redqueeninla ~ a musings locality

First considered here were California’s kid-critical Propositions:

• YES on 40 (levies one-time tax on highest earners – “Billionaires tax”),
• YES on 3 (retains current taxation rate at the top – “Millionaires tax”),
• NO on 43 (limits voters’ ability to raise revenues for local government services) … and the two determined by YES
•   NO on 41 and NO on 42 because they exist to torpedo Proposition 40.

Next considered are three housing initiatives, though it turns out the last one only pretends to be one:  Prop 1, Prop 37 and Prop 45

Prop 1 is a bond issue placed on the ballot by the legislature. It’s not tricky, there aren’t lobbyists and special interests trying to spin and twist understanding; there is no formal opposition to the measure. It’s straight-forward: authorize $11.25b for veteran and income-qualified housing. The proposition would “create and preserve affordable homes, expand homeownership opportunities, and support housing for [low-and-middle income Californians, students, youth], veterans, seniors, farmworkers, first-time homebuyers, working families, people experiencing or at risk of homelessness, Native American communities, and individuals with disabilities”, according to SHE, a community-development organization in the San Joaquin Valley.

An excellent fact sheet is here, and Ballotpedia’s thorough synthesis, from funders to full-text, is here. The Legislative Analyst estimates taxpayers would effectively purchase this initiative at:  “…$500 million to $600 million annually for about 25 years, … about one-quarter of 1 percent (0.25 percent) of the state’s total General Fund budget…”

This is why we have a government:  to be able to support those in need; even conservatives support this use of money, because it backfills where the “free market” has failed. As emphasized by the bill’s co-author, Asm. Buffy Wicks: “We all know the stats in California – two-thirds of lower-income renters are rent-burdened, 170,000 people are unsheltered, and we are 1.2 million units short of the affordable housing we need … ”. 

YES on 1 steps in where the market will not, delivering housing programs for California’s most vulnerable, making good on providing what is a common good, for all.

Where Prop 1 addresses income-qualified housing for California’s neediest, Prop 37 addresses the “missing middle” class of would-be homeowners. Limited to new construction or the first sale of a converted nonresidential property, the Proposition seeks to support the “dream of home ownership” for qualified individuals, with a second mortgage that would reduce the downpayment required, to be as low as 3%. The bond is for $25b but is structured to be repaid by recipient’s mortgage payments directly, not by taxpayers. And thus the nonpartisan Legislative Analyst’s Office anticipates: “No Direct State or Local Costs”.

YES on 37 is a reasonable experiment in jiggering the housing market in such a way as might create new incentives to increase affordability.

In contrast with Proposition 45, which just administratively, is estimated to cost Californian’s up to or even exceeding $100m annually, in the short term. In the long term, CalChamber’s “Building An Affordable California Act” (BACA, aka Prop 45), would significantly ‘modify’ CEQA, with unclear consequences ethically, legally, physically or fiscally for environmental degradation, harm or cleanup.

In the meantime, the proposition is promoted as a way to halt the impeding of important housing development projects, even while this measure was largely addressed last year with the urgency passage of AB130 and SB 131.

California’s housing crisis is no longer tied to “modernizing” its seminal Environmental Quality Act, aka CEQA; that issue has been mitigated (though with respect to affordable housing, Prop 45 actually backtracks by overriding such protections built into last year’s AB 130). However, Californian’s own environmental sustainability, absolutely depends on not shackling or further “modifying” CEQA.

Prop 45 is not, therefore, some necessary “corrective” to the housing crisis which bedevils California, because Prop 45 is neither a housing nor a home-building initiative; it is a building proposition. BACA is all about making building easier, swifter, and free of any manner of regulations, oversight, scrutiny and alternative suggestions, for a set of projects that builders, manufacturers, extractionists and resource provisioners – tech billionaires themselves define to be “essential”.

Sufficiently vague as to encompass all projects (in particular data centers), this demolition of CEQA will significantly reduce public input, critically limit local government’s capacity to conduct its business, and change its standard of review so that only the applicant, not government professionals, may singularly hazard an alternative project, which must meet standards locked in to the moment of submission, and are therefore impervious to new findings.

Adding insult to injury, CalChamber, the proposition’s authors, have ensured the permanence of BACA/Prop 45, by inserting an electoral poison pill mandating 2/3 voter approval for amendment. For more on the anti-democratic imposition of a super majority, see the discussion of Prop 43.

This is not regulation, it is regulatory capture, just in time for the new crunch of data centers. Gone will be any community’s right of environmental objection to the proposal site after project submission: it will be too late.

The proposals of Prop 45 are arrant and severe. With deregulatory fever creeping into power internationally even while the globe heats inexorably, this is the worst conceivable development from iconically environmentally sensitive California. We must vote NO on 45 for the planet, for our kids, for their opportunity ever to inhabit any house of any sort come 2076. Housing bill or no, Prop 45 must be stopped.

These are the Propositions discussed so far:

Proposition	position	Shorter name	Short name
Prop 1	YES	Housing bond	Bond for Housing Affordability Programs
Prop 2
Prop 3	YES	Sets top tax rate	“Millionaires tax” (retains highest-income taxation)
Prop 4
Prop 5
Prop 37	YES	Loan program	Loan Program for Middle-Income Home Buyers
Prop 38
Prop 39
Prop 40	YES	Billionaires tax	“Billionaires tax” (backfills looted healthcare dollars)
Prop 41	NO	Prop 40 buttress	Designed to engulf Prop 40
Prop 42	NO	Prop 40 buttress	Designed to engulf Prop 40
Prop 43	NO	Curbs local taxation	Constrains local taxation choice
Prop 44
Prop 45	NO	CEQA	Modifies Environmental Review