Council Gives an Earful on Need for Housing Regulatory Reform

The Assembly Select Committee on Regulatory Authority convened Nov. 6 to hear testimony about the ways in which onerous state regulation can increase the cost of housing, and the Bay Area Council made sure they got an earful.

Council Senior Vice President Louis Mirante shared the experiences of many of our members who have sought to build housing in the Bay Area and across California, but whose work was made more difficult, timely and expensive by an impenetrable regulatory culture. Excessive, unnecessary and poorly coordinated regulations and permitting can add hundreds of thousands of dollars to the cost of every new home.

Through our permitting reform and other regulatory reform work over the past few years, the Council has worked aggressively to decrease some of these barriers so we can address California’s historic housing and affordability crisis while avoiding the environmental harms that not building housing has caused: traffic, pollution, and causing people to move to states with much more pollutive energy grids. To engage in the Council’s housing policy work, please contact Senior Vice President Louis Mirante.