California lawmakers have been busy over the last decade trying to make it easier to build homes across a housing-strapped state. But there’s an 840-mile-long exception.
In an undulating band that generally runs 1,000 yards from the shoreline, the 12 members of the California Coastal Commission have the final say over what gets built, where and how.
Voters empowered the commission to protect the state’s iconic beaches in 1972, responding to a crisis of despoiled seas and the prospect of the Miami-fication of the California coast.
But five decades later, the state faces a different crisis as millions of Californians struggle to find an affordable place to call home. Now, a growing number of legislators and housing advocates are trying to wrest away some of the commission’s power.
Legislation by San Francisco Democratic Sen. Scott Wiener would fast-track apartment development in parts of the state that haven’t met their state-set housing goals, exempting them from lengthy public hearings and environmental legal challenges. The coast is no exception, effectively cutting the Coastal Commission out of the process.
Commission members, staff and environmental advocates say the bill may be the most direct assault yet at the agency’s voter-backed mandate.
“Once you start exempting classes of development from the Coastal Act there will be no shutting that barn door,” said Sarah Christie, a lobbyist for the commission. “You’re going to lose some of the best things about California.”
And as rising seas threaten to bring down bluffs and flood beachfront neighborhoods, coastal advocates argue that carefully considered development is more important than ever.
Wiener and his allies reject the argument that the commission is the only thing standing in the way of a development free-for-all, since current zoning rules and environmental protection laws would still apply. Ending what has become the regular practice of exempting the coast from…
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