Expedited California Environmental Quality Act review processes may indeed quicken the realization of the existing Google downtown project should it be approved. And I wouldn’t be surprised if that legislation was rushed through by the numerous recipients of Google lobbying money in Sacramento as a special favor–a cutout–to the tech giant. But to suggest that Senate Bill 7 will, in and of itself, unleash a housing construction wave across the valley or elsewhere in the state is to delude oneself and to gaslight everyone else.

Spatial limits on development and open space regulations–which are good things from an environmental and urban planning point of view–are combined with a long history of overwhelmingly detached, single-family suburban housing development model. This means the only way forward is up, i.e. intensified densification of housing and of land use. Should the Google project be approved, it will entail dense housing, as it should but, in the larger picture, will not have any appreciable positive impact on housing supply or affordability.

Significant quantities of affordable housing supply will not come through reduced taxes, fees and regulations for private housing developers. If that were the case, then the hundreds of millions in reduced fees and taxes and the many affordable housing exemptions gifted to developers by Liccardo’s councils and its predecessors over the decades would have prevented the persistent housing shortages we have faced (see my comments under https://sanjosespotlight.com/san-jose-city-council-commercial-linkage-fee-gaining-favor-ahead-of-vote/). The key ingredient to resolving the housing crisis is publicly-produced housing built on public lands and managed by the public sector in the public interest. This is the only effective, cost-efficient and sufficiently-scaled solution to the housing shortage we have been facing for decades (see https://www.sanjoseinside.com/news/scc-supes-set-to-approve-350m-in-bonds-for-affordable-housing/#comment-1701435). No amount of wishful thinking on the part of Newsom, Liccardo or Atkins regarding market-based solutions will change this basic reality.