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It’s no secret that one of the biggest challenges in California right now is housing, and a bill working its way through the legislature seeks to remove one impediment for certain projects: CEQA reviews.
Projects converting motels to transitional housing units are already exempt from CEQA, the California Environmental Quality Act which requires an environmental impact study for projects and calls for the determination of whether a project could significantly impact environmental quality. But that exemption ends in 2025.
Sen. Tom Umberg, D-Santa Ana, wants to extend the exemption indefinitely. And his legislation to do just that recently cleared the Senate Committee on Environmental Quality.
“It was born of the need for transitional housing and the supply of facilities that in large part were motels that would lend themselves to transitional housing, but for the ability to prepare food,” Umberg said of the original exemption. “The only way to do that, often, was to build some of these out a bit, and one of the impediments was to go through CEQA review.”
“Let’s remove that challenge, and let cities and nonprofits start to acquire these hotels,” Umberg said.
Transitional housing helps people experiencing homelessness have their own place where they can cook, have an address to register children for school and be sheltered from the elements.
Through Project Homekey, California has attempted to accelerate this concept of converting motels into liveable apartments and other services, like case management or job placements. The program provides state funding for communities to buy hotels and convert them, and it boasts nearly 6,000 units created at 120 project sites thus far.
And it’s proof, Umberg said, this exemption is…
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