action problem, right. Where if every city or city elected officials behave in the way that is sort of individually rational for them, right.

Which is to say, adhere to the needs voiced by their loudest residents so that they can get reelected and so forth, we will get a collectively irrational result. Because of course everybody might understand that California needs more housing.

And so it would be good if we had it, but it would be really good if the housing was all somewhere else. Right.

And as long as that can be the case, we are going to continue to do some combination of under producing housing overall and also pushing the housing that we do build onto communities that may be more vulnerable, that may offer less opportunity for people there and so forth.

And so it's no accident that, you know, we don't build a lot of housing. It's no accident that we have suburbs that avoid their housing responsibilities.

And it's no accident that even in places like Los Angeles, most of our new housing is built alongside our six lane arterials that are highly polluted and noisy and not nearly as desirable a place to live as much of the city is.

Which sometimes actually drives the cost of housing perhaps there. And another, I'm getting into the segment of the book now where gentrification can actually occur as a result of that because you're bringing in new stock and therefore you individually. I'm just curious on.

Yeah, so I think this is one of these things where it's like, you know, how do you define gentrification? And 10 people will have 10 different answers. If what you mean by gentrification is that the neighborhood changes and its socioeconomic composition changes. Absolutely.

You build a fancy new building, you're going to get a different kind of person in the neighborhood. But the question of whether that's accompanied by displacement is a separate one.

Because if you just build new housing and that, you know, I'm idealizing it a little bit and that absorbs most of that new demand, well then you're going to have a neighborhood that is statistically richer and it's going to have a lower proportion of people who are low income.

But the absolute number of people who are low income might be the same. Right, because they're still in their buildings. Whereas there are plenty of places where we don't build new housing. Right. And they gentrify and see displacement much, much more.

I mean, to give you a quick example of this, I mean Venice in Los Angeles has less housing today than it did in 1980. The buildings look the same, more or less, but the neighborhood composition is completely transformed and in part because we haven't built any new buildings.

Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Carrillo.

Yes, thank you.

Going back to why the housing cost is so high, if we were to rank the reasons why it becomes so expensive and just to mention a few, say CEQA, more state subsidies or even labor agreement or disagreements to build the housing. What would be the ranking among those three that you would recommend the legislation to work on to facilitate the housing units that we need in the state?

Oh I mean, people could have a lot of different arguments about that. I do think, you know, CEQA can be a very big deal, right. It's particularly for larger projects, you know, and that kind of probably interacts a little bit with the labor stuff, right?

Because CEQA can turn out to be something that labor unions use to sort of get what they want out of developers and so forth. But I also think there's just, it's too hard just to build mid-sized buildings, right. The type of development that might not even really fall under CEQA.

You know, I think that what one thing that's happened in our state is that because so such a relatively small fraction of the high demand land is owned for multifamily housing.

The multifamily housing that we build has to be the kind of pretty big, expensive multifamily housing that in addition to being more expensive to construct, is more vulnerable to CEQA stuff, is more vulnerable to labor conflict and so forth. Those are vexing problems for sure.

But also they could be avoided if a lot of the neighborhoods where right now we just have sort of low density single family zoning could be fourplexes, triplexes, you know, small apartments, that kind of thing, wood frame construction, that I really do think we have to remember that most of our expensive regions, like they allow so little that even modest reforms could get us pretty far.

Another thing that hasn't been directly mentioned is the environmental movement other than CEQA, which is part of it. But given the way that the environmental groups are opposing just about anything that has to do with anything. In this particular case, building housing units.

If there was a development right next to a freeway, for instance, they would oppose to that for the reasons. Do you believe that there is a way to get that movement to come to a balance where we can realize that we have a serious problem, which is not having enough housing.

How would you start working on getting those environmental groups to agree on we need to build housing?

Yeah, I mean I just. That is not my expertise. I feel like you guys are probably know better than me how to negotiate with interest groups. I can barely convince my faculty members to do anything.

One last comment real quick. You also mentioned that the housing that may be more affordable to build is in areas where people don't want to leave.

And that kind of brings me to the area that I represent, Palmdale-Lancaster where when I was a Council Member there, the challenges that we faced was where investors or developers were not willing to build the multifamily units because they believe that the market does not exist up there.

When I would argue all the time that just because the 14 freeways capacity at 5 in the morning with workers coming down to LA, I made that argument that the demand would be there if they build it. Of course it's a very expensive project if you build it and then just nothing happens.

But again, given the fact that the workers come from the suburbs of the LA area, the housing continues to be more affordable. What would be the way that we can maybe legislatively be able to make those developers be able to build over there where the housing need is.

Of course, keeping in mind also that we need to also invest in public transit. Widening the freeways is not going to be the way.

That's right, yeah. I mean, I confess I'm not as familiar with that situation. If I'm hearing you correctly, you have a situation where there aren't many regulatory obstacles for developers out there to build an apartment building that they just don't see the demand. And so you're having a difficulty sort of getting that action.

I mean that is something that occurs, right? You know, development is a risky business and the developers or their lenders are going to be somewhat risk averse. Again, it's possible that some of the developers on the following panel can speak to this with more experience and intelligence than me.

I know that there have been situations where, you know, if you can get someone to kind of go first and take that risk and then everybody else sees that that person is making money, next thing you know you got some development.

I'm not sure that there's anything that can be done from a public policy perspective to consistently induce development in places where the private market, market doesn't want to go. We have unfortunately, a fairly long history in the United States of efforts to do that in cities that are kind of softer markets and they don't usually work.

And trying to incentivize the private market to do things. The record there has been pretty mixed.

Well, thank you very much.

Thank you.

We will now move on to our second panel. If our panelists could come up, we will let them self-identify and let's maybe go down the list of the agenda. If Nevada, you want to start first?

Sure. Thank you. Thanks for the opportunity to speak today. I'm Nevada Merriman. I'm the Vice President of policy and advocacy for MidPen Housing. We're a nonprofit developer, owner manager and we provide resident services. We've developed 138 communities. We manage 10,000 homes and we span 10 State Senate districts and 17 Assembly districts. We have a 4,500 unit pipeline.

And in any given year, sorry for this plug, due to the inconsistencies in state housing financing available, we'll have somewhere between 500 and 1700 homes in construction. We have our roots in the San Francisco Peninsula, so we're familiar with environmental infill revitalization.

Can I just say one thing? Sorry, I forgot to say. Everyone will have five minutes.

Okay, great.

And I'll be timing.

So we're familiar with infill housing and the public perception is sometimes that these sites are unsuitable. However, much of the land under single family homes is in some of the most expensive areas to live in in the country have a variety of issues that may need to be mitigated for.

Think about underground storage tanks or, you know, five feet of fill brought in that layers most of Silicon Valley. And this is legacy contamination either from Silicon Valley industry or historical farming. You know, creating housing for California as part of every state's agency's mission.

But I think some of the agencies may have either lost track of this or maybe don't know that that's part of their mandate at all. AB646, for example, signed into law in 2018, is a Fair Housing Bill where all agencies must affirmatively further state fair housing.

And that means taking meaningful actions to address disparities, change segregated patterns of living and beyond. Sometimes our permitting process works well, but a lot of times it lacks alignment. Up and down alignment from the various agencies.

You could think about some of the great housing bills that have been passed, SB 35, AB 1449, the one we worked on together, AB 2334 et cetera.

And when we are not able to take advantage of ministerial processing or the other goals of those bills because we get a roadblock from another agency, then really we're not achieving that vision. And you know, we have a lot of specific examples of where we could enhance our work together there.

We've worked with 24 different agencies of California's 200 plus agencies. Not all on the same project, but every project has its own particular path forward. In an ideal world, each agency would restate this commitment and work together. Oftentimes one agency will have very hard and fast deadlines.

If you don't perform, your financing evaporates and other agencies may not be able to respect that due to their longer processes. You know that development is risky. We move forward only as we incrementally button up risk.

No developer is going to get into a project and then think, okay, maybe I'll have to clean up the whole aquifer under the City of Belmont, for instance. So we need to have assurances along the way in order to continue to move forward.

And as a nonprofit, certainly we do this, but we do this in partnership with your city partners and your county partners. I have a first example in San Mateo and this is really related to Department of Toxic Substance Control. We have had in some cases two years of awaiting responses or three particular reports.

I'll certainly provide the details afterwards. The punch line really is though that one of these reports was identified up front. We submitted what was needed, and two years later we still don't have it. We're continuing to be billed for staff time and review. That's open ended.

We also, after starting construction, two more additional reports were decided were needed there. And now we're under a year under review for those two new reports. The cleanup that we have in our budget is nearly $1.0 million. That is work where we are remediating the site itself.

And I think it's important to remember that there's processing fees, there's changes in the overall design that you must do in order to mitigate and make the project suitable for and safe for humans to live there. But there's also real cleanup work that we do and that'll be a theme in my next example as well.

In Daly City, we had another large 555 unit multiphase project and we were not able to get the sign off needed for DTSC once again to receive our Temporary Certificate of Occupancy. Rather than approving this, they provided written approval allowing residents to move in.

So clear recognition that their own process wasn't going to work in any kind of timeframe. And when you have, when you're unable to get a Certificate of Occupancy, you're carrying your maximum construction loan carry. So on $100 million, you're now you have an $80 million construction loan, very high interest rates.

Right now that full load is getting billed month after month after month. And those are business ways of calculating the cost. But there's a societal cost as well. You have homes that are empty, waiting for somebody to move in and a regulator not allowing that to move forward.

This is also very relevant to the PG&E conversations across the state where we have time delays that cost money that get billed back to the locality, San Francisco and others. But really they also prevent the homes from being brought online. So in that particular project, there was $1.7 million of cleanup work. I think that's important.

We need prudent regulation. But we also, because we pay for work to get done, we need that. We need these groups to partner with us, not just to regulate us, but because we too want to see the societal benefits that housing can bring. We can bring forth housing.

We can also bring forth having in the center of our infill sites next to city hall and whatnot. We can clean up legacy contamination. And that's a benefit to everyone. I'll stop there. Thank you.

Thank you.

Oh, actually, we'll do Dave. Actually, let's go in order. Sorry, we'll go to Dave next.

Good afternoon.

Is your mic on? Sorry. There you go.

Good afternoon. Thank you so much for having me Chair Wicks. Honorable committee members, my name is Dave Rand. I'm a land use attorney. My law firm, Rand, Pastor, and Nelson, has the good fortune of representing many housing providers attempting to build much needed housing all across the state, heavy emphasis on Southern California.

And it's great to be here to have this conversation. And I'm really heartened that you've set up this committee to have this conversation. It's hard for someone who does what I do for a living to not just come here and say, "Make everything by right. Reform, CEQA."

I'd love to spend time talking about that, but I know how challenging and how hard that is. So, I'm going to do something rather boring and talk about nuts and bolts and talk about process. This is the Select Committee on Permitting Reform. So, let's talk about the permit process.

The two hallmark laws we have in California that dictate and govern entitlement permitting process in California are the Permit Streamlining Act and the Housing Accountability Act. Those two laws set up a process with a series of steps that if you look at it, sounds like we've got everything in order.

You have a completeness process and a timeframe, a code compliance review process and a time frame, and then a timeframe to get a project approved.

The problem with this system and construct is that there are big gaps and major defects that allow cities a lot of room to slow the processing of housing projects and create vast disparities and how different jurisdictions elect to process housing projects. And I'm speaking of not exotic housing projects, not your builders remedy projects.

I'm talking about garden variety general plan compliant housing projects. It starts with filing an application. File an application, you're supposed to get deemed complete in 30 days. That sounds doable. If you're in the City of, say, Santa Monica, it is doable.

The City of Santa Monica has a very short, finite list of things that are required to file a complete housing project application. You can get deemed complete in 30 days, no problem. If you're next door in the City of Malibu, it's Dante's seventh circle of hell.

It could take you three or 30 months to get deemed complete, not 30 days, because the complete items that are required are infinite. Study after study, engineering drawings, construction level document drawings. Just to get started, just to get in the door is extraordinarily expensive. And time consuming.

So much so that there are jurisdictions that have set up processes at the outset that are so onerous it keeps people from even wanting to participate in those jurisdictions. They create a sort of aura around them that, "Don't come here. We're going to put you through hell."

Why don't we have a single uniform application for housing projects that covers every jurisdiction? We know you only need certain things. You need information about site conditions, you need plans of a certain type. Why can't we have a standardized form that the same information and items are required anywhere you propose to do a housing project in California?

That may sound radical, but we already have a version of that that came out of SB330 with a preliminary application. Standardized, same information, works really well.

We can have that same process for an application, and I can start with my client at the same time in the City of Santa Monica and the City of Malibu, or at least I should be able to. And that could help get us there.

As we go on into the process, after we go through code compliance review and back and forth with the city over objective standards and the like, we get to a point in theory where there is a timeframe to approve a garden variety general plan compliant housing project.

Say if the city is processing a project in an infill housing development through a CEQA exemption, there's a statute that says 60 days from the point in time in which a CEQA determination is made, the project shall be approved.

Well, that sounds great, except the CEQA determination is made in 99 out of 100 jurisdictions at the same time the project is actually approved. So that time frame means absolutely nothing in practice.

I can think of one or two jurisdictions that have a process where they start with a CEQA determination that occurs before the overall project entitlements are approved themselves.

So there has to be a mechanism in the law and, excuse me, AB 1633 started this to a degree, but there has to be a mechanism, particularly with more streamlined CEQA clearances, whether it's exemptions or addendum to previously certified EIRs within the scope determinations, what have you, Whether it's not public comments and responses to comments, it's more administrative in nature.

There has to be a point where the applicant can say, "Okay, city, you have everything you need? Are we good? Yes?" 60 day shot clock now starts. We don't have that right now.

And as a result, the permit streamlining time frames, once you get through the code compliance review after you're deemed complete, fall off the cliff and you're at the mercy of the jurisdiction to move the project forward has to be fixed.

If those two things were done, the beginning of the process, the end of the process: the Permit Streamlining Act and the Housing Accountability Act would work better together. We'd have a smoother process, more predictable process, more uniform, equitable process across jurisdictions. We wouldn't have the disparities to the degree we have now in processing.

I think we'd do much better moving forward. So, in closing, I'll just say make everything by right and please reform CEQA. Thank you.

Thank you. That was helpful. Dave. Tom, I believe you're next. Right. We'll start at the clock.

All right. Madam Chair and members of the Select Committee, I'm Tom Grable. I'm the Division President for Tri Pointe Homes down here in Southern California. In fact, you were sitting in my market area. So, we manage this territory of our market, Tri Pointe Homes, we're the fourth largest builder currently in California.

We have 18 operating divisions in 13 states, and we were a startup builder here in Southern California just 15 years ago. I also have the privilege of chairing the California Building Industry Association this year. We represent the homebuilders who build 85% of the homes that are built in our state each year.

And I also am a member of the leadership of BizFed and co-Chair of the Land Use and CEQA committee here in LA County. However, as Chair Wicks knows, I started my career writing EIRs, so I have more than a working knowledge of CEQA and the pitfalls of it.

I sit here today representing not builders per se, but rather people, all the people who need housing. So, we build homes for people, the people who have those needs. And the question and challenge that this committee I know is undertaking. Is California finally serious about solving the housing policy crisis?

And so, I just want to outline some inconvenient truths, some of which have been mentioned in passing. But housing in California and housing anywhere is a canary in the coal mine. It is a lead indicator of the state's economic health. Number two, another inconvenient truth to many is the market always wins. So, I'll leave it at that.

And we can talk about that later. Also too, as I mentioned, we don't have a housing crisis. Instead, we have a housing policy crisis that's been underway for 40 years, ever since the late 80s, early 90s. A balanced approach is needed. Infill, and I know we're talking about infill today, but infill is not the panacea to solve the housing crisis. Likewise, Affordable Housing is not the only type of housing that is going to solve the housing crisis, policy crisis. Also, home ownership, not rental, is the way to generational wealth creation for disadvantaged and underserved communities.

Housing legislation in recent years, there's been well over 100 bills. I think it's now approaching close to 150 bills that have been approved.

But if you go back to October 2017, there was a challenge that was issued during the election of that year and that was to build 3.5 million homes in our state in the next seven years. So how did we do? What's the report card look like from 2018 up until today, or yesterday rather, we calculated it.

Of those 3.5 million homes, there were 774,825 permits pulled in that seven-year time period: 22% of the target. Now, if I was in Dr. Manville's class and I had a 22% report card, I know what my grade would be in that class.

So, we're not - we're failing our residents here in the state in that seven-year period that averaged just a little over 110,000 homes per year.

That is all time lows when you look at it over the past 70 years in California going back to 1954 and the median price range from 2017 to 2024 went from 529,000 for a single for a home in California to 816,000. An increase of 54%. Population decline and shift out of state is reality.

In fact, we lost electoral votes in our state as a result to states like Texas, Arizona, Nevada and Carolinas. So again, the market is dictating that. Community counts in Southern California is going precipitously in the decline. Insurance, I just have to say insurance and then everybody in this room knows what I'm talking about.

Also, wildland areas and wildfire protection. Builders today since 2010 are building the most fire hardened product that we've ever built. And it's proving to be such fire hardened that we are withstanding wildfires that are coming to our doorsteps and stopping with the older stock that isn't happening.

So, in actuality for building outside in the wildland areas, we are providing a defensible space and actually the wall to the city protecting the older stock homes that are vulnerable for fire dangers. Other states, I mentioned Texas, Carolinas, Arizona, general plan zone change, EIRs, theirs are months, ours are multiple years.

Track maps, theirs are also months, ours are years. Building permits, theirs are weeks, ours are months. Other states, the process is consistent, reliable and predictable. Needless to say, that's why the capital is flowing to those states because of that reliability and dollars are coming going out of California from builders going to other markets

Also, it's a well-known fact and you can look it up in public: public builders earning statements. The CEOs have actually talked about being long on land in California is actually a knock against builders in California by Wall Street. So, companies' valuations are decline through their stock values when they have too much in California compared to other states.

So those are the stage work. So macro pre-entitlement challenges. CEQA reform needs an overhaul. General plans: the housing element has been revered as being that primary driver. Let's look at the land use element. Let's hold people, let's hold cities accountable for their land use element, providing ranges of densities that we can build, also program EIRs.

Cities can be held to higher levels of accountability for those EIRs on a programmatic basis. That basically sets up a buy right type of system to expedite the process. Zoning ordinances: I can tell you because we've experienced it firsthand.

Cities that are giving you RHNA numbers and putting designated numbers of units on specific parcels and then on the back end devising development standards and their zoning code to prevent that from happening. Those games are being played in cities. We've actually had a couple of potential projects we've had to walk away from because.

Because they weren't as advertised. The games that cities are playing in that regard. We need to expand SB330, the Housing Accountability Act, as was mentioned. Also, something that hasn't been mentioned yet: electrical capacity. We have a massive problem on the horizon that is not being talked about openly right now.

And us builders are running up against it in developable areas. Capacity is an issue because it takes too long to bring infrastructure to those service areas. And that also includes infill.

Would you mind wrapping up?

Yes. So, plan checks, permitting. We need shot locks. Just as the gentleman to my right just described. On site construction inspections. We are being subjected to the whims of inspectors who are making up their own rules on our job sites that are also adding cost and time. So, consistency of jurisdictional operations.

Walk across the street to a different city. You got a whole bunch of set of rules. As mentioned, self-certification of plans is something that's been done in other locations where cities don't have any liability over our product. We have entirely all liability, as do our consultants. That's something to look at.

Inspections follow the approved plans I mentioned and then penalties for rogue jurisdictional retaliation retribution that does happen. So, I'll wrap up the say home builders to jurisdictions, the state, counties and cities that we build in. We are your customers if we could just be treated that way. So, thank you for the subcommittee entertaining this.

This CBI will be a resource to this body, and we look forward to your success and we thank you for the consideration, especially including a market rate builder on the panel.

Thank you. Thank you. Jennifer Ganata, you are next. Thank you for joining us today.

Apologies, I was frantically trying to edit. So, good afternoon. My name is Jennifer Ganata and I'm the Legal Department Co Director of Communities for a Better Environment. I appreciate being able to speak today on infill housing and I'm going to talk about public health as it relates to that.

I know that the topic of housing is not often discussed from an environmental justice perspective. CBE is an environmental justice nonprofit organization that, since 1978 has used community organizing, research and legal strategies to build power with the four communities we partner with from the Bay Area to LA.

We are in Southeast Los Angeles, Wilmington, East Oakland and Richmond. As an attorney and a former community organizer, my work is primarily focused on the intersection of environmental justice, land use, and housing at both the statewide level and the local level.

From my firsthand experience working alongside low income BIPOC residents who suffer from severe and chronic health conditions due to their poor housing quality and actually just where they live, I found that it's crucial to tackle our state's affordable housing crisis using an intersectional, multi-issue lens.

We must address housing by simultaneously addressing the various issues that are connected to housing and a healthy community.

So those questions are how housing should protect and not weaken public health, how it can be well integrated into neighborhoods to promote our state's climate goals, and how it should guard against common harms such as exposure to toxic pollution and resident displacement.

As I've talked to parents and youth from Southeast LA to Wilmington over the span of 11 years, they've made it quite clear that they do not want to be forced to choose between having housing that's affordable and being able to protect their health and their children's health.

To be forced to live next to polluting freeways and toxic industrial factories is both an environmental and racial injustice and a lack of care for their humanity in their eyes. So, I actually provided Steve a report the California Environmental Justice Alliance put together about housing and environmental justice.

I've cut that part out of my testimony, so hopefully you read it, but I do want to continue and talk about that. You know, Robert Bullard, who's largely considered the father of environmental justice, understood the relationship between housing justice and environmental justice earlier on in his work in the 70s the through the lawsuit being versus Southwestern Waste Management, he and many others continue to assert that housing must be addressed as an environmental justice issue.

Bullard notes that limited housing and residential options combined with discriminatory siting practices contributed to the toxic exposure to the black community in Houston, Texas. In 1979, he was asking the question: how are benefits and burdens of environmental reform distributed? Who gets what, where and why?

Are environmental inequities a result of racism or class barriers or a combination of both? These are all still very salient questions. Just southeast of where we are now are the communities of Southeast Los Angeles, often referred to as SELA. These are vibrant communities comprised of largely working-class residents.

This region is also considered, population wise, the densest parts of LA County. CBE's office is located in Huntington Park, which is one of the larger cities in SELA. In 2021, CBE, along with our housing justice partners, sued the city out of lack of compliance with their housing element as well as their environmental justice element.

While we prevailed in our lawsuit, we continue to this day to figure out what is the best way to address the housing concerns that keep in mind the historical legacy of industrial pollution in the region as well as threats of tenant displacement.

At this very moment, we're still trying to figure out how to do rent control as we know that a lot of development is about to come into Southeast LA. So, in the coming years, as the city has to rezone in order to meet the RHNA numbers, this is where it becomes difficult.

Will developers simply get to use different streamlining tools to get around environmental review, which can lead to harms for current and future residents if they fail to address a toxic and polluted land they are building on and around? CBE has been organizing in SELA since the 90s.

And what we now know is that region is impacted by multiple sources of pollution. City of Vernon's Exide battery recycling plant closed in 2015, but not before it could emit at least 7 million tons of lead into the air and with a document in cancer risk in the community.

But Exide is not the only polluter in the area. There are multiple foundries, chemical operations, metal recyclers and simply vacant brownfields that have never been cleaned up and have been abandoned. Not to mention busy streets and freeways that serve as arteries for our goods movement and cut across the entire region.

So, to address the important connection between housing and environmental health, I think that we must do the following: we should ensure the full and timely implementation of laws and programs that are designed to reduce pollution and protect community health and ensure their consistency with the state and federal housing laws.

Southeast LA is an AB 617 community and has a community emissions reduction plan. Many of the SELA cities have or are creating environmental justice elements. But how do we make sure that housing development is keeping all of this in mind?

Another thing that we need to do is ensure that appropriate land, water, and air remediation takes place before development occurs and create more oversight and enforcement to ensure that housing is built to protect public health and not just to maximize corporate profits.

If we streamline for infill and EJ communities, how do we ensure that appropriate remediation takes place? After doing extensive research and talking to different experts and consultants, some of whom have actually worked at the Department of Toxic Substance Control, it's that not all site assessments are done to the same high standard or quality.

At this moment, there are no real checks or balances on how land is remediated; it's simply up to the developer, and we know that not all developers are the same. We also need to create heightened standards and protective safeguards for those communities that have experienced higher pollution burdens and poor land use planning.

We also need to include clear requirements for creating healthy, safe, and affordable housing in local land use planning, including by integrating such goals into general plans and community or area plans that regulate local land use. The land use element of the general plan has the most regulatory power to guide a city or a county's future development.

How can we develop goals, policies, actions and zoning codes so that our goals for affordable housing and environmental justice can also be fully implemented and realized through these planning documents?

And lastly, we need to create laws or requirements that allow for important community input to be included in housing and land use decisions to ensure housing can support communities and protect against unintended harms.

CBE often talks about a just transition and typically a just transition is used when discussing the fossil fuel industry, but we also apply it to land and our need for full land remediation.

How do we take land that has been a polluting site for decades and in some instances a century, and turn into something that can be converted into a public good for the community? These are crucial questions that we must answer first in order to create healthy housing in vibrant cities.

Thank you and our - thank you and our last guest, City of San Diego will be presenting. Mr. Alvarez is excited about that I believe.

Thank you. Thank you very much. Good afternoon, Chair Wicks and Members of the Select Committee. My name is Christopher Ackerman-Avila, Senior Policy Advisor to San Diego Mayor Todd Gloria on land use and housing issues.

I appreciate the opportunity to share how Mayor Gloria's leadership is transforming our city's housing permitting process and advancing our shared goals for housing production. Under Mayor Gloria's direction, San Diego is taking bold steps to expedite housing.

This commitment is evident in two recent executive orders he signed mandating a 30-day review and approval timeline for all ministerial 100% affordable housing projects and Complete Communities projects. Complete Communities is the city's Transit Oriented Housing initiative designed to improve access to transit, reduce VMT, and enhance pedestrian infrastructure.

These executive orders set a new standard for responsiveness, aiming to bring critically needed housing to market with unprecedented efficiency. In just the last year and a half since we got this executive order running, we've got 27 projects totaling 3,000 units approved.

For many years, the City of San Diego permitted approximately 5,000 homes annually, well below the 13,000 units needed to meet our RHNA targets. Last year, ho1wever, the city permitted nearly 10,000 homes, a record high since at least the 1980s.

Mayor Gloria's decisive leadership in implementing policy changes and permit reforms made this possible, and we're on track to sustain this momentum this year as well. Since 2021, the city's Development Services Department has created substantial streamlining programs for every level of housing development.

One element that is crucial to create a sense of certainty for builders is policy implementation, clarity, and flexibility. Our Development Services Department has hundreds of webinars, tutorials, information bulletins, and technical bulletins that are easily accessible to the public. Webinars and tutorials are accessed via YouTube or on the DSD website on various topics.

Information bulletins and technical bulletins describe processes, procedures, fees, requirements, and provide other resources as the state considers additional improvements to streamline housing permitting and construction, implementation guidelines for cities, counties and tribes will be crucial to help staff quickly adopt these policies and begin to get these permits issued.

Mayor Gloria understands that to create certainty and foster progress, our permitting framework must include flexible compliance pathways. His administration has introduced adaptable multipath criteria for projects, empowering builders to meet city requirements in ways that best suit each project's needs. The Park Master Plan, for example, adopted under Mayor Gloria's leadership, exemplifies this approach.

It includes a points-based scoring matrix that allows developers to choose how to meet minimum amenity requirements, whether through playgrounds, fitness circuits, community gardens, or dock parks. This flexibility allows developers to incorporate amenities that align with both city goals and neighborhood characteristics.

Similarly, for builders opting to build affordable housing off site, we require that the receiving site, where affordable units are located, offer comparable amenities to the sending site. A flexible point system helps standardize these requirements, measuring amenities like swimming pools, fitness areas, and community gardens by square footage to ensure equitable resources in all communities.

Our Mobility Choices Regulations provide similar flexibility for pedestrian infrastructure. Builders can earn points for adding high visibility crosswalks or planting shade trees or installing pedestrian rest areas or widening sidewalks or other fruit features. This flexibility supports the overall goal of creating walkable, accessible neighborhoods without imposing rigid one size fits all requirements.

As the state considers additional improvements to facilitating housing, cities, counties and tribes would benefit from flexible criteria. Often bills are passed with criteria or requirements that are impossible to meet in an urban infill project either because of cost or space or liability.

With a flexible criterion that creates various pathways to being eligible or to meeting requirements, it is more likely builders can opt into a program. Lastly, I'd like to very briefly touch on potential areas for improvement. The California building code is remarkable in that it helps us meet our climate goals, but it also certainly adds cost to housing.

The state must explore the intersection of reducing carbon emissions and reducing costs. The California Coastal Commission and California Fish and Wildlife Agencies are doing their jobs of protecting our cherished coast. However, they slow the city down.

Often pro housing policies adopted city wide years prior will not be affecting the coastal zone, and for staff, this means that they need to review projects with one set of regulations in the coastal zone and another set of regulations inland. This creates confusion for staff and the applicant. Two years cannot be an acceptable review timeframe.

They must move quicker. CEQA and continuous litigation, as has been mentioned before, continues to be an issue as well. Just about every housing policy our City Planning Department proposes and our City Council adopts is challenged in court.

Most of the time the lawsuit is frivolous, but it delays implementation and sometimes it delays specific projects so much that their project permits expire, and the applicant is forced to reapply for new building permits. Perhaps most pressing at this time is the role of utilities. Builders report several months of delays before having utilities come electrify the building.

The CPUC decision under SB410 and AB50 earlier this year is a step in the right direction, and we need more of that. In conclusion, San Diego is addressing the housing crisis with innovative reforms, flexible compliance pathways, accessible resources, and dedicated programs for key industries.

As we work toward ambitious housing goals, continued support from the state in regulatory alignment and streamlined review processes will be essential to achieving our objectives. Thank you, Chair Wicks and members of the committee for your commitment to advancing California's housing solutions.

Mayor Gloria and the City of San Diego stand ready to support these efforts as we address our shared housing challenges.

Thank you. Just appreciate everyone's participation. We will open it up to questions from my colleagues. That's okay. I'll let you guys go first. Mr. Carrillo, would you like to go?

No, just the comment made where there has to be a uniform weight when it comes to due to plan check and submit all application, all those things and the last comment on Fish and Wildlife treating coastal zones different from inland. We face the same concern with the Joshua Tree.

I represent the high desert where there's a lot of Joshua trees that we need to protect. However, because of the way that the Department is not staffed enough, there are delays like you mentioned.

And I think that that's something that we should also hold accountable those departments because with a promise that the Joshua Tree Trail Bill that had passed last year, there's been delays. We hear that from developers where they go through the submittal application process in the middle of the way.

The department just comes with new regulations that they themselves believe they have the authorization to do just because of language in the bill where in preservation of Joshua trees, local governments have the expertise to do that. The City of Palmdale and Twentynine Palms and those cities in the region.

But then because of language and the bill, the Fishing Wildlife Department determined that they can also not only impose the fee to take a Joshua tree, but they also, the developers also have to transplant the trees.

That's just a comment I wanted to make in that aspect because of the way that agencies take upon themselves the legislation that is not intended to do. And that's something on us. I realize that is something that we need to work on to alleviate the concerns of development. Again, we need to preserve the Joshua tree.

We need to make sure that it's an iconic. Continue to be an iconic species in the area. But when the language gives those agencies the ability to come up with new rules and regulations is the where the developers get frustrated in doing that. So that's something, again, that I just wanted to realize.

That's something we need to work on. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Carillo. Mr. Alvarez.

Thank you. I want to maybe start with Mr. Rand on the issue of the clock, which has always been really challenging. I think for me, from a local perspective, from a permitting process, from a local perspective, as we worked on expediting at the local level but even now at the state.

And you gave some really interesting sort of insight into how that's a problem. I guess what I'm trying to figure out is how we can perhaps create some certainty, uniformity around when a clock starts, whether it's for the 60-day review or for any number.

I mean, the truth is, everywhere you look, such as, like Coastal Commission, there's requirements to review something within a certain number of days that day, like never. The clock never starts oftentimes. Right, and so, I just want to hear more about that and what you've experienced.

Sure. It's a vexing challenge. And there are multiple clocks and there are multiple ways to evade all the different clocks that are in the law right now.

And so that's why I started with the Uniform Permit application, because that is one way at the start of the process when a developer files an application that you can get some predictability and some certainty and you know, one city can't load up the process to the point where that clock either never stops or once the application is submitted, there are infinite opportunities to restart that clock because you'll be serially deemed incomplete.

Can I ask you about how we can ensure that when it's submitted that it's - because cities will always tell you, well, it was an incomplete application. And so, we can't really start the time, and you can't really count that against us because the applicant was ill-prepared. They did not submit certain documents.

It took them a while and then they go in this back and forth, and so this is why the clock sometimes never really starts, because the application is never deemed complete.

So, there are some guardrails in the law on that now, but they're loosely enforced, and they're often violated. For example, the law says you have to have a list of application completeness items, and it needs to be posted in a publicly accessible location. So, a developer is not supposed to guess.

It's supposed to be very clear as to what you need to submit. And if there are 10,13,15 items that you have to submit and you don't submit them, well, then you'll rightfully be deemed incomplete. But there's no guessing game. Cities, often, municipalities in general often don't follow that.

And if they do follow it, some of the very astute ones just say, "Well, instead of asking for the 10 things we know we really need, we'll ask for 40 or 50 things." And then that just creates all the more process and opportunities for, you know, complications once the submit.

And then once they submit those and they request a change?

So, once you submit, then you're not - the city is not supposed to request, you know, new information. So, if you don't submit something that was required and identified, that's an incompleteness basis. But the city or county is not supposed to then ask for new information.

There's also things that often get front loaded to this process that are inappropriate, that slow it down, that are really meant for later in the process. So many cities will tell you that you have to show all the ways in which you're going to be compliant with their general plan and zoning at the outset of the process.

That's not supposed to be in that first 30-day completeness window. That is a subsequent period of time where there's a separate clock under the Housing Accountability Act for the city to review for code compliance purposes.

But these things get commingled and meshed together and oftentimes get pushed to the front, creating a very hard entry point for a housing project to get started in the door. And getting that completeness determination is really critical Assemblymember because that's what kicks off the CEQA process. You're not really starting CEQA until you're complete.

And CEQA is the longest part of the process.

So, we did not insert into the Housing Accountability Act. First, localities to submit their, whatever their list of completionists. That's just left for everybody's individual interpretation.

There is not a single uniform list. There's a requirement to have a list, but not a specified list. And therein lies the problem.

Were there any conversations to make a requirement that the list must be approved by someone like HCD?

That would make sense. And that's what the preliminary application process essentially does. You have a finite uniform list. HCD has prepared a standardized application. Some cities have modified that to a very small degree, but the law is very clear as to what the requirements are. So, everybody's going off the same rules of the road.

And whether I'm in Lafayette or Los Angeles, I know what I need to submit for a preliminary application. Not the case when we go to step two, which is time to submit that first formal entitlement application.

And if we can standardize that process as we've done with the preliminary application process, I think we'll save some time and move things faster.

So you get through the 30 days and then what's the next one?

You get through the 30 days and then if your project is 150 units or less, the city or county has to review for code compliance within 30 days. More than 150 units, it's 60 days. These are for general plan, you know, compliant projects that are governed by the Housing Accountability Act.

So, if you're doing a general plan amendment zone change in a - separate deal. So that's code compliance and that's fairly clear. And then there's iterative back and forth on that getting to code compliance. And then once that's done, that's when we go into the abyss.

No time frames other than these time frames that say 60,90,180 days, depending on the CEQA document, to approval. But those timeframes don't start until the CEQA document is approved. The CEQA document is not approved until the project's approved, typically. So those timeframes really have no practical effect at all.

How did we get into the practice of CEQA being approved once a project is approved, as opposed to?

So, it's - I understand that some time ago there was a - Jennifer Hernandez is laughing at me because I'm so young and new at this, that there used to be - CEQA was done earlier, when it was faster, when it was easier, when it was not what it is today. It was done earlier and then that was done.

And then you go to public hearing for the entitlements and the approvals afterwards. Today, in the overwhelming majority of jurisdictions in the state, it's combined. The approval process is combined. So, you, your EIR is certified the same night that your land use entitlements are approved by the planning commission or the city council.

Your CEQA exemption is adopted the same evening as your housing project entitlements. And so, because of that, the timeframes for approval are essentially worthless in practice today.

And you talked about entitlements happening at the same time as CEQA, which I saw happen in my city. But it was only when we had plan amendments or major amendments to local. We had local planning documents by neighborhood almost. You're telling me that in other cities cases?

Yeah, the San Diego Carlsbad does separate the sequel process from the entitlement approval process. You do that somewhat uniquely. Most jurisdictions in the state don't do it that way. They combined the approvals into sort of a single package, single event.

So you are, you're right that in some of those jurisdictions that you're mentioning, it is separated, but that's the exception, not the norm.

Got it and what about the disapproval of entitlements? I mean, a council, I get, they have the authority. Do most cities maintain that authority? Because what we would do is usually, we had programmatic EIRs, which if it was again, compliant, it didn't require discretion by the city council, therefore no vote.

Are you telling me that in a lot of cities they maintain discretion to approve specific projects even if it's within general plan?

Oh, yes, sir. Let me be clear. Let me be very clear. If the state functioned from a permitting entitlement perspective, like my fellow panelists, city from San Diego, your City of San Diego, this committee would not be needed.

San Diego, more than any other city in the state, has figured out how to streamline de-risk, standardize, expedite housing. But it is in a league of its own. There are a handful of cities that operate that functionally and effectively when it comes to approving housing around the state. The vast majority of jurisdictions go slower.

And maintain more discretion.

Essentially, well, they retain the discretion which requires the process, meaning triggers CEQA, triggers public hearings. State housing law still limits all cities ability to disapprove or reduce the density of general plan zoning compliant housing projects. But that doesn't mean it makes it go fast.

So, what we have in most jurisdictions is a long arc from submittal to the final end, even if that final end is largely predetermined by state law.

Okay. I would take a moment to take some credit on what we've done in San Diego along with at the moment, at the time, it was Council Member Gloria, who is now mayor, who continued this work. But I had a colleague, and I want to give him a shout out. My colleague was Mr. Scott Sherman, who was another Council Member. And together we formed a bipartisan group of regulatory reform at the local level, which I think has led to some of the improvements you talked about.

But I do want to acknowledge the state has also been helpful, you know, giving us some tools in what San Diego has decided to do is utilize the tools to that extent. But I think- but it took a while.

We started that work, I believe it was in 2015, and it was at least a couple years' worth of work of passing ordinances and changes.

And so, I think I just say that because I think that's the type of focus that I appreciate that the Chair has with this committee because we are now being very intentional in identifying those opportunities. And clearly there's a lot here today and more. So, I'll just stop there because I know I've taken enough time.

But appreciate and look forward to the other questions.

And that is your daily advertisement from San Diego. Thank you. I wanted to ask Jennifer Ganata in hearing some of this. First of all, I appreciate you being here with the perspective through intersectionality and the EJ lens and I appreciate you being here and presenting that.

Given that, I'd love to get your sense, and I know the devil is in the details and all that sort of stuff. But on some of the ideas presented by Mr. Rand sitting next to you, the idea of a single uniformed entitlement application, these types of ideas to help sort of the streamlining, still having to go through all the processes that one needs to go through, but making it as streamlined as possible.

And even the San Diego model that's been discussed here, how does that strike you through the lens with which you look at housing?

I think - so, I'm obviously only speaking from the jurisdictions that we're working out of. And I think that both Communities for a Better Environment and both CEHA have talked about it doesn't apply to every single community. I think that environmental justice communities do have a very long history. There's a lot of work that needs to be done.

So, if you have a streamlined permit in that way, I think the questions that I'm still raising is what do we do about the remediation? What do we do? How do we make sure that's going to happen? And I have like no assurances from the Department of Toxic Substance Control.

Not every project will go under a voluntary cleanup agreement. Oftentimes it's up to the individual developer. So, I mean, I guess the issue that we have is really how do we have any oversight on what's happening in the community?

So, I think the other instance for Huntington Park. For instance, Huntington Park is about 55,000 people and over, I think 75% of that population is actually renters. So that means most of the folks that live there don't actually own the land.

So, if you live there and you have an experience there and you understand on the ground what have been the conditions of living there, how do you actually give that input if you just have permits that you know can be approved and just go forward? I think that's, that's the question that we're having.

The thing that we want to be able to do is actually give community input and what are community led solutions. And I don't think, you know, in doing the housing element lawsuit, obviously we are, we want deeply affordable housing. We're asking for this to happen.

But how do we do this in a way that's including the community as well? And a lot of the processes are really set up where it's the jurisdiction and the developer, but not necessarily the people who live in the community.

And I understand that, you know, I think it's set up this way where you're not necessarily supposed to get all that input from everybody. But especially for communities like Huntington Park, where we've been organizing for decades and now, we're seeing a lot more interest because we're getting new rail, the proximity to downtown.

I think then the issue becomes too, is thinking about displacement issues. I think the first speaker was talking about gentrification and whether or not that also creates displacement.

Like, I think there is a real fear about displacement and going back to how, you know, working in cities like Huntington Park, I think what community residents are saying is that they want to stay in their communities, but they also are having a hard time staying there because of it being unaffordable. So, I just, like I feel like there's almost like a different - we're looking at this in a different way. Right? Like, I think there's this desire to build a lot, but then there's also this, like, how do we deal with the units that we have now and how do we keep them in line? So, like, how do you balance that?

Like, because if you are losing naturally occurring affordable housing or you're losing affordable housing units but you're building at the same time, like, doesn't that actually cancel one another out if you're losing a bunch of people and people are being displaced?

And I think for environmental justice communities, we're constantly trying to balance that and figure out, like, what are the solutions for that.

Thank you. Okay, Any other questions or thoughts? All right, well, thank you all for participating. Okay. Lots of claps today. We normally don't get to do that in the legislature, but it's a select committee. We can do whatever we want. I even had a senator come to the last one, which I wasn't supposed to.

Here's the agenda, but you're also going to read the remarks whenever you want.

Okay, we are on panel two. We will let folks self-introduce in order of the agenda which I think you all should have there. So, if Juan would like to lead us off.

Sure. Thank you. Good afternoon, Chair Wicks and community Member Committee Members. My name is Juan Matute, and I am the Deputy Director of the UCLA Institute of Transportation Studies. I study transportation finance, governance, and transit policy and planning in California.

I also have the honor of serving the state as a member of the Transit Transformation Task Force created by SB125. Today I will be discussing how permitting, particularly local permitting, affects transit ridership in California. First, it's important to note that based on the research, transit ridership is dependent on providing safe, reliable, and frequent transit.

Permitting plays a role in each of these. There are many options to provide a safe on vehicle experience, but often neglected is the off-vehicle experience and stop lighting is essential to providing a safe off-vehicle experience for people and stop furniture.

Permitting can provide both lighting at night and shade during the day, increasingly important in a climate impacted California Assemblymember Nazarian's AB 1975 from 2022, which as introduced would have created a statewide permit streamlining and limited review window for bus stop amenities, but was held in suspense, included the following research finding from the Transit Center, which is an advocacy group. Bus shelter quality and quantity in Los Angeles lagged far behind other cities that they studied because obtaining a permit for a single piece of street furniture, including bus shelters, required approval from the City Council, Public Works and eight other city agencies and nearby property owners.

A single veto from a council member or an appeals process from a constituent can essentially kill a permit for a bus shelter. Shelters and other street furniture can take six months or more to be approved or installed, if they are approved at all.

As a result, half as many bus shelters were installed in the City of Los Angeles during the study period compared to the City of New York in the same five-year period.

This problem is complicated because Los Angeles, though the biggest city, is one of the 488 cities in California, each of which have different requirements which we heard about in the previous panel. And this transit stop permitting reform can also cover better signage in real time information, both of which are essential to building transit ridership.

For reliability, permitting can be part of reducing operational variation, including variation due to traffic congestion. Transit only lanes or bus only lanes in congested areas are a key policy measure, as is transit signal prioritization. Both require a combination of intergovernmental coordination and permitting coordination, and then the last being frequency.

Improving reliability creates an opportunity to concentrate transit service on streets with bus only lanes or even develop bus rapid transit. Bus rapid transit offers a rail light transit service quality experience at a fraction of the capital cost.

But bus rapid transit projects in California have been plagued by community opposition and permitting delays, so there are a few successful examples. Van Ness in San Francisco and the Orange Line or G Line in the San Fernando Valley are two successful examples of BRT.

But a line between North Hollywood and Pasadena that has been delayed and reduced in quality and scope is an example of the local process getting in the way of what would serve regional transit passengers. The following is excerpted from an op ed I wrote in the LA Times in June of 2019, so pre-Covid and given that we're a short subway ride away from Hollywood, I like the framing. So, in the 1994 movie "Speed", the inconceivable happens. Sandra Bullock and Keanu Reeves operate a bus during morning rush hour in Los Angeles, maintaining a minimum speed of 50 mph.

If this feat was implausible when the movie was first released 30 years ago, now it would be impossible today. Lower speeds and traffic congestion reduced the reliability and frequency of transit services. Between 1994 and 2017, average bus speeds in the Los Angeles area declined by 13 and a half percent to a sluggish 12 miles per hour.

LADOTs, DASH buses, and Santa Monica Big Blue buses were particularly hard hit, declining 34% and 28% respectively. Transit ridership in California was falling before the pandemic. We're about as of 2022. The new data just came out this month, so I haven't analyzed it yet. We were at 56% of pre Covid levels in 2022.

The combination of slower speeds and reduced ridership creates a vicious cycle of even slower traffic because of more congestion and rising costs to provide the same service as transit, agencies have no other choice but to pay bus operators to sit in increasing traffic. Compared to 1994 operating conditions, in 2017, LA Area Transit area agencies spent an extra $130 million to pay bus drivers, or 7% of their operating budgets in 2017, which at the time was roughly equivalent to the amount of state transit assistance funds the state contributed to LA area agencies.

So, by improving speeds and therefore reliability and frequency, the state can help to grow both ridership and reduce per mile operating costs. Transportation is also California's largest source of greenhouse gases, accounting for 39% of total emissions in 2022, again part of COVID recovery and work from home.

It's likely larger now. And coupled with Transit Oriented Development focus of the last panel, bus rapid transit and improved transit quality provides a climate solution that can extend to building energy efficiency and building affordability.

A 2015 study of Transit Oriented Development scenarios near the Expo or E light rail line in Los Angeles found that new developments reduced long term greenhouse gas emissions by 33% versus business as usual.

This was due to a combination of improved building energy efficiency from density and also transportation efficiencies and a 2014 study of Transit Oriented Developments in Pasadena and the San Fernando Valley found that households can save $3,100 a year in housing and transportation costs due to reductions in parking spaces and automobile use. And this is offset.

Well, this is net of the higher cost of a new Transit Oriented Development. So, at the time this amounted to 5% of median household income in 2014, which was more than a median household would pay in state income taxes. So quality transit plus mixed-use development can be a powerful solution to California's climate and affordability crises.

Thanks to the work of the legislature, properties around hundreds of miles of transit corridors with four or more buses per hour during commute times are now eligible for incentives that boost heightened density and eliminate parking requirements.

But in spite of all these changes, without quality transit, people will over rely on automobiles, choke the very roads that these buses operate on, and limit people's mobility. That's a vicious cycle for transportation and possibly you know better than I for the long-term political viability of these housing density bonuses.

You also know better than I how to interpret national politics. But last week's election results may mean less federal funding for rail transit projects in California.

That leaves bus only lanes and bus rapid transit, which can be developed at a much lower cost than rail transit, as the most cost-effective solution for curbing the vicious cycle of declining speeds and ridership and increased auto dependence. This is a relatively new opportunity for California.

Bus only lanes have only been as effective as they are enforced and past deployments in Los Angeles have been choked with violators. Camera based enforcement of bus only lanes is now permitted in California as a result of AB 1917 bloom and is being deployed in Los Angeles as we speak.

But other legislative actions are needed to improve the quality of bus transit throughout California, deploying more bus only lanes and shade and lighting at bus stops. The Transit Transformation Task Force established by the 2023 budget trailer bill SB125 is working to develop these recommendations.

Last year CalSTA appointed 25 members to the task force and by next October CalSTA will submit a report of findings and policy recommendations to the Legislature based on the task force efforts. As a preview of this report, the following recommendations related to permitting were approved by the task force at our August 29th meeting.

B1: allow for exemption or preemption of local and state permitting requirements on identified transit priority routes and B3: establish a buy right permitting mechanism for transit infrastructure, bus shelters, transit priority, transit signal priority, et cetera, inside each city and on the state highways network. In "Speed", Reeves' character saves the day by getting people off the bus.

Our task is to do exactly the opposite, get people on the bus again. Thank you.

Thank you. Now go to Laura Tolkoff.

With the election behind us, everything we do in California now takes on the undertones of resistance and refuge. We can resist policy attacks in the courts, but we cannot be a refuge unless we have the homes and infrastructure that we need so that more people can live here freely.

So, our collective responsibility here is to show the rest of this country that California can get things done. The permitting framework is one of several pain points prone to driving up delays and costs and lowering project quality for active transportation and transit projects. Today I'm going to focus on two permitting issues.

One is environmental review and the second is discretionary permits. First, environmental review. The CEQA Environmental Impact Review, as you know, is the basis for many state and local approvals needed to build and deliver a transit project or sustainable transportation project like a sidewalk.

While CEQA is a critically important law for protecting against projects that are harmful to the environment and human health, it also has falsely treated all projects as inherently bad for the environment, even those that reduce emissions. As you know, each step in the process is subject to appeals and lawsuits that can increase project costs and create delays.

But acknowledging that we need more climate friendly ways to get around, the legislature recently exempted active transportation projects and some types of transit projects from this onerous and litigious part of project delivery. In 2020, the California Legislature passed SB 288, which temporarily exempted sustainable transportation projects in urbanized areas from CEQA.

A year later, the legislature extended the exemption through 2030. In 2024, the legislature expanded the exemption to zero emission rail projects. And we see this as really great start steps in the right direction because the good news is at the is that this exemption from CEQA works.

SPUR analyzed the exemptions filed with the Governor's Office of Land Use and climate innovation, formally OPR, between January 2021 when the laws went into effect in August 2024.

And we found that local jurisdictions, state agencies and public transit agencies have used this exemption to deliver and speed up 92 projects across the state, making them hit the ground more quickly and cost effectively. These include everything from ADA curb cuts to busways to readying maintenance facilities for zero emission buses.

So, to keep this momentum going, we recommend that the legislature make the CEQA exemption for transit and active transportation permanent as it sunsets in 2030. The second issue I'm going to talk about is around the discretionary permitting process.

With the exception of San Francisco MTA, transit operators do not own the right of way that they operate in, and this means that they need permission from local jurisdictions and state agencies with purview over that right of way.

There's a few things that commonly happen in the permitting process, some of which are very similar to what happens in the world of housing. The first is that cities and states can place burdensome requirements on the project in order to gain approval in ways that are not only costly but also damaging to the project's effectiveness.

In the case of AC Transit's Tempo Line on International Boulevard, the upscale community of Oakland, sorry, of Temescal in Oakland required AC Transit to study several different and less effective project alternatives before ultimately rejecting the project and clearing the path to scale it down from 16 miles to 9 miles, which also had the effect of undermining the goals of connecting the lowest income residents in the East Bay to opportunities in Berkeley which further perpetuated inequities in access and mobility.

Second, local and state agencies sometimes impose arbitrary and subjective requirements on projects and those requirements change from city to city.

So as an example, the Coastal Commission required the Monterey Salinas Transit Agency for their project, that goes across three different cities in Monterey County - the Coastal Commission required them to paint a roadway to match the sand dunes to protect the view shed, a requirement that is not only expensive and arbitrary, but also illegal under federal law.

And then so this is another example of where we see goals getting translated into subjective interpretations of aesthetics and preferences rather than objective, easy to reference performance-based requirements. And what you see is that like in housing, you see a few people having outsized influence over the projects.

When we have different requirements for different projects across each city from staff person to staff person, we end up with a very opaque and challenging review process that leads to delays of months, if not years.

With that in mind, we recommend that the legislature improve transparency by requiring local governments and state agencies to clearly and publicly post their policies and requirements necessary to gain approval and standardize those as much as possible. 3. The discretionary review process can have the effect of significantly delaying projects for several reasons. Intentionally or unintentionally.

In some cases, local jurisdictions simply do not have a single point of contact. In others, it is simply just not a priority relative to their own public works projects.

Whatever the source of the delay is, the broader issue is that transit agencies have little or no ability to compel a jurisdiction to issue a permit to the transit agency or their contractor, which increases construction costs and delays.

For that reason, we recommend that the legislature expand the Permit Streamlining Act 2 Transit Projects so that transit projects are eligible for expedited review. This would set clear and binding timelines for the review of permit applications and appropriately designate and assign project risks to the responsible parties.

Finally, I'd be remiss if I did not also point out that there are disparities in how different types of transportation projects are treated in the current regulatory structure. Transit projects often face barrier after barrier when highway expansion projects have relatively smooth sailing.

By comparison, the MST project to construct a best way along an abandoned rail line in the coastal zone was required to explore 18 different designs and fill, 70 different requirements and conditions. By comparison, a project to widen a bridge in the coastal zone in San Diego had only eight requirements placed on it.

The California Environmental Quality Act allows for projects that are harmful to the environment wildlife for people to proceed even when those harms cannot be mitigated by issuing a Statement of Overriding Consideration, which has been used dozens of times by Caltrans in recent years to construct and expand highways.

Set another way, California has made it very easy to build projects that are harmful to the environment and public health, but nearly impossible to build projects that are helpful to the environment and public health. Our hope is that the legislature will make it just as easy, if not easier, to build transit and sustainable transportation.

In summary, we recommend four actions that the legislature could take to improve transit permitting. 1. Remove the threat of litigation; make the CEQA exemption for transit and sustainable transportation permanent. 2. Improve transparency; require local jurisdictions and state agencies to clearly and publicly post their policies and requirements necessary to gain approval and standardize these when possible.

This third piece on standardization is requiring those jurisdictions to use objective design standards rather than subjective requirements and a clear and uniform application. 4. Improve speed. This requires setting clear and binding timelines and shifting the risk of delays to the reviewer rather than the transit agencies. Thank you so much for your time.

I'm happy to answer any questions you may have.

Thank you. Appreciate it. We will have questions now. I believe we're going to Rose Casey.

Good afternoon, Chair Wicks and select committee members, Assemblymember Carrillo: I'm Rose Casey, Executive Director of Planning at the Orange County Transportation Authority.

We appreciate the opportunity to talk with you today about OCTA's significant responsibilities and efforts to enhance transit service and discuss project examples where we have faced challenges with utilities and are currently dealing with permit processing issues and lengthy timeframes. So, I'd like to first provide you with an overview of OCTA.

We are one of three multimodal transportation agencies in the state of our $1.7 billion budget, half of that is dedicated to transit. We administer a half cent transportation sales tax measure and are on track to deliver on all of our commitments to the voters.

We operate the countywide bus and paratransit system that spans 34 cities with over 400 vehicles and we're very pleased to say that we recently surpassed pre pandemic ridership levels.

We are a member of Metrolink and LOSSAN joint powers authorities that uses the LOSSAN corridor, owning 40 plus miles of rail corridor in Orange County and we've invested more than 2.1 billion in the rail corridor and on Metrolink service to date. And finally, we're the transportation planning agency for Orange County with significant experience in capital project delivery.

So, one of our key transit projects we'd like to highlight in this discussion is the Orange County Streetcar. We're building the first modern electric streetcar in Orange County which will serve some of Orange County's most disadvantaged communities. Traveling through the dense downtown area of Santa Ana and connecting to Garden Grove.

This project was pioneered by the local cities through OCTA's sales tax measure program, representing a true bottom-up approach to addressing community transportation needs. It's funded through a combination of local, state and federal resources.

The many project benefits include improved transit connectivity to the region's commuter passenger rail services and enhanced access to employment centers, social services, housing, education and other key destinations. Improved transit accessibility for transit dependent communities Increased transportation options for short local trips Improved air quality within the project area by reducing dependency on automobiles.

But unfortunately, we've encountered several challenges related to the project, one of which is related to utilities due to utility conflicts and also Southern California's work needed to energize the various streetcar systems. We've encountered a total delay of more than a year.

So unfortunately, what this has resulted in is not providing the streetcar for the public to use for over a year, not to mention the high costs of contractor related delay costs.

There's another issue that I wanted to bring to your attention and that is that Southern California Edison and Southern California Gas have initiated litigation regarding the liability for relocation costs. These utilities have repeatedly filed lawsuits against transit agencies attempting to establish legal precedents.

And what this relates to is that the utilities argue that existing utilities within public way under franchise agreement should be considered as valuable real property and afforded all such rights, including relocation costs to be borne by the public agency. This is absorbing extensive legal resources and tying up millions of dollars in dispute agreements to facilitate the relocation.

The utilities have not prevailed in these cases to date, including their appeal to the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, and they are now working to appeal the case to the U.S. Supreme Court. This is a state law issue and could be clarified in statute.

Next, I'd like to talk about the LOSSAN rail corridor and challenges we are facing with obtaining permits for measures to deal with imminent threat to maintain operations in this vital corridor. OCTA is the right of way owner for seven miles of the coastal rail line in South Orange County.

Most of the stretch of the rail line is approximately 200ft or less from the coastline. Over the past three years, the coastal rail line corridor operations have been adversely affected by the processes of coastal bluff erosion, beach loss, revetment loss and bluff failures.

OCTA is conducting a study to identify solutions in the near and midterm and we have identified four areas that need to be addressed immediately ahead of the next winter storms.

We are proposing a project to reinforce the failing slopes below the rail corridor to avoid rail service disruptions and infrastructure damage that can lead to unsafe conditions for rail passengers and freight alike. Rail service suspensions over the past three years have resulted in nearly one year of closure.

This has significant impacts on communities and shifts more people to drive in single occupancy vehicles. It is important to avoid these kinds of events in the future as reliability is an important indicator of the public's willingness to use transit. So far, OCTA has been able to remediate these events under the emergency permitting processes.

Emergency permits enabled us to address the issue immediately. However, with the current identified hotspots, OCTA is required to go through the regular permitting processes, which means we must complete environmental studies and other analyses before a permit can be obtained from the Coastal Commission.

OCTA cannot use the emergency permitting process because there is not currently an active emergency, but OCTA believes there is an impending one. We must work through the coastal development permit process, CEQA possible leasing of land, and work with federal agencies to obtain the permits necessary before construction can begin.

We have been successful good news in securing a substantial amount of funding, but despite having all of the funding now for design and construction, we cannot move forward until these permits are secured.

These permits could take more than a year between the environmental studies and the permitting process, so with the winter season ahead of us, we need the permitting process to be expedited so we do not experience first further rail service suspensions.

Throughout this process we've encountered several challenges including lack of certainty of timing for permit approvals regulatory permitting agencies need to differentiate how they process public infrastructure versus private development projects. Entities that issue permits do not have a thorough understanding of transportation projects and there is no larger entity to direct single decision-making processes.

So given this experience, I'd like to offer some thoughts on potential solutions for complex transportation permitting processes. There would be benefit from more coordinated permitting across state and local agencies. A previous executive order from Governor Newsom created a strike team to work across state agencies to help maximize funding for infrastructure projects throughout the state.

A strike team or a similar task force could be used to identify permitting issues and solutions related to transportation infrastructure projects.

Also, an MOU could perhaps be established to facilitate collaboration between the OCTA, CalSTA and the Natural Resources Agency, which oversees the California Coastal Commission and others to efficiently manage permitting and regulatory processes for a specific project within the coastal zone.

There could be introduction of a one federal decision style process to streamline the review and approval of transportation projects involving multiple agencies, reducing time and redundancy.

So, this could include designating a lead state agency to oversee the entire permitting process, the setting of clear timelines and milestones because we need permit approval certainty, and interagency coordination procedures. With what the coastal rail resiliency efforts have highlighted is that there should be recognition of high-risk situations that are not yet emergencies.

Imminent threats should be handled more as emergencies and not through the typical processes. Thank you for including us in this important discussion.

Thank you very much and we will go to our last speaker, Carter Rubin.

Thank you, Chair Wicks and committee members. I appreciate the invitation to be here today. My name is Carter Rubin, and I serve as the Director of Transportation Advocacy at the Natural Resources Defense Council. NRDC advocates across California for sustainable transportation investments including public transit, active transportation and EV charging infrastructure.

Appreciate the chance to share my perspective on the opportunities to accelerate the deployment of these types of projects so that we can meet our climate goals, improve public health, advance equity and increase access to economic opportunity. My remarks, I think are going to cover three topics.

One is I'd like to touch on the State of the Transportation Project Pipeline and what's out there that's seeking permits. Two, discuss some of the streamlining already in place, and three touch on one area that continues to be a barrier for delivering more sustainable transportation projects. To connect what we're discussing here now to the previous panel, one of the great benefits of investing in public transit is that it creates more housing opportunities.

The legislature and local governments have passed several laws and ordinances that encourage more affordable housing and greater density in neighborhoods that are close to quote, major transit stops, which are usually defined in statute as a rail stop, a bus rapid transit stop, or the intersection of multiple frequent bus lines.

So, the more we can do to bring online more major transit stops by investing in those kinds of projects, the more communities can enjoy the benefits of more homes. Unfortunately, we are simply not building the clean transportation system at the scale and speed that we need to reach our climate goals.

A 2022 report from the Strategic Growth Council put it bluntly, $30 billion is spent annually across California maintaining and expanding transportation. But there is a gap between the vision for a more climate friendly and equitable transportation system on one hand and actions and infrastructure spending decisions on the other hand.

Further, the SGC said, quote, projects in the pipeline are rarely reevaluated to assess their alignment with current state policies, or priorities. Excuse me. In other words, simply streamlining everything in the transportation pipeline would almost certainly lead to an increase in highway expansion projects that would be working across purposes with our climate goals.

Fortunately, as Laura mentioned, the legislature has already taken steps to streamline more environmentally friendly transportation projects and CEQA remains an essential public participation tool on major highway projects.

Our understanding is that There are over 200 major highway expansion projects still in the pipeline across California, and we need strong environmental laws to ensure that Caltrans and its partner agencies are properly analyzing and mitigating the impacts of projects like those that add more cars and trucks to the roads and thus pollution to communities already carved up by the first era of highway construction.

So, we would recommend that this committee consider opportunities to encourage Caltrans and local project sponsors to be rethinking some of these harmful highway expansion projects to instead focus on delivering multimodal transit and active transportation projects that can take advantage on one hand of existing statutory streamlining and on the other also support state housing goals in the ways I mentioned.

Another area that is ripe for reform is how Caltrans engages with local governments on sustainable mobility projects that overlap with Caltrans owned corridors. If a local government wants to build a new bike path or dedicated bus lane that crosses a state highway, that city needs to obtain an encroachment permit from Caltrans.

This is also the case of a city or transit agency wants to make improvements directly to one of the many state highways that look and feel like a surface street in a community such as International Boulevard in Oakland or Lincoln Boulevard in Los Angeles, and dozens of more.

Based on my experience talking to local project sponsors and my prior job at the City of Los Angeles, this encroachment permit process can be fraught and take six months to a year to navigate.

Caltrans has been known to come back to a city with hundreds of comments on projects, even projects that touch as little as a few hundred feet of Caltrans right away. Basically, a local street that crosses over a freeway on a bridge, that part that is over the freeway requires a Caltrans encroachment permit to do any.

If the city wants to do something to what's really its street to control. Because those comments that Caltrans comes to cities with are often sourced from various different teams within Caltrans, they often directly conflict with one another, so the city struggles to resolve them.

When I worked at the City of Los Angeles, I managed a project on Venice Boulevard, which was then State Route 187. We had the enthusiastic support of the mayor and the local council member to transform Venice from a seven-lane high speed arterial into a more walkable community centric main street in Mar Vista.

From the get-go, the consensus from the city department staff was we should just try to get the corridor relinquished to us from Caltrans rather than go through this encroachment process, which felt like it could be a dead end. So that's what we did. We designed the project the way the community wanted it, and then we pursued a legislative relinquishment. And now Venice Boulevard is under the control of the city. And the project was built and has been successful in decreasing collisions, increasing active transportation and transit ridership, and increasing economic activity. So, the project was a win. And we basically proceeded by working around Caltrans and the challenges it faces.

Legislative relinquishment, though, is not the right fit for every community. Not every city can take it on, and the maintenance responsibility that comes with it. We'd be in much better shape having Caltrans working alongside cities as an enthusiastic collaborator on transit and safety improvements on surface streets that Caltrans owns.

Thankfully, SB960 from Senator Wiener was signed into law this past session and will begin to address this issue. Requires Caltrans to prioritize complete streets projects and it also puts in place a more organized encroachment permit review process for complete streets projects that are sponsored by a local jurisdiction or transit agency.

It requires Caltrans to designate an encroachment permit manager in each of the Caltrans district offices who has expertise in bicycle, pedestrian and transit priority projects to better coordinate this review process. And it would require Caltrans to follow a 60-day shot clock to approve or deny a completed application or else the application would be deemed approved.

This bill would also require Caltrans to report out regularly on how the process is going. So, we're encouraged that these reforms are on the way, and we would appreciate the legislature's continued oversight to ensure that SB960 implementation is working effectively, and Caltrans is engaging with local governments to deliver complete streets projects.

So, we think these efforts will ensure we can build the right kinds of projects at the speed necessary to clean our air and give Californians more convenient, safe and affordable ways to get around. Thank you. Thanks very much.

Thank you for presenting. Before we get to questions, one of the presenters was unable to be here today and I was just going to read some quick points from her presentation. Lisa Reinheimer, Deputy CEO of the Monterey Salinas Transit, MST, was going to discuss the Monterey Salinas Transit what it serves.

It serves the tourism economy, Monterey Bay Aquarium, Pebble Beach area, the agricultural economy, Salinas Valley with its salad and wine production, grows artichokes, many other vegetables and the local economy, hospitality workers at hotels, restaurants, healthcare workers, et cetera.

77% of the MST riders have an annual household income of less than $40,000 and 75% of MST riders are minority or nonwhite. The traffic problems that exist in this region seem to be pretty severe. From this memo the commute patterns bring slow travel to a halt essentially from the 7am to 9am hour.

So she lists through some very significant traffic issues.

So this will solution for this coming from the local community is the Surf Bus and Busway and Bus Rapid Transit Project, A BRT project, which would include six miles of new busway or road for buses only located on an abandoned rail line parallel to Highway 1 traffic with traffic signal priorities, three new transit stations, a multimodal mobility hub, multimodal trails and a contactless collection.

So, six miles is what they are attempting to do. Transit riders will see their trips reduced significantly in time with better and more frequent service and reliability. MST used SB 288 CEQA exemption in July 2021, SB 922 exemption in March of 2023. Final enzyme permitting began in late 2021 and continues today.

There are over 40 permits or third-party agreements needed for the project. The permitting challenges are as follows. Agencies issuing permits for the Surf Project are three local jurisdictions, Caltrans, California Coastal Commission, and the Federal Transit Administration Oversight; so two local jurisdictions require a tree removal permit, coastal development permit, grading, building, electrical, stormwater, etc., permits with multi rounds of review. MST submitted final plans in early 2024 and we're still working with the cities on these permits. The third jurisdiction only requires an encroachment permit.

There appears to be an inherent bias in city code ordinances and regulations which treat public transit infrastructure projects as if the projects were private development, not a public works project, which I think we heard others reflect that as well. 2. Caltrans streamlined DER process began in spring of 2023.

We are pending Caltrans encroachment permit and DER signature this week. There are 20 Caltrans representatives who reviewed the plans and documentations. Some comments conflicted with others. At times it seemed as though the projects were caught in an endless feedback loop with Caltrans staffing changes and new eyes reviewing plans.

Third issue, the California Coastal Development Permit took 18 months with over 800 pages of documentation and justification, evaluation of over a dozen feasible and infeasible alternatives, and a considerable amount of political influence to approve the project in the coastal zone.

Coastal Commission goals include access to the coast, GHG reductions to combat sea level rise, environmental justice and transit to the coast. With the approval of the CDP, there are several prior to construction conditions that are continuing to delay start of construction. The fourth issue, the Federal Transit Administration is also involved and comes with its own challenges.

There appear to be a higher level of scrutiny and documentation for transit projects when it comes with the federal highway and roadway projects. With the new federal administration, we are working with our FDA partners to secure the Small Starts Grant agreement before the new Trump Administration is sworn into office on January 20, 2025.

In conclusion, it should not take this long and be so difficult to deliver a project which aligns with dozens of statewide goals, policies and funding programs to reduce GHG emissions, incentivize infill development, construction, affordable housing and grow transit ridership.

So, I thought I'd put that in the record because I think it has reflected some of the other things that we've discussed, discussed here today in terms of transit. I have some questions, but I want to defer to my colleague here, Mr. Carrillo, to see if he has questions first.

Thank you. Thank you for the presentations. For Ms. Rose, I understood that Southern California and SoCal Gas are utility companies that are getting in the way of the transit system we're doing.

I'd like to reach out to you afterwards for me to learn more about that issue and I'm sure it has to do with encroaching into their easements. That's the reason why? Okay. Yes. Okay. Well, maybe we can talk about that offline after this so I can learn more. In terms of Caltrans, I was getting worried.

Nobody mentioned Caltrans until you did. That seems to be a common problem too. And we did have to do the same thing in Palmdale. Take Highway 138 and give it to the City of Palmdale for those specific reasons because you stay takes a long time to get through their permitting process.

And that is something that deters developers from improving arterials right across in the middle of cities. Just in closing, I think that we've heard over and over again the troubles with CEQA.

That's something that I know for a while, something that some of us have been very vocal about this and I really think that we should really consider. Maybe I should speak for myself.

They should consider really doing something about it because the quality of life of our residents in California is really detrimental when the delays that go for months and years on simple things like trying to improve the quality of life of transit related projects, for instance.

Things that I would really consider deeply to see how we can work together to make sure that we actually really improve the quality of life of Californians. Somebody mentioned elections earlier today.

Maybe this panel did something that I really have to think about because I feel that I have to deliver for my constituency and I'm speaking for myself. But it's something that I think we should all in the legislature be very mindful of how this election last Tuesday resulted because I feel that I have to deliver.

We have to deliver for Californians in all aspects, not only on the issues that this panel is focusing on. Housing, transportation, energy, insurance, you name it. Those are things that I believe we have to really deliver on because we're just not being.

I'm not being truthful when I speak to my constituents about improving their quality of life in my district. It's something that again, I think we should consider because these are real issues, real concerns.

And what happened last Tuesday, I think it's something that we in California should really take serious about because I have to deliver and all of you do, as well as agencies because you also serve the residents of the agencies that you represent. And again, I've just been redundant, I realize that.

But we have to really seriously think about how we can deliver, and I should send it as that. I'm sure that, in the next select committee hearing, CEQA will come up again as it has been in this third hearing.

And I really thank you for the time that you put into it, making us aware of the real issues, which I'm not surprised. But again, Madam Chair thank you again for having me.

Thank you, Mr. Carillo. Well, thank you for the panelists. I do have some questions. I will say, I don't know, maybe a year ago I went on a housing and transit trip to London and Paris. Get inspiration, learn from others, see mistakes and successes and all the other things.

And I remember there's a delegation of us and we sat down with one of the transit agency leads in Paris who said that they were in the process of building 68 new metro stops. And like, my draw dropped because I'm thinking in the Bay Area, like, to build one BART stop.

Like, one BART stop is a Herculean effort and they're going to build 68, and they're in the process of building 68. So, I know we went there for inspiration, but it came back a little bit like, "Oh, my gosh, how do we do all of this?" Right.

But it was important to see, Obviously, I know there's a different tax base and there's other pieces to that equation. So, I don't want to... it's not quite apples to apples, but it did spark for me. And I think for many of us, you know, we want to have nice things, too.

You know, we want to be able to have reliable public transportation. We want to be able to reduce our, you know, greenhouse gas emissions. We want to be able to have, you know, housing and transit interconnected because it really impacts quality of life issues. Right? It impacts our environment.

You know, in Paris they do the 15-minute city. We were driving around LA today, not a 15-minute city, although there's different pockets. And I know it's - I love my LA and LA colleagues, so I'm not disparaging, but, you know, I think it begs the question of how can we - I think Mr. Carrillo's point, we have to deliver for our constituents. And I think that that's really critical. You all laid out some, I think, very important and concrete ideas and policy reform suggestions. So, thank you for doing that. We're always looking for ideas. I was jotting down some of them.

I would love to get your take on, you know, and maybe Rose and Laura in particular, some of the things that you outlined and others who want to jump in, too. But from your perspective, what is the opposition to that? Is it just bureaucracy and inertia? Is it a lack of leadership? Is any of this politically controversial?

Are there labor issues? Are there environmental issues? Are there? Like, where are the constituencies and the concerns? And I'd love for you to speak as candidly as you're willing to on the record of the hearing, just so we can get a sense of, you know, what is the challenge to making this a more streamlined.

Particularly we're talking about public transportation projects. Right. So, I'd love to hear your all's thoughts on what you think the true opposition is.

I would be happy to start if that's okay. Focusing in on the LOSSAN rail corridor and the challenges we're having there. I think it's amazing when I sit and think about it how complicated permitting of sand and rock can be. But there are vast. There are opposite opinions on what the solutions should be.

So, whether, you know, there are sand only advocates or those who say it should be a combination of the two, or those who say that, you know, there needs to be rock revetment placed and so forth. So that's one.

The other is I think there's a lot of reliance on the current processes and the current permitting system and the definitions of what's an emergency. and an emergency is once the service is suspended and shut down and not available for users.

However, do we wait a winter season or two or more to get the permit to do the work and meanwhile, you know, have closures that affect the public. So, I think it is important to recognize that it may not be an actual emergency shutdown of service, but it could happen at any moment.

And when the weather conditions are such that it could very well happen at any moment, I think there needs to be a recognition, recognition of that.

I would just say that for this particular set of improvements for the coastal rail resiliency, it's very unusual for project improvements to get full funding for design and construction when we are still in the environmental phase. And yet that's what's occurred. So, we are really thankful to the state and to the Federal Government for allocating that funding.

But I think that shows the importance of moving ahead with these fixes and these preserving measures. So, I think it's just honestly, I think it's a reliance right now by the agencies on their definition of different types of permits. And right now, we don't we fall into the standard permitting process.

Thank you for the question. I would, I would like to amend the question, if that's okay. Sure. That sometimes it's not always actually opposition. It's that we're not used to doing things this way.

Like sort of lack of imagination almost or just like -

It's - so Mr. Manville spoke about it earlier that our systems are just not equipped to deliver on our policy goals that we've set out for ourselves. We have become accustomed to doing things a certain way for nearly 100 years. And now we have to adjust course.

It's almost like we've made this decision as a family to go to Hawaii, but we ended up buying our tickets to New York. And so, at a certain point we have to exchange our tickets and get on a different flight. And so, it's not always really direct opposition, but it's simple.

It's the not so simple things like the fact that we spread our limited transit capital dollars around as opposed to fully funding a project and just getting it done instead of having to wait on multiple cycles from the federal government, the state government to be able to get something started.

We just do not have a consistent tap that's on for transit, either on capital or operating that provides the predictable source of funding to get projects moving. We have not necessarily built the muscle around project delivery for some of the larger capital projects.

And we do not have sort of that standardization and uniformity where we just accept that certain types of projects are a public good and a public necessary necessity as opposed to a foreign agent in a way, on our streets. And so, I don't think it's opposition, it's that we just don't have the systems and the organizational infrastructure and the policies that get us all on that same flight.

That is the reason why we have the select committee. So, thank you. Any other thoughts?

If I could add to that, a mantra that comes up for me a lot is state capacity rules everything around me. And it's a topic that's come up in the Transit Transformation Task Force.

And I think if you look at the highway project delivery, you know, Caltrans has been building highways for 100 years and they have scores of engineers and environmental specialists and permitting people and so they can just turn out highway projects.

If you ask a transit agency to build a transit project, they might build a transit project once every two decades. And they're being approached and say like, okay, now you have $2 billion to build a rail line. They may not have quite the internal capacity in terms of project managers or experience delivering big capital projects.

And so I'm excited to see what comes out of the Transformation Task force in terms of recommendations around how do we build up kind of this permanent institutional memory and capacity to deliver big capital projects not once in a blue moon, but where they're consistently funded to be building, you know, the 68 new station vision, that scale of transit delivery rather than these sort of one offs where you build it and you learn how to do it and then, you know, you don't do it for two decades and everyone who used to be there has left the agency.

Right. You lose the institutional knowledge. Right.

Thank you. Developing that muscle memory in house is important. We, the UCLA Institute of Transportation Studies last month helped us held a symposium on how Los Angeles can accelerate projects before the Olympics. And so, we heard from people who talked about the approach that they took in Paris.

And what struck me as being different is that there was more of a kind of a one government, like we're all in it together, we're cooperating, and they wanted to deliver something.

Whereas the research in the United States on transit agencies and transit costs that Eric Goldwyn of NYU did on the transit project is that often there are interjurisdictional and sometimes interdepartmental issues within transit agencies that can be solved or that are solved not through cooperation, but through decisions that increase capital costs and timelines.

And that seeing that as whatever that arises as a solution from, whether it's narrow interest, capture of like everybody's just defending their own turf and not wanting to change things because that could change their relative power, or it's just this lack of esprit de corps of everybody working together to deliver something and be accountable for it, like was the case in Paris, seems to be a root cause of both increased cost timelines.

So, it is - there is this certain aspect of how we do things in the United States and it's not just California that is for transit capital projects in particular is driving up costs and timelines. And I do think it is because there's not necessarily the accountability of acknowledging tradeoffs.

Like if we spend this much on the Second Avenue Subway in New York is the one that gets the most criticism for this. If we spend this much on three stations, that means that the next three stations and serving the people who would benefit from that project is at least 10 years longer down the road.

And that there doesn't seem to be an accountability function that points that out and lead leads to decisions changing that would make things change in the future. So, I don't know if Paris has figured it out culturally and we haven't, but it's probably worth looking towards what they do in order to accelerate things.

If I could just piggyback with maybe an illustration of this. If you're a transit agency and you're trying to permit a transit project in a community, oftentimes that community isn't that the permit review agency is tempted to say, "Well, we've always wanted to upgrade this stop sign to a full traffic signal. And so, you know, we'll use this as an opportunity to ask the transit agency to fold this into the transportation project." And it may be the case that that local transit agency's board includes elected officials from the local community that's permitting the project.

So, it's usually just the path of least resistance for the transit agency to kind of suck it up and say, "Okay, well we'll will fund that betterment." And as Juan said, there are tradeoffs. And so, project costs escalate.

And instead of being an environment where the local government is saying, "Great, it's a new transit project, how can we get this done asap?" It sort of just becomes a Christmas tree to hang stuff that they want to add to their community on.

I'm familiar with this Christmas tree. Well, thank you all so much for joining today. We are going to now move to public comment if folks want to line up over here. Appreciate the panel. Thank you. We'll give folks a second. I see some familiar faces in the public comment.

Great. And we will take. If folks could take one to two minutes, that would be helpful. We've got a lot of folks to get through. So appreciate your expeditious but important and profound comments. Take it away.

Thank you very much. Thanks very much. My name is Jennifer Hernandez. I am, among other things, a CEQA nerd. But I'm here representing the 200 for home ownership, which is civil rights organization. Also, I want to contrast a little bit from my background is now teaching environmental justice at USC Law School.

Environmental justice is an incredibly important part of a civil rights pie. There's other slices to the pie. People need to have attainable home ownership. They need access to good jobs, a decent education, upward mobility, healthcare. All of that comes down to the need for reasonable and affordable housing.

And so in the context of that housing pie, first I want to just say there's no replacement for home ownership. Median net worth right now of a homeowner is $396,000. Median net worth of a renter is $10,000. It is a brutal reality that unless we restore attainable home ownership to California, we have broken our housing market.

And that's what we've done so far. Rental infill, they're virtually equivalent. It's very, very challenging to do home ownership at scale, at density.

And what we know for sure is from the Turner center, infill only not only doesn't work, it doesn't even pencil 5 over 1s without prevailing wage, without inclusionary, without EIRs, without lawsuits, with really Low fees, with no relocation, no demo. Those projects don't pencil almost anywhere in California.

And so we can't respectfully think about a housing permit reform solution that is infill only.

There's been a point raised by a few speakers, but we've just turned ourselves into pretzels thanks to your leadership to make everybody do new housing elements, to make everybody account for affirmatively furthering fair housing, to make each city and county, almost none of whom on a statewide basis have four bus frequent transit lines.

Everybody needs to help with housing and permit reform, needs to help everybody get to housing. So with respect and passion, we know we need to fix CEQA. We know from David Rand's excellent remarks, changes, tweaks to the Permit Streamlining Act and Housing Accountability Act.

We know from CARB, we've only developed 6% of California, Massachusetts, New York, Connecticut, they've developed almost 40% of their states, 1%. The 7% solution at the edges to allow for people to actually live again in the housing they want. And can afford. That's an equity and civil rights issue, and I'd encourage the Committee to think that through.

Thank you very much. Thank you.

Thank you so much, Madam Chair and Committee Members, for holding this today. My name is Mott Smith. I am the Chairman of the Council of Infill Builders. I'm also a small builder myself and a faculty Member at the USC Price School.

I'm not going to make the moral case for what you're doing because I think you already have the moral case and you're going to hear from a lot of people who are going to make it. I just wanted to offer a couple of practical recommendations, if I may.

The first one is if you do absolutely nothing else, just copy and paste whatever San Diego does across the state. It worked for parking reform. And I think, honestly, today San Diego is issuing half of all building permits same day.

And the way they did it was not by doubling their staff, which is what you usually hear we need to do if you want to do better. It's. They stopped doing half the things that were adding no value to the process.

Because as a builder going through the process, I find that so many of the things that I do where I submit an application and six months later I get it back, there's been no change. They just approved what I did, but it took them six months to do it.

And any process where the output is the same as the input is a zero value process. And we should stop doing those things as a state. Second thing I'll say representing the infill builders is we need as many. By the way, I forgot, I'm also representing BizFed. Hello.

The second thing we need to do is to look at impact fees, as you well know, and transfer taxes, which are not only housing killers, they're killing commercial projects, industrial projects, and they're not actually helping. They're not actually getting infrastructure built. And so more robust tools and a more robust.

I love the way Juan Matute described this more robust muscle at the local level for directly building public improvements as opposed to needing a developer to show up on whose backs you build these public improvements would be a great, a great change.

And then finally, I strongly urge you to make code simplification an explicit, explicit requirement where as part of the triennial code review process, we're not just looking at things we can add to the code, but explicitly asking for things that we can remove from the code so that balancing costs is up there with balancing life, safety and other good outcomes.

So thank you so much.

Good afternoon. My name is Chris Wilson with the LA County Business Federation. I serve as their Director of advocacy for BizFed. We appreciate your collective leadership on working to streamline and rationalize rationalize our permitting process in California. We also appreciate today's co topic on analyzing infill housing for permitting reform.

And while it's an important one, we urge this Committee to take under consideration permitting reform for greenfield development, single family development, transit oriented development, multifamily development, which according to studies, California lags behind states like Washington and Texas. An infill housing only or an affordable housing only approach is not the cure all.

To solve the housing policy crisis, we must cut red tape for all housing development projects to move forward. We believe California can conduct reasonable environmental reviews that provide for meaningful community input. However, it shouldn't take longer to get a decision for about a permit than it does to actually construct a project.

We also, we also are just going to take a look at the following considerations. Once a project permit is granted, no new impact fees can be added and the building codes or environmental regulations are changed. They shall not apply to projects that have already been greenlighted.

Again, if we truly want to reform our Permian in California, we need to have a holistic approach and inventory of what is working and what is not in terms of building projects without delay and as fast as possible. Thank you.

Good afternoon Assembly Members. Thank you for holding this hearing. My name is Arne Corl and I'm also another Member of BizFed where I represent the Apartment Owner Association as well as Los Angeles South Chamber of Commerce. From my day job, I'm a rental property owner and a developer.

Where I primarily developed in south LA, I no longer develop in south LA. I was one of a collective of a group of what I called bootstrap developers. There were dozens of us who hired from the community irrespective of the backgrounds. Some of those individuals went on to start their own businesses.

They would actually purchase some of the homes from us because it's really about the will. And how do we seem to focus more on cost than on value?

And again, some of the same reasons that we will no longer develop in California is because some of the very reasons that you've heard today and now those individuals, for example, even though we had the CEQA challenges as one of the problems, those individuals that worked for us didn't belong to a union, yet they were able to ultimately purchase their own homes or other units that were with us.

So we were building those one to fours. There still is Some enough infill in South Los Angeles and some of south of the 10 Freeway to make infill develop thousands of units. Well, we need all of the options on the table, but please consider doing this with urgency. Thank you.

Thank you.

Hello. Thank you for holding this. My name is Joseph Cohen May I am Los Angeles Housing Production Institute. I have notes on the whole smorgasbord of different topics so I'll just go through them. One thing is I appreciate Dave Rand bringing up the permit Streamlining act that Supan Potton and Needsomer Farms.

One thing I want to mention is that permit streamlining act, most of it actually doesn't apply to buy right projects. And that's an easy fix that will help accelerate buy right projects as if the timelines apply not only to non ministerial projects. I'd like to talk a bit about post entitlement permitting timelines.

There's a lot of talk about the entitlement process, but post entitlement permitting has the timelines have become longer and longer and that adds a lot of cost and risk for development in LA post entitlement permitting timelines the data that I've looked at I think for apartment projects it really is much longer than the data that gets reported to hcd.

It often is taking a year or two after entitlements are granted for a project to be able to get a building permit. For comparison, in a lot of European countries cities are required to issue building permits within eight to 12 weeks.

Texas recently passed a law that if a city doesn't issue a building permit within 45 days, the developer can hire a private company to conduct reviews. And those might be some approaches to look into.

In LA specifically departmental clearances are major source of delays and even if there was deadlines for permitting, the clearance problem needs to be solved. I don't have a solution for that, but that's something that should be discussed.

It can take months to get sign off from a Department when the actual walk that they need to do is like a five minute task. And that's another thing that just the timelines keep on getting longer and longer. You know, 10 years ago this wasn't the case. Utility connections on major source of delays was brought up.

But one thing I want to mention is LADWP isn't regulated by Utilities Commission. So there is no state over site of ladwp. So there is no accountability if they are delaying the electrifying of a project. There is no process to go to a regulatory body and bring up or get changes made. And that is a huge issue.

Inspection timelines is also another issue that varies city to city, especially in some smaller cities. Condo subdivisions. If you want to build for sale housing the exact same project, you want to build it as a condo, it is likely going to take an additional year or two of approval versus building as an apartment building.

And we talk about making home ownership feasible. We need to like not get rid of that extra time. It shouldn't take longer for a condo subject project than if the exact same project is an apartment project project.

And then also trigger CEQA for project that would normally be exempt from ceqa potentially can get triggered CEQA just because of a condo subdivision. Another big source of delays for condo projects is that the state has to approve the condo subdivision before they can do condo sales.

And that process is another thing where it's just taking longer and longer and less efficient and going state capacity. It's an issue where we don't have state capacity. With state capacity, we're seeing the same issues with Metro with projects like the Sepulveda line was originally supposed to be completed by the Olympics.

They're not even going to break ground by the Olympics. They haven't completed the EIR for that. Timelines are getting longer and longer. And with Metro I would love to see in house expertise being built instead of everything going out. Contracting out to consultants either at Caltrans and applying to all the different transit agencies or in Metro specifically.

And I think that will ultimately save the agency and save the state a lot of money. Thank you very much.

Hi, my name is Kirsten Bladh. I'm an Associate Director of State Policy for Streets for All. And I just wanted to talk about how our housing crisis is really harming our transit systems and our transit ridership. Someone earlier I think mentioned how our housing crisis is causing a migration of people from California to places like Texas.

But we also need to look at the population migration that's happening within our state because all of the cities that are losing population are in our most transit rich counties. And all of the cities that are growing the fastest are in places that have zero major transit stops.

So for example, in Assemblymember Korea's district, Victorville is one of the fastest growing cities in our state. They do not have the transit to support that growth, which means everyone who moves there is driving for every trip, which is hurting the air quality in those areas. And now Victorville has more people than Pasadena.

Pasadena has six LA Metro stations. That's where we should be seeing more growth. And so our transit Ridership is never going to grow if we are forcing people out to cities that don't have transit. And that's just cementing, you know, another generation of car dependency for California. Thank you.

Good afternoon, everyone. Mark Vukcevich, Director of State Policy for Streets for All. I want to just make a few points that kind of convey the scale of this issue because I think all the presenters brought up a lot of expertise.

But I just want to mention so the Los sand rail corridor, for some of you who maybe are not from the SoCal region, I took it today to get here from Orange County. It's the second busiest rail corridor in the country behind the Northeast Corridor. It serves as a strack net rail corridor for the Marine Corps.

It is used for freight and it's falling into the ocean. And our agencies are telling us that they can't do anything about it. I want to just stress that how important that is.

I also want to stress that even on the building transit side in France right now costs about US$300 million per mile to build subway Spain, it's about US$250 million per mile. In the US it's 1.2 billion per mile to build a subway line. And it's not that we don't have smart people in this country.

It's that we're failing in a lot of different ways. When I was in the army, we had a phrase called good idea fairies. And what would happen is that a leader had a good idea and there was General consensus on that idea.

And then you'd have all these people say, well, I have a good idea that's going to improve that. I'm going to have a good idea that improves that. And by the end of that process, you fail the mission because everyone's good idea mars the actual end outcome.

And the problem with our environment is we don't actually only have good idea fairies. We have other people who are actually trying to fight these projects.

We're trying to hold them hostage and say that you're not allowed to build this subway project unless you build this park, unless you build this parking lot, unless you build this right turn lane. And all of that adds up to these huge and massive cost delays because our government can't work together with itself.

And that's the system and the environment that we've built. The last thing I want to say is that we're also lacking some expertise, or I should say we need to shift expertise.

So, you know, one of the main things that transit project agencies suffer with when they're first building because they don't have this expertise is they oftentimes underinvest in utility relocation, which causes major issues down the line. But in many ways you can't blame them. They haven't built a mega infrastructure project before.

But the problem is, is that they may not have that utility relocation expertise. You know who does? Caltrans, our agencies that have been building highways and mega infrastructure like highways for decades and decades.

So we need to use the expertise that we have in this state to implement the things that we actually want in the State of California. We need to ask ourselves if this convoluted process is leading to a more equitable outcome. And I think the answer is no. Thank you.

Good afternoon, Madam Chair and Members of the Committee, Assemblymember Juan Carrillo. My name is Jordan Panana Carbajal, Government Affairs Manager for California YIMBY. We first want to thank you and your staff for prioritizing this issue and convening this Committee. We really want to state that permitting delays are a major hurdle to building housing in California.

Developers and homeowners have shared that securing a permit to build can take months and sometimes years. According to HCD's APR data, securing a permit in California for fully entitled multifamily development takes on average 272 days.

These delays increase the cost of building in California and undermine the recent efforts that have been undertaken to speed up the entitlement process. And California is here as a resource to address the critical barrier to construction.

Our team has conducted research into potential solutions such as allowing applicants to hire third party plan reviewers or inspectors of cities or counties, delay or did not or did not make the timeline and did not provide the permanent timely matter. And this is just one of the many ideas around this issue.

And we're happy to talk to any Member or staff to continue the conversation on this. Thank you so much.

Good afternoon. Chair Wicks and some Member Carrillo. Thank you for the opportunity to comment today on this important hearing. My name is Alyssa Diaz Senior Policy Manager at the Los Angeles Area Chamber of Commerce, representing over 1400 Members in the region.

The Chamber strongly supports process modernization to streamline permitting, coordinate funding and incentivize the timely implementation of projects across the state. An advanced infrastructure that meets the growing needs of LA, the state and the nation will incorporate all energy sources, new EV and AB Technology and modernize our water and electricity systems to ensure reliability and increase affordability.

The Chamber also supports policies that will increase mobility, relieve congestion and expand alternative commute options. It's also necessary that we discuss goods movement in this conversation.

Regarding sustainable transportation, we need smart regulations that facilitate the effective and efficient movement of goods through our ports, such as zero emission trucks, charging and fueling infrastructure and grid enhancements to ensure long term reliability.

In fact, the Port of Los Angeles is in the midst of a $500 million build out of its electric grid support 100% zero emissions operations. Further, over the next four years, the LA region and the state will be preparing for multiple global events. As mentioned, the 2028 Olympic and Paralympic Games.

It's important now more than ever that we work together to ensure accelerated delivery of planned transportation projects for both visitors to the region and Californians. Any policy implementation must match available government provided funding, commercially available technology and state provided infrastructure to make implementation features.

Additionally, we support all housing at all levels and believe Angelenos and Californians should be able to live near where they work. Thank you for the opportunity.

Thank you.

Hi, my name is Ekta Naik and I'm with SOLA Impact. We are number one affordable housing developer in the State of California and number 16 multifamily developer in the nation. We bring private capital to the table to build much needed affordable housing, which means we do not use any taxpayers money or public financing.

We're very encouraged by this initiative. And Madam Chair, we really thank you for your efforts in leading this reform. We have over 30 projects in the pipeline, anywhere between design phase to permitting to projects getting ready to, you know, pull permits all the way through under construction.

And fingers crossed, if I get LADWP building energized, you know, I might be getting my TCO tomorrow. That said, to address the affordable housing crises that we face as a nation and the state, we really need to encourage innovative construction techniques. One being modular housing.

We need a standardized state approved modular unit plan that doesn't need replan checking for each project. Very similar to the ADU initiative, we currently have six projects, four of which are in plan check and two of which are under construction.

And on all those projects we're using exactly the same module over and over, but each project gets plan checked by a different plan checker and we still go through three rounds of plan check. Of course the city also loves to plan check.

You know, while that is governed by the state, I think there's a lot more education that needs to happen around modular housing.

The second is I think it would be great to have like a digital plan check process in all the cities to really cut the plan check timelines that a lot of My colleagues over here have reported about if we can develop something very similar to Title 24.

Title 24 which is states you know process of approving mechanical plans. It would be, it would cut creating a software that automatically reviews and passes or fails. The plans will unleash around 10,000 plus units just in City of LA itself.

The state should be auditing cities plan check permitting and inspection processes with the same level of rigor as cities entitlement and housing element compliance. While there's a lot of ways we can parallel plan check through different departments, it's really not happening. For lack of better words. A lot of departments have alligator arms.

You know, they don't want to put their stamp first until the others have. And nobody wants to put the stamp first. And that really stretches the process. Somebody said it's a five minute job but it stretches the plan check process for over five months because nobody's willing to put that stamp first.

The other one is approved building plans should be the bible. Inspectors should not have the authority to interpret the code and request on the fly changes on site, site at their discretion and interpretation during construction they should be forced to only inspect against the approved plans.

And one such example is on a project that we built triple main at the 11th hour fire Department asked us to add a third exit stairwell which would delete a whole step. This is 11th hour. I had construction financing lined up, GC ready to go and that delayed the project by four months.

They made us change the lobby to a different lobby, added change the street names, all of that. We did all that to get the plans approved and now during construction the inspector made us undo all of that that they made us do. So four months of delay during permitting and another six months of delay now.

So we really need to streamline how the insp inspectors review the plans and they should abide by the approved plans. The other one is one of our projects.

Waivers were denied without notice and on falls justification we were forced to add a 14 foot tall ceiling on the ground floor on 100% affordable housing project that increased the cost by $2 million and extended the timeline by eight months. Because now I have to go back and plan check everything. And one more point.

I'm not going to take a lot of you guys time, but a lot of folks mention LADWP Utilities being all in sync on one such project. We've been working with LADWP for three years and 25.

Three years and four months and we're still not sure if we're going to get the building energized by December to move the residents in. I will stop here, but we're very encouraged by all of this and thank you.

Because we really need red, blue, black, brown, white, all shapes and forms to really collectively come together to address the affordable housing crisis that we have. Thank you.

Hello, Good afternoon. My name is Aleja Kretcher and I am a legal fellow with Communities for a Better Environment. At CBE, we work with the communities and residents on the ground that are most affected by gentrification, by unhealthy housing and by the risk of displacement.

Working within the Environmental Justice Movement, I want to push back on the notion that we don't understand that the need for housing is there and that we don't want to halt development around anything and everything.

Instead, I want to put forth that in our neighborhoods where our residents do not have a seat at the table, processes like those required by CEQA are the only protections our Members have to ensure their housing isn't built on lots that will give them cancer or other illnesses.

I also want to offer that streamlining housing for buildings with the minimum numbers of affordable units, but having that affordability expire after 30 years, like the builder's remedy, is like building a boat with a hole in it.

Before prioritizing developer payout via unencumbered buy right development and trickle down housing, we should first protect our residents currently at risk for displacement with rent control and permanent affordability, while also ensuring that DTSE and developers are properly remediating land before providing housing that is making people sick. Thank you.

Thank you.

Good afternoon, chair and Members of the Committee. My name is Fernando Gaytan. I'm with Earth Justice and I'm actually, I was a former housing attorney and so this discussion about housing is so near and dear to my heart. Very important to me. Obviously I understand and appreciate that housing is essential, especially affordable housing.