California’s courts let NIMBYs strangle UC Berkeley. There’s only one reasonable response
The California Supreme Court refused Thursday to delay a ruling that will force UC Berkeley to cut next year’s admissions by thousands, effectively endorsing the notion that college students in the heart of a major metropolis pose a significant environmental threat under California law. At a time when soaring housing prices, pervasive homelessness and other repercussions of California NIMBYism have never been clearer, the decision empowers the sort of affluent property owners who brought this case to go beyond blocking housing for younger and less wealthy people to stunting their education and more.
The neighborhood group that brought the case, Save Berkeley’s Neighborhoods, cited such alleged enrollment-related environmental catastrophes as “excessive noise.” In a statement hailing the court’s ruling, the group accused the university of “creating a tremendous housing shortage in Berkeley,” but it’s also opposed construction of housing that could accommodate students.
The high court’s ruling in favor of these reactionaries leaves the Legislature with no sensible option but to face one of its longest-standing failures, the California Environmental Quality Act. CEQA, as it’s known, made this and countless other misbegotten lawsuits possible by imbuing NIMBYism with the full force of law, contributing to one of the worst housing shortages in the country and now constraining the state’s already oversubscribed higher education system.
State Supreme Court Justice Goodwin Liu noted in dissenting from the ruling that “if the ultimate result of the present suit is to deprive thousands of prospective students of the opportunity to attend one of our premier public universities, I would not be surprised if this stark consequence prompts political actors to rethink the balance that CEQA currently strikes.” Lawmakers are indeed considering a bill to exempt student and faculty housing from CEQA as well as a narrower effort to address the Berkeley dispute.
They’re good ideas that don’t go far enough. As a Bay Area business group noted, this case “clearly and loudly demonstrates ... the urgent need for comprehensive reforms to the California Environmental Quality Act, which has become a primary tool of local activists and others in blocking housing and other vital infrastructure.”
Gov. Gavin Newsom rightly joined the city of Berkeley and others in criticizing the court rulings. But he also quietly abandoned his campaign pledge to close the housing deficit by getting 3.5 million homes built within two terms, replacing it this week with a promise to plan for a million fewer five years later.
Save Berkeley’s Neighborhoods and its ilk fundamentally refuse to acknowledge any housing shortage; to them, the problem is a population surplus. And their backward point of view is prevailing.
Save Berkeley’s neighborhoods? Let’s save California from the selfish instead.