It’s hard to get people to agree on a solution when they don’t even agree on the problem.

Ask some state politicians and much of the blame for California’s housing woes lies with local obstructionists. Take away the NIMBYs’ favorite procedural tools and the housing market will eventually build its way out of the shortage, they argue. 

But “red tape” has a powerful constituency. Its members include:

• City governments, which generally like having a say in what does and doesn’t get built within their borders. The powerful League of California Cities has opposed several measures to streamline the local housing approval process. It has called such efforts counter to the “the principles of local democracy and public engagement.”
• Environmentalists, who don’t want the Legislature tinkering with the California Environmental Quality Act or similar eco-minded regulations. Pro-housing advocates argue that environmental concerns can be used as a pretext to hold up a project for any number of unrelated reasons. Cases in point: The law has been used in the past to block high-density housing and bike lanes and the conversion of parking lots into affordable housing. The law’s defenders counter that legal challenges are fairly rare.
• Building trade groups also benefit from the status quo. Proposed changes to make it easier to build almost invariably lead to debates among organized labor groups over what kinds of high wage requirements and union-hiring mandates should be included. When the trades don’t get their way, they’ve been known to block legislation or oppose local developments. 
• Anti-gentrification activists, who often argue that developers should be saddled with more restrictions, not fewer. New houses may bring down prices over time and in general, they argue, but for those who are facing eviction or displacement today, new, high-end development only makes a particular locale more attractive to outside investors and wealthy house hunters.
• Good old fashioned NIMBYs. As California lawmakers have set their sites on building denser, more affordable housing within the state’s exclusive suburbs, local lawmakers and irate homeowners have gotten creative in their efforts to get around the rules. A few examples of what cities have tried: Declaring themselves mountain lion habitats, requesting historic designation protections, rewriting their local constitutions and shunting required development onto parcels that are literally underwater.