Maggie Kash, Maggie.Kash@sierraclub.org, 202-656-4548
Oakland, CA -- It is clear that the housing crisis is extreme in California and in many cities across the country. It is also clear that we need to act now to fight the climate crisis. Smart, walkable, and affordable housing is a way to fight both beasts.
The Sierra Club is committed to fighting climate change in a way that meets human needs, and that is why we strongly support policies that increase affordable, urban housing density, and access to public transportation. Our policies to achieve those solutions can be found here.
We support the goal of increasing transit-oriented development to reduce greenhouse gas emissions -- but we have concerns about the approach in California Senate Bill 827 Planning and Zoning: Transit-Rich Housing Bonus (S.B. 827) because the mechanism being employed in S.B. 827 is playing out across the country in very different, and sometimes harmful ways.
At the heart of this bill is what a coalition of labor, good government groups, and a host of others call state-level preemption. In essence, these bills strip local governments from the decision-making process.
Last year we saw this used in Louisiana and Tennessee in an effort to stop local affordable housing mandates for developers, using the very same blunt instrument -- removal of local zoning authority. There have also been examples applied across blocking local fracking bans, deregulating factory farms, suppressing the minimum wage, and most recently, to a bill that just passed committee in Utah this week, restricting local elected officials’ ability to advocate for public lands protections.
“This bill has the right aim, but the wrong method,” said Lindi von Mutius, Sierra Club chief of staff. “We know that some members of the legislature are working to refine the bill to make it less damaging in approach. We hope they are successful because we need more transit-oriented development that is appropriately sited to ensure smart, walkable communities that improve quality of life, reduce pollution, and fight climate change.”
Achieving these development patterns and transit improvements require complex policies that at their best are designed to include public participation and environmental mitigation at the local and regional level.
About the Sierra Club
The Sierra Club is America’s largest and most influential grassroots environmental organization, with more than 3 million members and supporters. In addition to helping people from all backgrounds explore nature and our outdoor heritage, the Sierra Club works to promote clean energy, safeguard the health of our communities, protect wildlife, and preserve our remaining wild places through grassroots activism, public education, lobbying, and legal action. For more information, visit www.sierraclub.org.