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LAND-USE BILL PROMOTES FREEDOM
& PROPERTY RIGHTS BY STEVEN GREENHUT, CALIFORNIA POLICY CENTER
Conservatives promote the importance ministerially approve a proposed housing development
of property rights, free markets, regulatory reform, small businesses, family values and the need to reduce the power of unelected bureaucrats. In California, for instance, they want to exempt projects from the dreaded California Environmental Quality Act
(CEQA) and streamline the permit process so builders can boost housing supply.
They are completely right on all those points. Yet after a bill came along that promotes those concepts, many Republican legislators and right-leaning activists have opposed it. Apparently, these conservatives support freedom and property rights, but not when it affects their neighborhoods or intrudes on their personal preferences.
I’m referring to Senate Bill 9, which passed the Legislature on Thursday. The measure, according to the official bill analysis, requires “cities and counties to
project containing two residential units on parcels zoned for single-family residential development.”
In plain English, that means property owners could – by right, rather than at the discretion of planning officials – subdivide their lots and build up to two dwelling units on each lot. It’s similar to the state’s groundbreaking ADU (accessory dwelling unit) law that gives owners the freedom to create separate apartments on their property, except SB 9 allows them to build units that can be sold individually.
Supporters say the law will lessen the housing crunch by incentivizing construction. That’s true, although it’s only a small part of a supply-boosting agenda. High prices stem from years of overregulation by local governments that do the bidding of NIMBYs (Not In My Back Yarders) – people who own their homes and don’t want additional congestion.
Please turn to page 23
Steven Greenhut is senior fellow and Western region director of the R Street Institute. He is responsible for overseeing R Street’s efforts in California, Oregon, Washington state, Nevada, Arizona, Alaska, and Hawaii. His duties include authoring op-eds and policy studies, testifying before state and municipal legislative bodies and representing R Street as a speaker, public commentator and coalition ally in venues in which it is possible to move state and local policy in the Western region in a more free-market direction. Steven is a 2005 recipient of the Thomas Paine Award, granted by the Institute for Justice in recognition of his writing to promote liberty. In 2011, he placed second in the International Policy Network R.C. Hoiles Prize for Journalism. Steven received his bachelor’s degree from George Washington University in 1982.
APARTMENT MANAGEMENT MAGAZINE - SEPTEMBER 2021 CS-17