Report Highlights Urgency in Fixing California’s Broken Permitting System
The Assembly Select Committee on Permitting Reform, chaired by Assemblymember Buffy Wicks (D-Oakland), yesterday (March 5) released its report detailing systemic permitting challenges to addressing California’s housing and climate crises. The report also identifies best practices, success stories, and opportunities for reform that would minimize uncertainty, speed up time frames and reduce costs to these necessary infrastructure projects.
The Bay Area Council and Bay Area Council Economic Institute partnered with Wicks on a series of public hearings and site visits held across the state last year to help inform the report and we contributed to the development of the report. The Committee’s findings confirm that California’s permitting system not only hinders progress but drives up costs and delays projects communities desperately need to address interconnected housing and climate crises.
“It is too damn hard to build anything in California. Our broken permitting system is driving up the cost of housing, the cost of energy, and even the cost of inaction on climate change,” Assemblymember Wicks said. “If we’re serious about making California more affordable, sustainable, and resilient, we have to make it easier to build housing, clean energy, public transportation, and climate adaptation projects. This report makes it clear: the system isn’t working, and it’s on us to fix it.”
The Committee’s report highlights how permitting inefficiencies and bottlenecks drive up the cost of housing, electricity, water and transportation projects – costs that are ultimately passed on to everyday Californians.
“To build the affordable housing California desperately needs and make critical investments in clean energy and transportation infrastructure, we must reign in the many-headed hydra of out-of-control permitting,” Bay Area Council CEO Jim Wunderman said. “The work Assemblymember Buffy Wicks is leading to reform California’s onerous, excessive and expensive permitting processes will make it easier, faster and less costly to build and invest in addressing our biggest challenges and bolster our economic competitiveness. We heartily applaud Assemblymember Wicks for her incredible leadership and are proud to be partnering with her to reform California’s broken permitting system.”
The Select Committee on Permitting Reform will continue its work in 2025, focused on translating these findings into legislative action, regulatory improvements and policy changes that will make California’s permitting system faster, more transparent and more predictable.
