Have you ever wondered what your California electeds, State Senator Jesse Arreguin and State Assemblymember Buffy Wicks, [yes, that’s her real name] are up to in Sacto? Well, luckily, both of them are well funded by developer dollars, so they boast a generous PR budget which can be used to inform the voters..
Last week Buffy’s PR person put out a lengthy document which fully disclosed her plans to de-fang almost all of California’s development regulations, including the California Environmental Quality Act and the California Coastal Commission. It’s an attack plan that Co-President Musk would be proud of.
Here’s the pitch, from her staff’s press release::
“California Legislature Releases Sweeping Bill Package to Fast Track Housing Production
Thursday, March 27, 2025
SACRAMENTO – In a unified effort to tackle California’s housing crisis, a bipartisan and bicameral group of legislators today unveiled the Fast Track Housing package — a suite of more than 20 bills aimed at making housing more affordable by slashing red tape, removing uncertainty, and drastically diminishing the time it takes to get new housing approved and built.
And the ‘nut graf’::
… {L]awmakers are zeroing in on the systemic delays that continue to stall progress on housing development. The Fast Track Housing package focuses on streamlining the processes that have made it so difficult to build housing at the scale and speed California needs.
The package targets the five key bottlenecks that delay housing development: application, CEQA compliance, entitlement, post-entitlement, and enforcement. By addressing inefficiencies at every step, lawmakers aim to reduce project timelines, cut costs, and get shovels in the ground faster.
The package also introduces significant reforms to the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA), aiming to exempt environmentally friendly housing projects from lengthy reviews. This move, backed by environmental and housing advocates alike, is central to Assemblymember Wicks’ AB 609.
No surprise, this scheme has gotten a lot of Republican support, and why shouldn’t it? It’s a veritable Neo-Liberal manifesto, YIMBY-speak to the core. And because you can’t tell the players without a scorecard, the press release provides a handy list of all its supporters, not just Buff and Jess but the whole bipartisan bicameral gang of legislators. Some data-driven journalism student should now plot the correlation between developer campaign contributions and this packet’s sponsors.
By now there’s a host of academic studies pointing out that building lots of market rate housing does nothing for those who need affordable housing: people like families, mobility challenged people, old folks, the working poor and other under-served groups. Trickle-down just doesn’t work to provide affordable housing, pure and simple.
Tim Redmond on San Francisco’s excellent 48hills.org spotlighted a typical analysis, a new study of housing pricing from the Federal Reserve Bank:
“New study by Fed economists directly contradicts Yimby narrative on housing prices
The study, also connected to the National Bureau of Economic Research, directly contradicts the fundamental economic thesis that has driven housing policy in the state for years: that development constraints have created high housing prices.”
Redmond’s article provides a good short summary of the lengthy NBER report, which would be worth a full read if you’re able to understand economicese.
The Mission Local site provides a good review of where all this is going by Joe Rivanno Barros:
‘Abundance,’ darling agenda of centrist Democrats, comes home to San Francisco
The piece is a comprehensive report on a City Arts and Lectures appearance last week by columnist Ezra Klein and his collaborator Derek Thompson, discussing with Michael Pollan the trendy cult’s origin story, a new book called, like the movement’s founding principle, “Abundance”:
“Michael Pollan wasted no time cutting to the heart of the matter: The top-selling recently released book “Abundance,” a 288-page manifesto on creating a “liberalism that builds,” may no longer be relevant.
“It’s almost like a sick parody of your book,” Pollan said of President Trump’s actions in D.C. — cutting a trail through the federal bureaucracy, firing tens of thousands of workers, cancelling the kinds of research grants the book seeks to reform.
“Abundance,” by journalists Ezra Klein and Derek Thompson, critiques inefficient bureaucracy and seeks a deregulatory scalpel; Trump and his pit bull Elon Musk have opted for a red-and-chrome chainsaw.”
My own longtime observation of and participation in leftish politics tends to see two camps of progressives. One can roughly be described as “you need more and I’ll help you get it”. The other can be rephrased as “I want more for me and I’ll do anything to get it.” That’s the Abundance doctrine espoused by Scott Weiner, Buffy Wicks and Jesse Arreguin as well as authors Ezra Klein and Derek Thompson,.
The Internet is currently rife with reviews of the book by that name and others which preach the gospel of abundance, a clickable list of sources which taken together provide a good picture of the theory behind Buffy Wick’s package of proposals. The many deregulation proposals are no surprise coming from Republicans, but Democrats should think twice before jumping on the abundance bandwagon. The law of unintended consequences could lead to irreparable environmental damage and further wealth disparity.
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