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.
In the meantime, Newsom also argued that the appeals court did not adequately answer the question of whether infill developments that add new residents to an already densely populated area present a CEQA violation or are simply “natural consequences of urban life.”
Additionally, he said that concerns about noise from additional students should not be considered, because existing city noise ordinances near People’s Park should be able to mitigate unruly parties and students to comply with CEQA’s standards. While the court ruled that those controls are futile because of insufficient enforcement, Newsom said the judges failed to prove neighbors’ claims of excessive noise — potentially allowing people to use “personal observations” as evidence in CEQA lawsuits.
Berkeley City Attorney Farimah Brown shared many of these same concerns in an April 20 petition to the courts.
She said the decision to reject the project based on concerns of noisy student parties is misguided, given that the purpose of the project is to alleviate overcrowding in student housing and reduce the need for students to live off-campus in Berkeley’s residential neighborhoods.
If CEQA is ruled to require that public agencies mitigate impacts of “perceived social traits” of future residents, she said, it will threaten the city’s ability to approve projects intended to help house people who have historically been excluded from the community — including affordable housing projects, group homes, senior facilities, rehab facilities and more.
“In addition to being inconsistent with the purpose of CEQA, the court of appeal’s decision also appears to mistake the remedy for the cause of the neighborhood impacts alleged in the case,” Brown wrote in the city’s petition.
While UC Berkeley requested that the state’s highest court intervene promptly after the February appellate court ruling, spokesperson Dan Mogulof said the university is grateful for the support from state and local officials.
“It’s another indication of the extent to which the court ruling, if not overturned, could hinder colleges and universities’ ability to provide students the housing they deserve,” Mogulof said in a call. “If the decision stands, it will also hinder housing for communities across the state, empower the powerful and facilitate the objectives of NIMBYs.”
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