California is experiencing a shortage in affordable housing. In Los Angeles, for example, the median price for a single-family home recently hit a new record high of $575,000. At that price, a household would need to earn over six figures to reasonably afford a home. With California expected to increase its population by over 10 million by 2050, the state’s housing affordability crisis seems likely only to get worse. In a recent paper, Jennifer L. Hernandez, a partner at the San Francisco office of Holland & Knight, places much of the blame on the state’s environmental protection law, the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA). Hernandez finds that the majority of all lawsuits filed under CEQA between 2013 and 2015 targeted attempts to increase the housing supply in the state’s urban areas.
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