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NOTE: The opinions expressed in the news items cited here do not necessarily represent the opinion of Catalysts for Local Control. We try to present a balanced picture of the news on the subject of housing and legislation.
How bad is California’s housing shortage? It depends on who’s doing the counting
By Ben Christopher
September 26, 2025
For nearly a decade now, the Legislature has been churning out bills, Attorney General Rob Bonta has been filing lawsuits and Gov. Gavin Newsom has been revamping agencies, dashing off executive orders and quoting Ezra Klein with the explicit goal of easing the state’s chronic undersupply of places to live.
Guest Opinion: Don’t be fooled by anti-Prop 50 gerrymandering campaign
by Diana Diamond
September 25, 2025
Two days after Gov. Gavin Newsom and the California legislature placed Prop 50, a redistricting measure, on the Nov.4 special election ballot, I received three 8 x 11 glossy campaign mailings, urging me to “Say No” to “Unconstitutional Gerrymandering.” One flier declared, “California families struggle with soaring costs, and the states sink deeper into deficit, Governor Newsom and the legislature are scheming to take redistricting power away from our Independent Citizens Redistricting Commission.”
Marin Voice: Assemblymember lays out case for Prop. 50
By Damon Connolly
September 20, 2025
It is tragically self-evident that the Trump administration poses a unique threat to our freedoms, shared values and diverse communities. The National Guard is being sent to American cities against the will of local elected leaders and the residents themselves, federal agencies designed to help the most vulnerable are being gutted and whole neighborhoods live in fear that their family members will be seized and sent off to brutal foreign prisons without due process.
These rural Californians want to secede. Newsom’s maps would pair them with Bay Area liberals
by Jeanne Kuang
September 18, 2025
Over several rivers and through even more woods, flags advocating secession from California flutter above hills dotted with cattle, which outnumber people at least sixfold. This ranching region with a libertarian streak might have more in common with Texas than the San Francisco Bay Area. But it’s not Texas. And California is dominated by Democrats, that will likely force conservative Modoc County residents to share a representative in Congress with parts of the Bay Area.
To build housing, we need to fix RHNA
by Guest Opinion Writer
September 15, 2025
As my colleagues and I enter the final weeks of the legislative session, housing is rightly at the center of our attention. But as high-profile bills move across the floor, I keep returning to an elephant in the room: our broken Regional Housing Needs Assessment (RHNA) process. It is the very mechanism meant to drive housing production, but it is too costly and confusing to do the job we ask of it.
A powerful California lawmaker wants to overturn the ‘Holy Grail’ of housing reform — just for one project
By Emily Hoeven,
Sep 12, 2025
Two months ago, California passed what many described as the “Holy Grail” of housing reform: a law that exempts most urban infill projects from review under the California Environmental Quality Act, which interest groups often cynically leverage to delay or deny developments for reasons that have nothing to do with the environment. Now, one of the state’s most powerful Democratic lawmakers is seeking to reverse that.
We live in at least two different realities
By Beth Porter
September 13, 2025
One thing that has become really clear since yesterday is that we live in at least two different realities. Talking to a friend who only knew Charlie (Kirk) as a Christian motivational speaker because that’s all that ever came across her feed.
I showed her videos she’d never seen before of his racism, misogyny, homophobia, advocating for violence against specific groups of people. She was horrified by a number of things that he said, but she had never seen or heard them before, the same as I had never seen or heard the clips of him as a perfectly nice loving man and father.
New California law to make housing projects easier can also make them cost more
By Dan Walters
September 5, 2025
Two months ago, Gov. Gavin Newsom and legislators from both parties celebrated enacting landmark legislation to remove the California Environmental Quality Act as an impediment to new housing construction. Lopsided votes in the Legislature for Assembly Bill 130 and Newsom’s immediate signature seemingly ended decades of debate over how the environmental law, signed by then-Gov. Ronald Reagan more than 50 years ago, was being used to delay or kill residential developments.
3 key voices have changed their tune on Newsom’s redistricting plan
By Sophia Bollag
Sep 4, 2025
Shortly after Gov. Gavin Newsom first suggested retaliating against Texas’ efforts to redraw congressional maps to favor Republicans, California redistricting commissioner Sara Sadhwani threw cold water on the idea. A couple of weeks later, Sadhwani changed her tune. She’s now one of the top spokespeople for Newsom’s campaign to redraw California’s congressional seats in favor of Democrats, even starring in one of the campaign’s ads.