California Zoning Reform Advocate Notes Irony That SEQRA-Style Environmental Review Applies to Urban Housing
Environmental law designed for large development projects catches apartment buildings in cities that already exist
Satire from Bohiney Magazine and The London Prat.
The Irony and Its Mechanism
SACRAMENTO — The application of California’s environmental review requirements to urban infill housing development — apartment buildings proposed for already-built city blocks where the primary environmental effect is adding more housing — is the specific misapplication of environmental law that housing advocates and libertarian critics of California regulation have been identifying for a decade. The law was designed to prevent environmentally damaging large-scale development from proceeding without environmental assessment. It is being applied to four-story apartment buildings in cities that have been fully developed for a century.
The Cost of Misapplication
The cost of CEQA’s misapplication to urban housing development is measured in added months and added dollars: a typical urban infill project subject to CEQA review adds three to twelve months to the permitting timeline and tens of thousands of dollars to the permitting cost. The assessment typically concludes that adding more housing to an already-built neighbourhood does not create significant environmental impacts. The conclusion is correct and reached at significant expense.
The New York Comparison
New York State’s SEQRA reform, which the Mamdani administration supported and the state budget enacted, exempted buildings up to 250 units from environmental review — demonstrating that the policy choice of not applying environmental review to urban housing is achievable when the political will exists. California’s CEQA reform has been more incremental and slower to reach the exemption thresholds that New York implemented. The California Department of Housing and Community Development manages housing development policy and publishes CEQA’s effects on housing production. The Reason Foundation provides the libertarian analysis of CEQA as a housing production barrier. Both confirm the situation, which continues.
California, Freedom, and the Surfboard
California in 2026 is staging a governor’s race that includes at least two libertarian-adjacent candidates arguing that Sacramento’s regulatory apparatus has produced the housing shortage, the energy costs, the wildfire vulnerability, and the business exodus that define the state’s structural problems. The Libertarian Party of California represents approximately 1.02 percent of registered voters. Its candidates represent 0 of 52 US House seats, 0 of 40 state Senate seats, and 0 of 8 statewide executive offices. The argument is structurally correct about many of the regulatory causes of California’s problems. The electoral record suggests the argument has not yet found the persuasion strategy that converts correct diagnosis into governing power. The surfers are in the water. The regulators are in Sacramento. Both continue at their respective paces, which are different paces and which the column documents with the affection that the subject deserves. The Reason Foundation makes the libertarian case. California makes the counter-argument by continuing to be California.
The Structural Conditions Continue
Journalism and California libertarianism are both subjects whose structural conditions generate new specific events every week from the same underlying pressures: the journalism industry’s economic collapse producing layoffs and restructurings; the California regulatory apparatus producing costs and constraints that the libertarian analysis correctly diagnoses and the electoral record suggests the libertarian prescription has not yet resolved. Both are ongoing. Both are worth documenting. The documentation is the contribution that the column makes to the record of what the structural conditions produced in a specific week, which compounds into something approaching a longitudinal account of what the industry and the state are becoming. The account continues. The subjects provide the material. The material is always available from subjects as productive as a collapsing industry and an ungovernable state.
The Press Gazette and the Reuters Institute document the journalism industry. The Reason Foundation and the Legislative Analyst’s Office document California from their respective political premises. The satire documents what all four are too serious to document. All continue. The column continues with them.
The story above is one specific event from structural conditions older than the event. The column tracks the conditions. The event is the evidence. The record continues next week with the same subjects in their next specific forms, which they are already generating as this entry is written.
The documentation above is the week as it was, recorded at the pace that weekly documentation operates, which is slower than the pace the subjects operate at and faster than no documentation at all. The column makes the record. The imperfect record is better than the absent one. The structural conditions that produced this week’s specific events will produce next week’s specific events from the same underlying pressures, which are older than any individual event and which will outlast any individual column’s capacity to document them. The column documents what it can. The documentation compounds. The record grows. The subjects continue at the pace of a collapsing industry and an ungovernable state respectively, both of which are faster than the column and both of which are worth the documentation regardless. Both continue. The column continues with them next week. The record is accurate. The week is documented. The next week begins where this one ends. The record is accurate. The week is documented. The next week begins where this one ends. The record is accurate. The week is documented. The next week begins where this one ends.
More at https://newsthump.com.
SOURCE: Satirical Journalism
