Newsom Enacts Landmark Housing Reform: A Turning Point for California

BERKELEY, Calif. – Gov. Gavin Newsom has signed two housing bills into law, aimed at making it easier and faster to build new housing.

These new laws are supposed to help break down the barriers to building new housing and speed up production while reducing costs.

This could be helpful for buildings like this one in downtown Berkeley, an 8-story apartment complex aimed at housing students. The project broke ground in December 2024. 

And in fact, Newsom called this change “the most consequential housing reform in modern history.”

The new laws lessen environmental review standards under what is known as the California Environmental Quality Act, or CEQA, which ended up creating a lot of red tape for new builds, often resulting in thousands of pages of environmental assessments and years of litigation. 

While the standards were meant to protect the environment, they’ve been weaponized by groups that want to stop affordable housing projects that they don’t want in their neighborhood. 

“We’ve seen this abuse over and over again,” Newsom said on Monday. “We’ve fallen prey to litigation as a strategy, delay as a strategy. The consequences of all of that are too much demand chasing too little supply. It’s not complicated, this is Econ: 101.” 

The first bill, AB 130, introduced by Assemblymember Buffy Wicks (D-Oakland), exempts most urban housing projects from environmental review. It also only requires buildings taller than 85 feet and low-income buildings to pay union-level wages for construction workers.

The second bill, SB 131 by Sen. Scott Wiender (D-San Francisco) waives the environmental restrictions for other buildings too – like health clinics, child care, food banks and more.

Newsom essentially forced these two bills through – saying his signature on the budget would be void if they didn’t pass.