From the Sacramento Bee: California’s’ public colleges and universities, plagued by a shortage of student housing, would be permitted to expedite construction under a bill cleared by an Assembly committee Monday. SB-886, sponsored by state Sen. Scott Weiner (D-San Francisco), would require the state to grant UC, CSU and Community College campuses an exemption from regulations under the California Environmental Quality Act, or CEQA.*
The bill, which has already passed the Senate, cleared the Assembly’s Natural Resources Committee Monday afternoon. “SB 886 is designed to address a very real issue in California, and that is the profound lack of available student housing,” Wiener told assembly members on Monday. “We have high rates of student homelessness, students that are living in their cars, living from motel to motel, couch surfing, living in very overcrowded situations — which is not conducive to actually learning.”
The legislation follows a major lawsuit that illustrated just how crowded California schools are becoming. The suit, spearheaded by NIMBY group Save Berkeley’s Neighborhoods, alleged that the University of California, Berkeley was admitting too many students for its available space. After the California Supreme Court ruled that the university would have to cut its student enrollment by several thousand — meaning it would need to revoke acceptance letters — the legislature and Gov. Gavin Newsom quickly passed legislation effectively reversing the court’s decision through a CEQA exception. The Berkeley case underscored the vast reach of CEQA. Outraged legislators said that it demonstrated the need for revisions to the law...
Full story at https://www.sacbee.com/news/california/article262520122.html.
Since the governor has not been a fan of the use of CEQA in blocking projects, it seems likely that he would sign the bill.
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*Text of the bill is at:
https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billTextClient.xhtml?bill_id=202120220SB886.
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