NIMBYs at Center of California's Housing Shortage

The market is evidently there, and private developers, it would seem, are ready to fill it, at least for those in the moderate-to-high income brackets. The impediments are largely political.

NIMBYism – not-in-my-backyard – is rampant in California, sometimes erupting extemporaneously in response to development proposals, sometimes driven by misguided environmentalism. It affects even high-density “infill” projects that environmentalists support in principle, but often oppose in practice.

An example is the Neighborhood Integrity Initiative in Los Angeles that, if enacted, would make it almost impossible to build large-scale housing projects in a huge city already experiencing mass homelessness and immensely burdensome housing costs, as Mayor Eric Garcetti points out in his criticism of the measure.

Walters points out to the use of CEQA by infill opponents as being a major reason for the failure of the metropolitan regions to build sufficient housing, thus driving up cost. "Were politicians willing to seriously address California’s housing crisis, rather than make token gestures, they’d reform CEQA and take other steps to encourage supply," he writes.

A recent CEQA study posted here confirms his perspective, but is careful to separate NIMBYs from environmentalists.

• And in the private sector, higher-density housing is most contested. Infill projects in general appear to attract challenges far more often than “greenfield” development, or sprawl.
• “CEQA litigation is not a battle between ‘business’ and ‘enviros’ … [It] is primarily the domain of Not In My Backyard (NIMBY) opponents and special interests such as competitors and labor unions seeking non-environmental outcomes,” writes co-author Jennifer Hernandez.

An earlier study came to an opposite conclusion, finding that "the state's environmental law is low on the list of barriers to infill development," according to a 2012 post.

Hat tip: Len Conly, Sierra Club Bay Area Transportation Forum.