Insight

California’s housing cost is still the highest in the nation and Sacramento is still focused on increasing housing production. And although overall production has not gone up much in recent years, it’s outpacing population growth – at least according to the demographers at the California Department of Finance. The latest numbers show that between 2022 and 2025, California added one new housing unit for every resident – 349,000 new people and 364,000 new housing units, or a li

As the Legislature prepares to convene in January, another round of changes to the California Environmental Quality Act seems likely. The question is whether the 2026 changes will be incremental – clarifying, among other things, some of the “Swiss-cheese” holes punched in CEQA in 2025 – or whether someone in the Legislature will attempt a more comprehensive attempt at reform.

Most cities won't be affected. But for those in urban counties with frequent rail or BRT service, the future will be very different. Here's a rundown.

The U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling involving the National Environmental Policy Act does not directly affect California’s environmental review process. But the NEPA ruling is likely, some lawyers say, to expand the gulf between NEPA and the California Environmental Quality Act.

His new executive order -- targting California in particular -- could try to disrupt 20 years of state climate policy, as well as SB 375, SB 743, SB 1000, and local climate action plans.

New bills by Wiener and Wicks take dead aim at the way CEQA is structured. Is the long-awaited final showdown on CEQA reform finally here?

Probably not, but there will be more threats to California's independent power, and the Administration will likely do everything it can to undermine that power.

His mission was to help people understand the underlying economics of public goods and services. Parking was simply the vehicle, one might say, that he chose to do so.

Probably not. Residents typically want to rebuild what they had before -- even if replicating the existing land use pattern creates significant wildfire risk.

State law has lots of definitions of infill and transit-oriented locations. As local governments increasingly use the infill exemption to get around environmental review, this is becoming a problem.

The second Trump Administration is likely to back off of zoning reform, environmental protection, and transit funding. Will the state's own laws and policies serve as a firewall against these changes?

Fallout from Supreme Court case on is still unclear, but there's no question that cities and counties will have to make "individualized determinations" more often, bulletproof their nexus studies, and allow more appeals.