California matters

groin area

Gov. Gavin Newsom signed legislation Monday that will rescue UC Berkeley from a court-ordered enrollment freeze and steep admission cuts and allow the university to resume plans to enroll more than 5,000 California first-year students.

The new law in effect ends a frantic few weeks at one of the nation’s most sought-after campuses during its critical admissions period, and admissions offers will be extended as originally planned, a campus spokesperson said. The court order over housing issues had threatened cuts and a major enrollment reconfiguration for first-year and transfer students, many of whom would have been forced online or given deferred admission offers.

The legislation, passed unanimously by California lawmakers earlier Monday, will give the state’s public colleges and universities 18 months to complete any court-ordered environmental review before being subject to a mandatory reduction or freeze in campus population.

The admissions debacle occurred after a neighborhood group successfully sued UC Berkeley, alleging that the university did not adequately address environmental issues related to increasing student enrollment. The legislation was presented as a rescue mission to help UC Berkeley after the California Supreme Court maintained a lower court order imposing an enrollment freeze, which would have forced the university to cut its in-person fall class by more than 2,600.

Save Berkeley’s Neighborhoods used the California Environmental Quality Act, or CEQA, which requires environmental review of development projects and its impacts, in its case against UC Berkeley. The law has been wielded by antidevelopment forces for decades.

State Sen. Scott Wiener (D-San Francisco), who introduced a bill last month that would exempt public universities’ housing developments from California’s arduous environmental review process, said the issue Berkeley faced in relation to CEQA was not unique, and that the law has been used to prevent the developments of other housing and transportation projects.

University officials say the multiple lawsuits filed by neighbors have put UC Berkeley in an almost impossible situation: One aims to block it from growing enrollment before building new housing while another is trying to stop it from implementing its long-term plan to do just that — build more housing.

The lawsuits undermine claims by neighborhood groups that they “merely want the university to build more student housing,” said Dan Mogulof, a spokesperson for UC Berkeley.

• The new CA-45 is a C-shaped [House] district [in California]. Democrats have a nearly 5-point advantage in voter registration there, according to figures from Political Data Inc. White voters are the largest bloc, at 45.7%. Asian voters are second at 32.8%, with half of that group, or 71,948 voters, identifying as Vietnamese American. Another 13,609 voters in the district are Chinese American, while PDI reports 6,295 voters in the new CA-45 were born in Taiwan.
• GOP Rep. Michelle Steel is Korean American. Democrat Jay Chen is Taiwanese American. Both are trying to woo voters in the new CA-45, a House district now centered around the largest Vietnamese American community in the United States. And with three months until the primary, the topic that's become maybe the biggest point of contention between the two campaigns is China. Steel also has tweeted about China far more than any other local House member so far this session.
• Both candidates are promising to work to lower healthcare costs, boost jobs, address homelessness and support veterans. Chen's campaign also focuses on boosting infrastructure, protecting voting and reproductive rights, better funding public schools and standing with international allies, while Steel discusses securing the U.S./Mexico border, lowering taxes, COVID-19 recovery and ending sanctuary states and cities.
  • Steel regularly criticizes China and paints it as the biggest threat to the United States. Such talk has proved popular among many local Vietnamese American voters, who cited China as a key reason they broke with other Asian American communities and supported Trump in 2020. And it's taken on new urgency in light of Russia invading Ukraine, with Steel and others raising flags about the potential for China to invade Taiwan.
  • Chen insists that he, too, is "very clear-eyed about the threats and challenges China poses for us." He notes that as an intelligence officer in the Naval Reserves he's regularly briefed superiors on the subject. But he's also raising concerns about how broad, anti-China rhetoric might help to fuel the rise in violent, anti-Asian hate crimes', insisting that leaders here need to "stand up to China without also demonizing Chinese Americans and Asian Americans here at home."
• Confucius Institutes are [Chinese-sponsored] educational centers offering lessons in Chinese languages and culture. The centers have been located in more than 100 American universities over the past two decades. While a 2019 Senate report said it found "no evidence that these institutes are a center for Chinese espionage efforts or any other illegal activity," the committee recommended eliminating Confucius centers unless there could be more transparency about how they function and if similar American exchange programs could be allowed in China.
  • Twelve years ago, when Chen was serving on the board of education for the Hacienda La Puente Unified School District, he and three fellow board members voted to bring a Confucius Classroom program to the district. Some parents pushed back, and the board agreed not to accept funds from China for the program. [Steel's] campaign spokesman, Lance Trover, said Chen's position on Confucius Classrooms "raises serious questions about his ties to China" and accused him of "standing with the Chinese Communist Party over California parents and families."

SACRAMENTO — Gov. Gavin Newsom defended his administration’s work on housing and homelessness during an interview with The Chronicle’s editorial board Thursday, promising to crack down on local opposition to housing projects.

“Taxpayers deserve more in terms of results, not just inputs,” Newsom said. “They want to see results.”

In the last few years, Newsom has been responsible for putting more state funding into housing and homelessness programs than any other recent governor. His previous budgets have poured billions in funding to increase housing production and help get homeless people off the streets, but Californians aren’t yet seeing results they want, as they continue to rank housing and homelessness as top concerns.

Three years into Newsom’s tenure, housing production remains sluggish. Although preliminary numbers show the homeless population has shrunk in San Francisco, it’s grown in almost every other Bay Area county that reported data last week.

Where’s the holdup? At the local level, Newsom argues, where “not in my backyard” politics prevent homeless shelters from being constructed and housing projects from being approved. More for you

“NIMB Yism is destroying the state,” he told the editorial board in an interview seeking the paper’s endorsement in his upcoming re-election bid. “We're gonna demand more from our cities and counties.”

Tensions over state intervention in local housing policy have escalated in California in recent years as the housing crisis has raged and lawmakers have passed dozens of new laws pressuring local governments to build more homes. A proposed ballot measure that would override recent state housing laws and give local jurisdictions far more power over housing decisions did not qualify for the November ballot, but organizers have said they’ll try to make the 2024 ballot.

Newsom’s promise to hold cities and counties accountable isn’t new. One of his first actions as governor was to sue the city of Huntington Beach for not planning to build enough affordable housing, something local governments must do under state law. He said his new Housing Accountability Unit within the Housing and Community Development Department is poring over the minutes of local planning committees to determine whether local governments are complying with state housing laws that require them to plan for affordable housing and, in some cases, approve it.

“It’s critical to hold cities and counties accountable,” he said. “There's a crisis. Why the hell are you stopping projects? I mean, we've seen it over and over.”

That was illustrated last year, when Newsom’s Housing and Community Development Department began investigating whether San Francisco supervisors violated state law in rejecting a 495-unit apartment complex near Sixth and Market streets. That could potentially lead to the Newsom administration suing San Francisco, just as it sued Huntington Beach.

Newsom pointed to that lawsuit and suggested that was just a preview of the work his office will do to hold cities accountable on housing and homelessness.

In his revised state budget, which he unveiled earlier this month, Newsom identified homelessness as the state’s top issue and proposed $700 million in new homeless aid and $500 million to convert malls and office buildings into housing. Those proposals would build on billions in housing and homelessness funding that Newsom approved in last year’s budget.

Cities, meanwhile, are saying they need even more funding to meet the demand for housing. In a statement, League of California Cities CEO Carolyn Coleman applauded Newsom’s proposal to provide funds to convert commercial space into housing, but said cities need another $500 million to “help finance housing production, incentivize development, and achieve real progress toward housing production goals.”

Newsom’s proposal would need approval from the Legislature to become law. The state Constitution requires the governor and lawmakers to enact a budget before July 1, when California’s next fiscal year begins.

“I’m so excited about the next few years,” Newsom said. “We’re just winding up, and we mean business… what we put together in the last few years is starting to pay dividends.”