LOS ANGELES — Santa Monica resident Leonora Camner only has to open her windows to escape Southern California’s worsening heat waves.
Where millions of Los Angeles County residents must sit in a car for more than an hour to drive to the beach, Camner can get there in minutes. Coastal access is an equity issue, however, one that she said inspired her to join Abundant Housing LA, a nonprofit organization that advocates for solutions to the region’s affordable housing crisis. She is now the group’s executive director.
“I’m very fortunate to live in a place where we still have a cool breeze,” she said. “So many people work here in Santa Monica, but they are constantly having to leave because of the rising cost and lack of housing.”
As home prices soar and wildfires rage across California, the state is increasingly confronted with the herculean task of addressing climate change while creating more affordable housing. A series of new mandates recently issued by Gov. Gavin Newsom has plunged the state deeper into what some say is an “existential” dilemma generations in the making: how to house the state’s 40 million residents while also protecting its natural resources.
It’s a complicated task in a state where both homelessness and home prices are on the rise as climate change is fueling wildfires and drought.
“It’s such an existential issue for a California facing climate change,” Camner said. “With these extreme fires, I don’t see how we can ever address housing in a way that doesn’t plan for that fact. There is no getting around it.”
Last month, Newsom, a Democrat, signed more than two dozen housing bills aimed at spurring new development and addressing the state’s affordable housing shortage. He also approved a bill that curtails single-family zoning by allowing up to four units on single lots and another that encourages creating more housing density near transit and urban centers.
Combined, the bills usher in a new era of growth for California at a time when millions of people struggle to afford rising rents and exclusive home pricing. Across the state, million-dollar houses have become the norm as the pandemic economy pushed an already competitive market into overdrive. While high earners scramble to outbid each other for single-family housing stock, renters are faced with an eviction moratorium that expired at the end of September.
Intertwined with California’s housing shortage is climate change, which has contributed to severe drought, rising sea levels, historic wildfires and unprecedented heat waves. The state has already outlined a goal of becoming carbon neutral by 2045, a target that advocates say can be achieved in part by creating more housing near jobs and transportation centers and thereby eliminating hourslong commutes.
At the center of the debate in Southern California is a yet-to-be completed tool that could bridge the gap between conservation and development. The SoCal Greenprint will be an interactive mapping platform providing access to more than 100 data sets that highlight natural resources. Inspired by similar projects around the country, the tool will include information on agricultural land, green spaces, habitats and biodiversity and clean water and air.
The tool would be free for all users and would not constitute binding policy or regulation.
“It is really, really important at a time when we’re facing so many challenges and opportunities that we have the data available so that people can make the decisions they want to make,” she said.
“Knowing where there are communities that don’t have a park close by … is really important to build knowledge and solve a number of the things we’re trying to solve,” O’Donoghue, who served as project lead on the Bay Area Greenprint, added.
But in Southern California, where single-family zoning has long reigned supreme, the SoCal Greenprint has turned into a flashpoint. Last week, a public hearing on the future of the project devolved into a four-hour heated debate between those who want to see its immediate completion and opponents who worry it could stymie efforts to build more housing and transportation. Some went as far as to call the tool’s implementation modern-day “redlining,” while others said it would be a “betrayal” to further delay the project.
Ultimately, members of the Southern California Association of Governments voted to pause development of the SoCal Greenprint for future study and review.
Chris Wilson, public policy manager for the Los Angeles County Business Federation, said the tool could have “unintended consequences” and affect some 4,000 transportation projects in the L.A region alone, including pausing construction because of environmental concerns revealed through the Greenprint.
Wilson and his partners in the business community also worry about the potential for litigation as a result of the California Environmental Quality Act, a state law that requires local governments and public agencies to address the environmental impacts of major projects and land use decisions. Since being signed into law by then-Gov. Ronald Reagan in 1970, CEQA, as it’s colloquially known, has become “the environmental law developers love to hate.”
“When you understand the SoCal Greenprint, yes it is about housing, but there is also a spillover to the transportation and goods movement sector,” Wilson said. “These are things we want to make sure SCAG is aware of so there are no unintended consequences.”
Culver City Mayor Alex Fisch said he was “shocked” by the contentious public hearing last week and called the Greenprint a “tremendously helpful tool.” But he also sees it as a symbol of the inherent tension between conservation and development.
“The concern that people have is that when you look honestly at the environmental impact of building on the urban fringe, it’s terrible,” he said. “It is just a map, but it’s a proxy for so much more.”
