Newsom says the future of state housing is at stake in UC ruling



Gov. Gavin Newsom is asking California’s highest court to resurrect UC Berkeley’s controversial plan to build student housing at People’s Park, a storied green space born in 1960s student activism.

The state’s legal challenge claims that if the ruling stands, the case will create another avenue for opponents to use the California Environmental Quality Act to block sorely needed housing, exacerbating homelessness and the state’s current shortfall of roughly 3.5 million homes.

“It is not difficult to imagine, for example, existing residents citing this case in opposing low- and moderate-income housing, or developments likely to attract young-adult residents or families with children, or designed to support the integration of individuals with disabilities into the community,” Newsom’s filing said.

In February, a state appellate court ruled that the University of California failed to study how much noise the proposed $312 million student dorm would make on the 2.8-acre site.

Without that information in the project’s environmental impact reports — or a justification for why UC Berkeley could not meet self-prescribed, non-binding housing goals without demolishing the park — the judges declared that the university violated state environmental law.

Consequently, the plan to develop roughly 1,100 student beds and 125 units for currently unhoused residents just three blocks south of campus off Telegraph Avenue remains in limbo.

Siding with similar petitions from the UC Regents and the city of Berkeley, attorneys from Attorney General Rob Bonta’s office representing Newsom asked this week that the state Supreme Court reconsider the previous opinion from the First District Court of Appeals in San Francisco, according to documents.

“The courts have an important role in ensuring that CEQA is not warped to serve purposes that the legislature never intended,” Newsom’s attorneys said in a Wednesday court filing. “While the statute’s scope is broad, its text has long made clear that existing residents do not have a superior or exclusive entitlement to the benefits of residing in a particular community.”

The Supreme Court of California has not officially decided to hear the case, and the timeline of that verdict remains murky.



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