Landmark California environmental laws will be suspended for wildfire victims seeking to rebuild their homes and businesses, according to an executive order signed Sunday by Gov. Gavin Newsom.

Requirements for building permits and reviews in the California Environmental Quality Act and the California Coastal Act — often considered onerous by developers — will be eased for victims of the fires in Pacific Palisades, Altadena and other communities, according to the order.

“California leads the nation in environmental stewardship. I’m not going to give that up,” Newsom told Jacob Soboroff on NBC’s “Meet the Press.” “But one thing I won’t give into is delay. Delay is denial for people: lives, traditions, places torn apart, torn asunder.”

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Dan Dunmoyer, president and chief executive of the California Building Industry Assn., said the governor’s action represents an early and strong statement about the future of these areas. Newsom is making clear, Dunmoyer said, that the state will encourage homeowners to go back to their neighborhoods rather than deem development there too risky.

“He’s put a marker down to say we’re going to rebuild these communities,” Dunmoyer said.

Waivers of the environmental quality act, known as CEQA, and the Coastal Act could shave years off the process for homeowners in the Palisades, he said, but building permits issued by local governments represent another major hurdle.

“Those two banner ones are important,” Dunmoyer said, referring to the state laws, “but if the locals don’t come up with an expedited process, that’s where it could get stuck.”

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Newsom’s order calls for the state housing department to work with affected cities and the county to develop new permitting rules that would allow for all approvals to be issued within 30 days.

In the wake of the fires, housing analysts have renewed calls for the city of Los Angeles to speed up its processes. A 2023 study found that the average unit in a multifamily property in the city took five years to complete, with a substantial portion of that time related to bureaucratic approval.

Mayor Karen Bass has acknowledged the problems and pledged that the city will accelerate permitting.

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“We are going to clear the red tape and unnecessary delays and costs and headaches that people experience in ordinary times so that we can rebuild your homes quickly,” Bass said at a news conference Thursday.

Bass reiterated the promise at a news conference Sunday morning, applauding the governor’s action, and said she plans to release details on the effort this week. L.A. County Board of Supervisors Chair Kathryn Barger, who represents Altadena, similarly lauded the governor’s executive order.

“I want to thank the governor for hearing my request and taking swift action to ensure that our residents will not be burdened by unnecessary requirements as they begin the process of recovery and rebuilding,” said Barger, a Republican.

However, many GOP members across the state said Newsom’s order was too little, too late.

“Wildfire victims deserve much more from Gavin Newsom. When his track record includes lying about and underfunding wildfire prevention efforts, he owes Angelenos answers on how he and local Democrat leaders could have been so unprepared for these devastating wildfires,” said California Republican Party Chairwoman Jessica Millan Patterson. “No more blame game and excuses. We need accountability from this governor, and we need it now.”

Environmentalists also noted that the governor’s executive order restates an existing provision in the Coastal Act that provides exemptions for fire rebuilds.

The California Coastal Commission, which is tasked with coordinating with local officials in enforcing the Coastal Act, noted last week that the state law already clearly lays out that reconstruction of homes, businesses and most other structures destroyed by a disaster are exempt from typical coastal development permits — as long as the new building is sited in the same location and not more than 10% larger or taller than the destroyed structure.

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In the 2018 Woolsey fire, which devastated areas in and around Malibu, the commission coordinated with city and county officials to help homeowners rebuild. Coastal officials also noted that over the years, following other devastating natural disasters, the commission has processed hundreds of “disaster rebuild waivers” in other coastal areas that are directly regulated by the commission.

“When the time comes to rebuild, both the Coastal Act and the Governor’s Executive Order provide a clear pathway for replacing lost structures quickly and easily,” Kate Huckelbridge, the commission’s executive director, said in a statement. “Our hearts go out to all the residents of the L.A. area whose homes and communities have been destroyed by these horrific fires.”

President-elect Donald Trump and other conservatives have castigated Newsom and other Democratic leaders in California for embracing environmental policies that they argue laid the groundwork for this month’s historic destruction. Calling Newsom “incompetent,” Trump said he should resign, and made false statements about water being redirected to protect small fish and about Federal Emergency Management Agency policy.

“The fires are still raging in L.A. The incompetent pols have no idea how to put them out,” Trump wrote Saturday night on Truth Social, his social media platform. “Thousands of magnificent houses are gone, and many more will soon be lost. There is death all over the place. This is one of the worst catastrophes in the history of our Country. They just can’t put out the fires. What’s wrong with them?”

Trump’s transition team did not respond to requests for comment on Saturday.

Newsom, during the NBC interview, said he had asked the incoming president to come view the devastation in person, as Barger did Saturday.

“We want to do it in the spirit of an open hand, not a closed fist. He’s the president-elect,” Newsom said. “I respect the office.”

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While noting that many of the buildings that survived the fires were more likely to be built under modern building codes, Newsom said he was worried about the amount of time it would take to rebuild. So his executive order eliminates some CEQA requirements, modifies Coastal Act provisions and ensures property tax assessments are not increased for those who rebuild.

CEQA was signed into law by then-Gov. Ronald Reagan in 1970 amid the burgeoning environmental movement. The Coastal Act was created after a landmark voter proposition in 1972 that was led by a fervent statewide effort to save the coast from unchecked development and devastating oil spills like the 1969 disaster in Santa Barbara that was considered the “environmental shot heard round the world.”

Both have faced challenges for decades, and governors of both parties have argued for more than 40 years that CEQA needs to be reformed. Several of the act’s requirements were temporarily suspended by an executive order issued by Newsom during the pandemic. He argues that now is the time again.

Asked on the news program whether this month’s wildfires are the worst natural disaster in the nation’s history, Newsom noted that recent fires had resulted in a greater loss of life but said, “I think it will be in terms of just the costs associated with it in terms of the scale and scope.”

He called for a California version of the Marshall Plan, the American effort to rebuild Western Europe after World War II.

“We already have a team looking at reimagining L.A. 2.0,” he said, “and we are making sure everyone’s included, not just the folks on the coast, people here that were ravaged by this disaster.”

California is overhauling its landmark environmental protection rules, a change state leaders say is essential to address the state’s housing shortage and homelessness crisis.

California’s governor, Gavin Newsom, had threatened to reject the state budget passed last Friday unless lawmakers overhauled the California Environmental Quality Act, or Ceqa, a 1970s law that requires strict examination of any new development for its impact on the environment.

The governor and housing advocates say that Ceqa, although well-intentioned at the time, put up bureaucratic roadblocks that have made it increasingly difficult to build housing in the most populous state in the US.

Lawmakers passed the transformative measure despite opposition from environmental groups. Newsom called it a step toward solving the state’s housing affordability problem.

“This was too urgent, too important, to allow the process to unfold as it has for the last generation,” he told reporters at a news conference after signing the bill.

The new rules were passed in two so-called “budget trailer” bills. Under the new rules, large swaths of “infill housing”, or homes built in and around existing development, will be exempt from Ceqa reviews. There will be some exceptions, including for very large projects and construction in very low-density areas, but most homes and apartments built in cities will no longer be subject to the review.

“This is what we’ve all been waiting for – a long-overdue step to stop Ceqa from being weaponized against housing,” said Assemblymember Buffy Wicks, who sponsored one of the bills. “We’re taking a major step toward building desperately needed homes faster, fairer, and with more certainty.”

The new regulations also include exemptions for hi-tech manufacturing sites, a move proponents say will stimulate growth but critics say will facilitate industrial development in low-income neighborhoods.

The exemptions, and in particular those for manufacturing sites, have been vehemently opposed by some social justice and environmental groups. “Together, these bills undermine the public participation process and the right to protect their community from environmental and health risks,” said the Western Center on Law & Poverty.

“We’re in a nature crisis, we’re seeing unprecedented loss of wildlife, and that’s to be made worse with this bill,” said Laura Deehan with the group Environment California in a committee hearing on Monday.

Earlier this year, Newsom waived some Ceqa rules for victims of wildfires in southern California, creating an opening for the state to re-examine the law that critics say hampers development and drives up building costs.

The state budget passed last week pares back a number of progressive priorities, including a landmark healthcare expansion for low-income adult immigrants without legal status, to close a $12bn deficit.

To get more housing built across the state, California lawmakers and Governor Gavin Newsom passed major changes to the 50-year-old California Environmental Quality Act on Monday. For these years, this law has enabled environmental advocates to delay suburban expansion and empowered local residents and other dissenters to block projects they opposed. It has also become a common tool for critics to challenge nearly all types of development initiatives.

What is a landmark environmental law?

The California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA) is one of the most significant environmental laws of the state. The Act sets up a state policy of sustainability in response to “create and maintain conditions under which man and nature can exist in harmony to fulfil the social and economic requirements of present and future generations.”

CEQA mandates that state and local authorities identify and assess the major environmental effects of proposed developments and implement all practical measures to minimise or eliminate those impacts.

Does Governor Newsom threaten to reject the state budget?

In a rare show of bipartisan agreement, Democratic Governor Gavin Newsom signed two bills that avoid rigorous environmental review requirements for certain housing and infrastructure projects, aiming to remove costly obstacles and speed up development.

Though CEQA has long been considered a pillar of California’s environmental policy, Democrats acknowledged that the state’s strict regulations had contributed to a severe housing crisis affecting its nearly 40 million residents. Environmental groups criticised the move, but lawmakers ultimately prioritised housing needs over procedural protections, marking a shift in the approach to development in California.

“If we can’t address this issue, we’re going to lose trust, and that’s just the truth,” Newsom, a Democrat, said in a news conference, the New York Times reported. “And so this is so much bigger in many ways than the issue itself. It is about the reputation of not just Sacramento and the legislative leadership and executive leadership, but the reputation of the state of California,” he added.

Over the past decades, discussions hovering over changing the law have repeatedly surfaced, thwarted only by opposition from environmentalists and local governments. In addition, Newsom also threatened to reject the state budget until lawmakers rolled back CEQA.

Meanwhile, survey director for the Public Policy Institute of California, Mark Baldassare, said, “This has created a different political environment.” “Voters have been telling us in our polling for quite a while that the cost of housing is a big problem, but maybe for the elected officials, the election itself was a wake-up call,” he added.

On Monday, environmentalists flooded a legislative hearing room, emphasising that the sweeping changes could hurt sensitive ecosystems and ease the process to build manufacturing sites that could result in more pollution. Some Democratic lawmakers also flagged concerns, highlighting that the legislation could pose a threat to the habitat of certain species of butterflies, bears and bighorn sheep. “Jeopardising those whole ecosystems, I think, is a risk that we don’t want to take,” said State Senator Catherine Blakespear, a Democrat.

CEQA lead to unforeseen consequences?

As governor, Republican Ronald Reagan signed the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA) into law in 1970, during a period when his party was more in step with environmental priorities. The act emerged from a shared understanding among state leaders that California’s vast natural landscapes, its forests, coastlines, and mountains, needed protection from increasing smog, water pollution, traffic, and unchecked suburban development.

Over time, however, even some environmental advocates have acknowledged that CEQA, while well-intentioned, led to unforeseen consequences. Originally intended to apply mainly to government-led projects, a 1972 court ruling extended its reach to many private developments as well.

For years, Republicans have criticised CEQA for damaging California’s business environment. So it’s significant that Democrats, under Governor Gavin Newsom’s leadership, have now steered the party away from a law that once reflected core Democratic values.

SACRAMENTO — In a historic move to address California’s persistent housing affordability crisis, Governor Gavin Newsom signed into law the most sweeping reforms to the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA) in over five decades. The legislation, embedded in the 2025–2026 state budget and passed through AB 130 and SB 131, represents a fundamental rethinking of how the state balances environmental review with the urgent need to build homes, infrastructure, and climate-resilient facilities.

“These reforms reflect a new mindset—one that prioritizes delivery over delay,” Newsom said during the signing ceremony in Sacramento. “This isn’t just a budget. This is a budget that builds. It proves what’s possible when we govern with urgency, with clarity, and with a belief in abundance over scarcity.”

At the heart of this legislative shift is the “Abundance Agenda,” a guiding framework for Newsom’s administration that calls for producing more of what Californians need—especially housing—by removing procedural obstacles and empowering local governments with tools to move projects forward. This legislative package, drawing heavily from proposals by Senator Scott Wiener and Assemblymember Buffy Wicks, redefines what can—and must—be done to increase housing supply and affordability.

AB 130 and SB 131 together create ten new CEQA exemptions for a range of projects, including infill housing, child care centers, health clinics, broadband infrastructure, food banks, wildfire mitigation, and clean water systems. These exemptions are designed to accelerate permitting and shield developers from years of costly and uncertain litigation—often driven not by environmental concerns but by groups seeking to block change.

“This is a vote for the biggest CEQA reform in 55 years,” said Wicks. “This has been decades in the making: every governor since Ronald Reagan has attempted this. And now, today, we sit on the precipice of that change. Let’s deliver on this priority.”

Supporters of the reforms argue that CEQA, while vital when enacted in 1970, has become a tool for obstruction in the hands of special interests. From anti-housing homeowner groups to labor organizations seeking leverage on unrelated issues, CEQA lawsuits have been weaponized to delay or block projects that already meet local environmental and zoning requirements. The most affected developments tend to be those focused on infill housing and urban revitalization—projects critical to both climate policy and affordability goals.

Under AB 130, housing developments that meet objective planning standards and are located in already-zoned, non-sensitive areas can bypass CEQA review altogether. “This is what we’ve all been waiting for—a long-overdue step to stop CEQA from being weaponized against housing,” Wicks said. “We’re taking a major step toward building desperately-needed homes faster, fairer, and with more certainty.”

SB 131 goes further, targeting vital infrastructure and community services. Projects exempted under the bill include those involving advanced manufacturing facilities, rural clinics, parks, and wildfire mitigation efforts—areas where the intersection of environmental review and urgent public needs has long produced bottlenecks.

“This is, and I can humbly say this as someone who’s been a student of this and a practitioner of sorts over the past six-plus years, the most consequential housing reform that we have seen in modern history in the state of California,” said Newsom.

Local leaders praised the move. “No longer will CEQA be leveraged to stall critical county wildfire, water, and housing projects,” said Inyo County Supervisor Jeff Griffiths, president of the California State Association of Counties. Riverside Mayor Patricia Lock-Dawson added that “the Transit-Oriented Development Implementation Program in trailer bill AB 130 is a smart, forward-thinking approach that provides the flexibility cities need to meet our climate goals while still allowing for responsible development.”

The reforms are backed by housing advocates, labor groups, and environmental organizations focused on urban sustainability.

“We applaud the governor and the legislature for this breakthrough reform package,” said Matthew O. Franklin, President & CEO of MidPen Housing. “We know that increasing housing supply is key to solving our affordability crisis, and are confident these measures contribute to a future with more affordable, environmentally sustainable housing options for all Californians.”

Yet, the legislation has also drawn fierce opposition from environmental justice advocates, conservation groups, and some tribal communities, who argue the changes were rushed through the budget process with minimal transparency and public input.

“This half-baked policy written behind closed doors will have destructive consequences for environmental justice communities and endangered species across California,” said Jakob Evans, a senior policy strategist with Sierra Club California.

Asha Sharma, State Policy Manager at Leadership Counsel for Justice & Accountability, criticized the process: “The legislature’s back-room budget deal is an attack on lower-income communities of color that consistently get sited for harmful industrial projects. It’s not a question of if, it’s a question of when a public health disaster will occur.”

Other critics argue that while infill exemptions may help streamline development, the broader CEQA rollbacks open the door to projects that could erode hard-won environmental protections. “Exempting a broad swath of development with no consideration of habitat for imperiled species will decimate the state’s natural heritage,” said Frances Tinney, an attorney at the Center for Biological Diversity.

Still, even critics acknowledge California’s dire housing conditions, with median home prices pushing past $900,000 in some regions, and rents consuming more than half of income for many families. The state needs an estimated 2.5 million new homes by 2031, including over one million affordable units, to meet demand.

Senator Aisha Wahab, chair of the Senate Committee on Housing, emphasized that the reform package isn’t just about deregulation—it also brings more than $1.4 billion in new investments for affordable housing, renters, and first-time homebuyers. “With SB 681, and these budget wins, we’re delivering real protections for residents, fighting displacement, and prioritizing affordability,” she said.

To reinforce local accountability, the budget includes $500 million for the Homeless Housing, Assistance and Prevention (HHAP) Program Round 7. Jurisdictions must demonstrate compliance with state housing laws, adopt encampment policies, and meet performance benchmarks to qualify for funding. The state may reallocate funds from underperforming jurisdictions to those producing results.

Additional investments include $100 million for the Encampment Resolution Fund, $81 million for the Home Safe Program (which helps older adults remain housed), and $81 million for Bringing Families Home, which supports families involved in the child welfare system. These funds complement the Governor’s broader homelessness response strategy.

In tandem with these reforms, Newsom announced nearly $103 million in Homekey+ awards to five counties, creating over 315 units of permanent supportive housing for veterans and individuals with behavioral health needs. This is the first round of funding under Proposition 1’s $2.14 billion allocation, with applications continuing to be reviewed on a rolling basis.

These reforms arrive as California’s homelessness growth slows, even as national numbers rise. While homelessness rose over 18% nationally in 2024, California’s overall increase was limited to 3%. The state also recorded the largest reduction in veteran homelessness and made notable progress in reducing youth homelessness.

The legislative momentum is drawing national attention. Urbanists, housing researchers, and YIMBY leaders hailed the CEQA reforms as a game-changer.

“I honestly can barely believe this happened,” wrote Atlantic policy writer Jerusalem Demsas. “Total YIMBY victory in California today. After Newsom signs this bill, CEQA will no longer apply to any infill housing under 85 feet.”

Chris Elmendorf, UC Davis law professor and CEQA scholar, called it “the most impressive case of gubernatorial leadership I have ever seen.”

Nolan Gray, planning director of California YIMBY, added, “The impossible has become possible: we’ve passed a clean CEQA infill exemption. This is probably the most important thing California has done on housing in the present YIMBY moment.”

Corey Smith, Executive Director of the Housing Action Coalition, struck a cautious but hopeful tone: “AB 130 and SB 131 ensure that the state’s environmental review process works better—not just for housing, but for climate action and equity. CEQA’s current framework is too often misused to block exactly the kinds of infill, affordable, and sustainable housing our communities desperately need.”

The road ahead will test whether these reforms yield their promised results. The success of AB 130 and SB 131 will depend not only on implementation by state agencies and local governments but also on whether the state can maintain the political will to defend the reforms against potential litigation and backlash.

Still, many believe the tide has turned.

“We’ve finally moved from diagnosis to action,” said Senator Wiener. “These reforms offer a chance to reclaim our future—and to build a California where more people can afford to stay, thrive, and belong.”

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California Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) signed legislation Monday paring down the state’s landmark environmental review laws in a bid to cut red tape and make housing more accessible.

As part of his 2025-26 budget, the governor gave his stamp of approval to two bills — A.B. 130 and S.B. 131 — his office described as “the most significant overhaul of California’s housing and environmental review laws in decades.”

“Today’s bill is a game changer, which will be felt for generations to come,” Newsom said in a statement.

The two “budget trailer bills” — measures that essentially serve as revisions to the state budget — include a streamlining package that remove certain development barriers, update review procedures for critical housing and infrastructure and create new tools for accelerating production.

Garnering bipartisan support, the legislation involves implementing major reforms to the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA). This pivotal statute, signed into law in 1970 by then-Gov. Ronald Reagan (R), required state and local agencies to disclose the potential environmental effects of all their decisions, including on housing-related initiatives.

“I just enacted the most game-changing housing reforms in recent California history,” Newsom wrote late Monday in a post on the social platform X.

“We’re urgently embracing an abundance agenda by tearing down the barriers that have delayed new affordable housing and infrastructure for decades,” the governor added, calling upon Californians to “get building.”

Among the reforms included in the new bills are measures to speed up housing and infrastructure projects by streamlining their environmental review. Some such projects are infill housing — residences built in unused urban lots, high-speed rail, utilities, broadband — as well as community centers, farmworker housing and wildfire prevention structures.

Although the new rules maintain protections for natural and sensitive lands, they exempt local government rezoning procedures from CEQA requirements.

The legislation also expands the Permit Streamlining Act by restricting certain Coastal Commission housing appeals and accelerating permitting in coastal areas.

Also within the bills are measures to freeze new residential building standards through 2031, with exceptions granted to emergency, fire and conservation-related updates.

Sustainable financing tools, such as a revolving fund to reinvest equity from stabilized affordable housing into new developments, will also be made available through the laws.

The approved actions also entail strengthening oversight of local homeless shelters via annual city and county inspections and authorizing the withholding of state funding if agencies fail to comply.

The legislation also more than doubles the existing Renters Tax Credit by increasing credit to support renters up to $500 for qualified filers.

State Sen. Scott Wiener (D), whose previous bill proposals provided the foundation for much of the new legislation, described the CEQA reforms in a Monday statement as “a bold step forward toward tackling the root causes of California’s affordability crisis.”

He touted the CEQA exemptions for streamlining approvals for housing, child care centers, clean water infrastructure, climate adaptation projects and advanced manufacturing: processes that improve or create entirely new materials and products.

“These bills get red tape and major process hurdles out of the way, allowing us to finally start addressing these shortages and securing an affordable California and a brighter future,” Wiener said.

Despite earning support from both sides of the aisle, the bills have gotten pushback from environmental groups.

A day before the legislation became law, Miguel Miguel, director of Sierra Club California, accused the state Legislature of “using backroom deals to undermine” California’s “bedrock environmental law.”

“Leaders are abusing the budget process to push these anti-environmental policies, slipping language that was formerly in AB 306 and SB 607, two bills that faced massive opposition from environmental groups, into trailer bills to bypass public input and subvert democratic accountability,” Miguel wrote in a last-ditch call for opposition to the bills.

Meanwhile, as late as Monday morning, labor unions were appealing to Newsom and state legislators to reconsider a CEQA exemption on advanced manufacturing included in the bills.

“We know that exempting ‘advanced manufacturing’ industries from CEQA would expose us, our members, and colleagues to grave harm in our workplaces and communities,” the unions wrote in a collective letter.

Among their specific concerns cited was the semiconductor industry’s extensive use of toxic “forever chemicals,” also known as PFAS, in their production processes. Citing previous usages of other contaminants from the 1960 to the 1990s, the writers stressed that pollutants harmed not only workers, but also neighboring communities.

The unions also warned the legislation “would give carte blanche to companies like Tesla to expand without any environmental oversight.”

But other groups celebrated the CEQA reforms as critical to solving California’s looming housing and infrastructure crises.

“No longer will CEQA be leveraged to stall critical county wildfire, water and housing projects,” Jeff Griffiths, president of the California State Association of Counties, said in a statement.

“This legislation will make California more affordable for families by helping to alleviate our housing crisis and, in turn, reducing homelessness,” Griffiths added.

Chris Elmendorf, a property law expert at University of California, Davis marveled in a postsigning analysis on X just how quickly Newsom’s “triumph over CEQA … went down” and the remarkable shift in the politics of reform that has taken root in the past few years.

He noted that just since the two trailer bills went public over the past week, one of the most powerful opponents — the California Building Trades Council — went from rejecting the legislation to expressing neutrality.

“The law that untold numbers of project opponents have leveraged for year after year after year of delays went from untouchable to demolished almost overnight,” Elmendorf stated.