Pressing pause on adding yet more building standards to the already onerous, and highly expensive, codes already on the books in California isn’t really the optimum way to create more desperately needed housing here.
Actually cutting back some of the myriad red tape imposed by cities, counties and the state Legislature is the only way to ensure proper progress toward getting a roof over more heads.
But as they say about those who find themselves already in a hole: Stop digging. That’s the only way to prevent yourself from getting in even deeper.
That’s the reason that, lacking real reform of existing codes, it’s important to support Assembly Bill 306, which would keep the state’s building standards covering design, wiring, plumbing, energy standards and fire and earthquake safety frozen for new housing for the next six years. Localities would also be kept from making it harder and more costly to build.
With new code changes and add-ons coming every year ion a state in which it’s already harder to build than anywhere else in the country, and with the pressing need to rebuild over 10,000 homes lost to the Eaton and Palisades fires, now is the time to stop digging ourselves deeper into that bureaucratic hole.
Dan Dunmoyer, president of the California Building Industry Association, a trade group, told the nonprofit news site CalMatters: “We had the most seismically safe, water-reduced, fire retardant, energy efficient homes in the world two years ago and we just keep on adding more and more and more to it. At what point do you just take a pause?”
At this point, that’s where.
The good news is that, despite opposition from some NIMBY neighborhoods and at least one environmental group, so far no lawmakers have said they are against the pause.
Assemblymember Nick Schultz, D-Burbank, lead author of the bill, said it is simply time to leave the code alone for a few years while California catches up on its housing needs. And Schultz has a powerful co-author: Assembly Speaker Robert Rivas. That is surely one reason why the bill passed out of the Assembly with 71 yes votes last month, with no members voting against it, and is now in the hands of the state Senate.
At the end of last year, Rivas, as one of two leaders of the Legislature’s supermajority Democrats, read the large room of Californians disaffected by the rising prices of everything here and gave his colleagues a wake-up call.
“Californians are deeply anxious. They are anxious about our state’s cost of living,” he said in the wake of the November elections. “We must chart a new path forward and renew the California dream by focusing on affordability.”
While the lack of affordable housing in the nation’s largest state can sometimes seem an untenable problem, the fact is that legislative reforms can do some measure of good toward the goal of finding more people better places to live. Two years ago, former Ventura City Council member and longtime housing advocate Bill Fulton co-authored a study noting the 17 different bills that had been passed in Sacramento allowing for more accessory dwelling units — ADUs — to be built in California.
“The combination of all of these reforms appears to have been successful in increasing ADU production statewide,” the authors noted. “For example, in 2016, California permitted just over one thousand ADUs. In 2021, over 20,000 ADUs were permitted.”
Even in a climate in which officials are finally moving toward “a culture of yes” as opposed to no when it comes to building homes in California, the study said, “high development costs—such as labor, materials, development impact fees, and stringent building code requirements — continue to impede housing development in even the most permissive cities and counties. Permissive land use laws are not enough to spur building if housing development is not financially feasible.”
California lawmakers must continue to redouble their efforts to let housing happen in the Golden State if we are going to be able to dig ourselves out of this hole.
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