How California is solving housing: Pass a Law, Draw a Polygon, Deny the Project

California loves crating housing legislation. Seems like every month there is a new and improved Senate bills, Assembly bills, executive orders, new housing elements, density bonuses, ministerial approvals, RHNA allocations, CEQA exemptions and enough acronyms to build a small subdivision out of alphabet blocks.

Then a homeowner enters an address into a government eligibility map.

The property is in the correct residential zone. The lot is large enough. There is an existing home on one side and unused land on the other. Utilities and access appear feasible. The owner imagines creating another homesite, building a house and using the proceeds to pay down the mortgage or help the family.

Not so fast. Parcel Intersects an Environmental Constraint, says thegovernment map.

What constraint? Somewhere, somehow, the parcel has offended a polygon.

Welcome to REAL California housing reform.

Environmentally Sensitive Horse Ranch

What started this deep dive into the government maze of making our housing better and our life easier was a large residential parcel in Rancho Santa Fe that I was analyzing for SB9 eligibility. It appeared to satisfy three of the four principal factors shown on San Diego County’s SB 9 map.

The fourth screen indicated that the parcel intersects “an environmental constraint”. That sounds serious—until you look at the property.

The site was previously used as a horse ranch, so most of the land has already been disturbed by years of equestrian activity. There is little meaningful vegetation across substantial portions of the site. Much of the surface consists of compacted decomposed granite. A larger parcel next door presents a similar danger to fragile California environment. It is also a former horse property and already contains a single-family residence, but it apparently offends some vague environmental constraint.

Meanwhile, all properties on the west side of this same road do not appear to suffer from the same ecological condition. Somewhere inside California’s magnificent collection of overlapping maps, databases and habitat layers, you can clearly make three steps and end up in a different environmental preserve without realizing you are entering a sensitive area.

Apparently, California’s protected species can understand assessor parcel boundaries. A habitat can travel through Rancho Santa Fe, arrive at the edge of a parcel, consult the assessor’s map and stop before crossing the road.

The problem is not that environmental resources should be ignored. Wetlands, protected species, floodways and conservation lands are legitimate considerations.

The problem is that the phrase “intersects an environmental constraint” tells the homeowner pretty much nothing.

It does not explain:

• What resource allegedly exists.
• Where it is located.
• Whether it occupies five square feet or five acres.
• Whether it was identified through field observation or database mapping.
• When the information was collected.
• Whether the resource still exists.
• Whether the proposed homesite could avoid it.
• Whether mitigation is available.
• Whether the condition legally disqualifies SB 9 or merely requires investigation.

A screening map should be a useful warning tool, but it should not function as a verdict.

But that distinction becomes academic when challenging the map requires a surveyor, civil engineer, biologist, land-use consultant and possibly an attorney. And while the property owner must spend tens of thousands of dollars merely to determine why the government’s computer displayed a warning; the county now has a 100% bullet proof reason to deny your SB9 application or turn it into a discretionary approval process that can take years instead of streamlined 2-3 months.

Technically, the government did not reject the project. It merely put the burden on the homeowner to discover whether the project should be allowed at your own dime.

“By Right”—Subject to Everything on the Left

SB 9 was presented as a major opening of California’s single-family neighborhoods because it supposedly provide a way for a property traditionally used for one single-family home to accommodate additional housing. The Bill allowed an eligible parcel to be divided into two approximately equal parcels and additionally allowed up to two housing units on each resulting parcel.

The idea was great and simple, and it required ministerial processing instead of years of discretionary tortures. But if you got too excited, don’t be: there is a fine print, so pull out your glasses.

The property must satisfy zoning and geographic requirements. It cannot conflict with specified tenant protections or historic-resource restrictions. It must avoid or address a lengthy list of environmental conditions incorporated from Government Code §65913.4, including wetlands, certain farmland, hazardous-waste sites, flood areas, conservation lands, protected-species habitat and conservation easements.

For an unincorporated property, the entire legal parcel must be located within a Census-designated urbanized area or urban cluster. Not merely the proposed building pad. Not 95% of the property. The legal parcel must be wholly within the boundary. California Government Code §66411.7

A boundary created for federal statistical purposes can therefore decide whether California housing law exists on one side of a property and disappears on the other.

The statute now requires a completed SB9 application to be approved or denied within 60 days. If denied, the agency must return written comments identifying defects and explaining how the application can be corrected. That is progress—but it only helps after an owner has assembled and submitted a complete application. California Government Code §66411.7

The expensive uncertainty occurs earlier: determining whether it is rational to prepare the application at all.

California has created a streamlined approval process at the end of a costly eligibility maze.

The Fire Map That Ate San Diego

Then we arrive at the Very High Fire Hazard Severity Zone.

Wildfire risk is real. San Diego County has experienced destructive fires, difficult evacuations and communities with limited access. Nobody is suggesting that California place families in combustible houses surrounded by unmanaged brush with one narrow road and a garden hose for fire protection.

But look at how fire mapping operates in practice.

Enormous developed portions and entire neighborhoods of San Diego County appear within hazard classifications. Even water reservoirs may appear completely inside No-Go colored areas. On properties we have examined, two identical parcels next to each other with similar topography, vegetation and access can fall into opposing categories. The whole map looks like checker board sometimes only proving again that the fire can be very smart and very selective when it comes to APN boundaries.

The governing statute is more nuanced than an absolute prohibition. Government Code §65913.4 identifies Very High Fire Hazard Severity Zones and State Responsibility Areas as constraints, but it also recognizes an exception where applicable fire-mitigation measures have been adopted. Those measures can include defensible-space requirements, fire-access standards and Chapter 7A construction. California Government Code §65913.4

That raises an obvious question: If a proposed home can be built with fire-resistant siding and roofing, protected vents, tempered glazing, sprinklers, compliant emergency access, adequate water supply and defensible space (pretty much all standard requirements when building houses in Southern California anyway), why should a generalized map drawn by a mad state employee with a choice of only two crayons, blue and blue, prevent the project from receiving a site-specific common sense evaluation?

If the high fire severity zones are so real, why does California allows people to occupy older homes in these communities, homes constructed long before modern wildfire codes? Shouldn’t these homeowners be required to evacuate if the state feels that it’s unsafe to build a new house right next to it that’s compliant with all latest building codes and fire protection features?

That is not a rational distinction between safe and unsafe housing. It is the replacement of judgment with an artificial overlay that’s only there to prohibit. A hazard map should begin the analysis, not end it.

The VMT Time Machine

As if fire and environmental overlays are not enough to stop a development project, California has another remarkably effective growth-killer mechanism: Vehicle Miles Traveled – VMT.

VMT began with a reasonable concept. Development located far from employment, transit and services may produce more driving, and hence more emissions. Under SB743, California shifted transportation analysis under CEQA away from traditional intersection congestion and toward the number of vehicle miles generated by a project.

Then California performed its favorite regulatory magic trick: it converted a regional planning model into a parcel-level development verdict.

San Diego County’s January 2026 Transportation Study Guidelines still display screening maps based on SANDAG’s ABM2+ travel model with a 2016 base year, ten year old map! SANDAG now has ABM3, with a 2022 base year but when it comes to VMT, we are still using 2016 maps.  

Think about how people lived and worked in 2016. Zoom was primarily something a camera did. Remote work was an occasional privilege. Hybrid employment was not a normal operating model.

Then COVID happened. Office attendance changed. State and county employees worked from home, including those responsible for this blue crayon mania. Private companies reduced office footprints resulting in ongoing sharp pain in office real estate world even today. Medical appointments moved online. Shopping and delivery patterns changed.

Even SANDAG has acknowledged that its older model treated 2020 as though it were a normal, non-COVID year, overestimated VMT and required adjustments. Nevertheless, the County’s published screening system continues relying on maps built from the older framework.

A future homeowner in Ramona or Alpine might work remotely all or part of the week. Another might own a home-based business. A third might be retired. Their vehicles may be electric. Their actual travel behavior may have little to do with the 2016 patterns established by SANDAG.

But the screening map doesn’t care, it doesn’t interview these homeowners. Instead, it identifies the project’s Traffic Analysis Zone, applies modeled regional behavior and assigns the area a VMT category.

The County technically allows an applicant to present more refined parcel-level analysis, Big Data or alternative methodologies, how generous… But do it at your own risk, and expect to be told “No”

In the end, the government gets to use yesterday’s obsolete assumptions for free while the property owner must spend thousands on transportation consultants to justify today’s reality.

But Aren’t the Cars Becoming Electric?

To be fair, VMT is intentionally broader than tailpipe emissions. California officials argue that vehicle miles also represent road demand, energy use, collision exposure, infrastructure requirements and development patterns. An electric vehicle still takes up road space, a legit claim.

But it also creates a typical California contradiction. The State is spending enormous political and financial capital encouraging zero-emission vehicles, yet its land-use system continues treating the simple act of independent driving itself as a major environmental impact regardless of the vehicle’s emissions.

Imagine California in 2035 (that’s when Newsome promised all Californians will drive only EVs): every new house has solar panels, every family has electric vehicles, every employee works from home three days a week. And yet, suburban subdivisions are still declared environmentally destructive because a 2016 model believes its residents commute to an office 50 miles away in gasoline-powered cars five days a week.

California is quick to adopt rules that prohibit something, but it is very slow (if ever) to admit that these rules needs updating or eliminating all together.

The Big Three Veto Governments

The housing debate is often presented as a simple dilemma: Sacramento politicians really want housing and they get elected with those promises during campaign time, but it’s those pesky cities and counties that resist the change.

That explanation is convenient and incomplete. The deeper conflict exists inside government itself. A planning department may want additional housing, Land use department wants to grant you exemptions because they are logical, a building department wants to issue permits and collect fees for the county, even elected supervisors may publicly support housing development in general.

But a project must also survive Big Three powerful regulatory circles of hell:

1. Fire
2. Environmental resources
3. Stormwater

These three departments are not primarily evaluated by how many homes are delivered, so they could care less if we don’t build a single house in California for the next 100 years! Their underlying focus is the opposite, for them the new houses are a nuisance, the new houses are danger to what these departments are out there to protect!

The fire official is not rewarded when 20 families receive houses, instead he wants to make sure that his access or fire-protection decision today doesn’t become controversial tomorrow.

The environmental reviewer receives little to no institutional benefit from supporting a development on a disturbed horse ranch or previous working nursery. The reviewer only cares about potential professional and political risks if someone later alleges that habitat or some fairy shrimp or non-native grass was overlooked or disturbed. Sierra Club is a real threat that makes new homeowners irrelevant.

The stormwater regulator is not judged by whether the subdivision is economically viable. The regulator is judged by whether runoff requirements were imposed, reports were filed, inspections were completed and potential pollutants were put out of business. So, while 90% of contaminated water gets into the system from existing homes built over the last decades with no stormwater requirements, the new homes are supposed to solve all stormwater problems once and for all.  

The incentives are structurally asymmetric. Approving a project creates identifiable risk for the regulators. Denying it creates an invisible cost to the public. Nobody is going to publish a photo of a  the family that never received a home, the construction worker that didn’t get hired or another housing project abandoned before an application was even filed.

When even a small uncertainty risks exists, the administratively safest response is a logical fallback: require another study, impose another condition or decline the project all together. We don’t need to allege that regulators have a secret agenda of stopping  housing, the system does not require a conspiracy, just take away any incentives to prove otherwise. Each department can rationally pursue its own narrow mandate while the combined efforts create a framework that irrationally discourages housing.

Stormwater: The Government Inside the Government

Stormwater regulation provides the clearest example of this bureaucratic haven.

County stormwater employees generally work inside or for the County, but the vertical obligations they enforce originate outside of the local planning department. The federal Clean Water Act establishes the NPDES framework. California administers that program through the State Water Resources Control Board and Regional Water Quality Control Boards. The San Diego Regional Water Board issues the regional MS4 permit covering the County and participating municipalities.

The County and cities must control stormwater and non-stormwater discharges from the municipal storm-drain system. They then impose development and enforcement requirements on projects and property owners.

The Regional Water Board can penalize municipalities—including the County—for violations, and stormwater department inspectors are very eager to penalize, including actions against local cities, public agencies and private developers. The regulatory pressure travels downhill: EPA and State Water Boards to Regional Water Board to County or city to developer and ultimately to the homeowner.

Responsibility chains travels uphill whenever someone asks why housing is so expensive. Everyone was merely complying with somebody else’s requirement.

This explains why County planning folks privately complained to me that the stormwater conditions are excessive and impossible to modify. A planner sees a housing project. The stormwater reviewer sees the County’s exposure that needs to be prevented.

The planning department negotiates. The stormwater department documents. The difference is institutional power.

Relevance Through Regulation

It would be difficult to prove that agencies consciously create more and more restrictions to preserve their jobs. The institutional incentive is more subtle and more durable.

A government department typically demonstrates its importance by identifying and managing issues within its jurisdiction. More identified risks support more mapping, staff, consultants, inspections, reporting and compliance programs, and ultimately more budget allocations.

Regulations operate like a ratchet. A new rule is adopted after a fire, lawsuit, enforcement action, audit or political controversy. The additional requirement becomes permanent. Old requirements rarely disappear when technology, construction practices or behavior changes.

Fire maps is not going to shrink because an agency voluntarily determined that Chapter 7A construction has reduced risk. Habitat maps seldom change even after decades of commercial use changed previously undisturbed land and it’s now a compacted horse ranch. Stormwater manuals rarely become shorter because science and experience again and again that there are simpler ways to provide substantially the same protection. And VMT maps do not automatically expire when commuters’ behavior changes.

No department wants its annual report to say: “We reviewed the evidence, concluded that several risks had been overstated, eliminated unnecessary restrictions and reduced our involvement.” Administrative organizations rarely seek irrelevance. They seek jurisdiction, budget and protection from blame.

Nobody Owns the Cumulative Result

Every department can defend its individual requirement. Fire officials defend fire protection and safety. Biologists defend habitats of fairy shrimp and sage grass. Water-quality officials defend stormwater impact of dolphins and turtles. Transportation planners defend traffic impact on environment. Each may sound reasonable when examined alone.

Housing feasibility, however, is not destroyed one condition at a time, it’s destroyed cumulatively.

A project may survive one expensive requirement, or two. By the time you pay for biological studies, fire improvements, stormwater facilities, VMT mitigation, utility extensions, civil engineering, consultants, redesigns and administrative review, the housing may remain technically approvable but no longer financeable.

Government then records the result as a private-market failure to cooperate with the state’s noble goal of providing affordable housing to the citizens. The greedy developers “chose not to proceed, too expensive to comply.” The profit-hungry investors “would not back the project, too much regulatory risks.” And ultimately, the homes “did not pencil”, even though we issued dozens of new bills and regulations to build more housing.

It’s convenient! Nobody denied the housing. Government merely required the project to comply with every public-policy objective accumulated over several decades of bureaucratic creativity until it collapsed under the cumulative weight.

This is California’s most effective method of housing prohibition because it produces no single decision to appeal, there is no final denial letter, no accountable agency. There is simply a project that quietly disappears.

A Constructive Reform Agenda

So, where do we go from here? How do we really solve the housing crisis while protecting grass, birds and dolphins? California does not need to abandon environmental protection, wildfire safety or clean water standards. It needs to stop using generalized unrealistic models and outdated or overlapping maps as substitutes for current, parcel-specific data.

Here is my wishful thinking, the list of reforms that could help us protect legitimate public interests while making housing laws actually meaningful, not just a political campaign.

1. Shift the burden of proof to the government

If a parcel appears to satisfy the objective requirements of a ministerial housing law, it should be presumed eligible. The homeowner should not have to prove the absence of every conceivable environmental or safety condition.

If an agency wants to deny eligibility, the agency should bear the burden of identifying a reasonable, verifiable and parcel-specific factual basis. “Intersects an environmental constraint” is not enough.

The denial should identify:

• The exact statutory exclusion.
• The affected resource or hazard.
• Its physical location on the parcel.
• The source and date of the supporting information.
• Whether the condition was field-verified.
• Why avoidance or mitigation is infeasible.
• What corrective action, if any, would make the project eligible.

2. Require a binding decision within 30–45 days

A homeowner should be able to request a preliminary statutory eligibility determination before spending heavily on complete engineering and architectural plans. The responsible agency should have 30 days for an ordinary parcel and no more than 45 days when interdepartmental review is genuinely required.

If the agency fails to provide a factually supported decision within that period, the parcel should be deemed eligible to proceed under the applicable housing statute, subject to normal building and safety codes.

Not nine months. Not after three consultant studies. Not after the financing window closes. Thirty to 45 days max!

3. Make every constraint transparent

Every map warning should disclose the underlying data layer. Clicking an environmental flag should show the alleged wetland, habitat, flood area, fire zone or conservation resource. The public should be able to see:

• Who created the layer.
• When it was last updated.
• Its intended scale and accuracy.
• Whether it is advisory or legally controlling.
• The administrative process for challenging it.

A mysterious polygon is not due process.

4. Give government maps expiration dates

Fire, habitat, transportation and environmental maps should not live forever. Every regulatory map should have a mandatory review date. If the underlying information has not been validated within a defined period, it should lose its presumption of accuracy. Today’s decisions must require up to date evidence.

5. Allow development around limited constraints

A minor overlap should not disqualify an entire parcel. If a protected resource occupies one portion of a property, development should be permitted on the unaffected portion when objective setbacks and mitigation measures can protect the resource.  The word “intersects” should trigger design coordination, not automatic project mortality.

6. Establish fire-mitigation safe harbors

A project complying with objective fire-access, water-supply, defensible-space and current fire safety building standards should be presumed safe for purposes of housing eligibility overriding the fire rating of the area before housing was built. The project should be judged based on what will be rather than what it was.

An agency seeking denial should have to identify a site-specific, unmitigable public-safety impact. Broad reference to a regional map in general should not be sufficient for denial.

7. Modernize VMT analysis automatically

Short of eliminating VMT all together like a bad dream, VMT review process should be drastically changed, starting from screening maps using the most recently validated travel model.  Remote work, hybrid employment, home-based businesses and current travel behavior must be incorporated and it should not take 10 years to get done. Builder should not have to spend fortunes on expensive studies to prove that people no longer live exactly as they did in 2016.

8. Require a cumulative housing-feasibility review

Every department should answer three questions before imposing a development condition:

• Is the condition based on a verified, parcel-specific impact?
• Is there a less expensive means of achieving substantially the same protection?
• What effect will the condition have on housing cost and feasibility?

When combined agency requirements exceed a defined percentage of project cost or land value, an independent housing official should coordinate the departments and select workable alternatives.

Today, every regulatory objective has an empowered advocate and a staff attorney. Housing has a useless press release.

9. Publish net—not theoretical—housing capacity

Every new housing bill should include an honest parcel-level analysis:

• Parcels initially covered.
• Parcels removed by urban-boundary requirements.
• Parcels removed by fire classifications.
• Parcels intersecting environmental constraints.
• Parcels affected by VMT.
• Parcels removed by overlapping exclusions.
• Parcels remaining physically and economically feasible.
• Applications submitted.
• Applications approved.
• Building permits issued.
• Certificates of occupancy completed.

Potential units are not homes. A unit should not count until someone can reasonably build it.

The Real Test

California’s housing agencies ask homeowners and developers to prove nearly everything: prove that the parcel is eligible, that the habitat is absent, that the fire risk is non-existent or can be mitigated, that the residents will not drive too far or that the runoff will not harm the watershed.

It is time for government to prove something too: prove that the denial is based on actual current facts. Prove that the impact is parcel-specific. Prove that no reasonable mitigation exists. And prove it fast, within 30 to 45 days.

And mainly, the government should prove that, after all the departments finish protecting their individual interests, California’s housing laws still apply so that people can actually build. California does not have a shortage of housing bills and no shortage of buildable parcels, we just have no system that allows them to survive contact with the agencies whose livelihood depends on killing housing rather than helping it flourish.

Until that changes, Sacramento will continue producing thousands of pages of housing reform, politicians will continue to report how much they have done to promote housing in the state, homeowners will continue being squeezed out of state to the areas where they can afford to buy, and builders will continue abandoning projects that look legally possible but financially impossible.

But at least another housing press release didn’t take 6 months to write and was approved ministerially.

Alex Lisnevsky