INTRO

There is a regulatory Perfect Storm descending on us. You’ve heard warnings like this before, but the threat now is so dire that if it hits us with its full strength, it threatens to put most California homebuilders out of business. The storm’s four converging new threats will ravage builder’s profits and in the worst case, national builders would be forced to leave the state for less regulated markets and local builders would have to cut back or close.

BIA exists for challenges like this, but this is the biggest challenge we have ever faced. To succeed in beating back any of these threats, we will need our Builder Members, our Associate Members and their employees to join us.

The Perfect Storm Educational Series is intended to give Builders, Associates, and all their employees an understanding of the building industry regulatory elements and how they could change your business and impact staff.

THE PERFECT STORM ADVOCACY ISSUES KEY

• Vehicle Miles Traveled – Vehicle miles traveled (VMT) per capita is calculated as the total annual miles of vehicle travel divided by the total population in a state or in an urbanized area. These data are calculated as the total daily miles of vehicle travel in an urbanized area divided by the total population.
  • ISSUES: A study by the San Diego County Board of Supervisors found that as currently written, VMT would add as much as $2 million to the cost of a house. That’s the worst case, but when the better-case adds $200,000, it’s still enough to kill projects. Here’s just one VMT mitigation measure the study identified: The developer would have to buy transit passes for every resident of the development for every year in the life of the development – typically 50 years!

• Stormwater – New statewide stormwater regulations requiring water quality tests upstream and downstream from all construction sites.
  • ISSUES: New statewide stormwater regulations will cost the industry hundreds of millions of dollars by requiring water quality tests upstream and downstream from all construction sites. Our modeling shows that it would cost a four-year construction project $250,000 or more to comply. Failure to comply would result in fines of $56,460 per violation per day even though technology doesn’t exist to meet the new standards. As if that’s not bad enough, the Legislature is talking about halting all construction during the wet season – from October through May!

• SB 12 and Wildfires – SB 12 allows for the Office of Planning and Research control over development approvals in high fire risk areas.
  • ISSUES: Although this bill was stopped last year, it will be back again with another tragic wildfire season pushing it forward. This bill gives the anti-housing Office of Planning and Research control over development approvals in high fire risk areas – even though new developments are subject to fire safety standards that make them effective fire breaks that often protect existing homes. The 2021 version of the bill acknowledged that up to 49% of the regulations it triggers don’t even need to be reasonable – just “a majority” of them have to be!

• The SCAG SoCal Greenprint – A “conservation mapping tool,” Southern California Association of Governments (SCAG).
  • ISSUES: Promoted as a “conservation mapping tool,” the SoCal Greenprint threatens our industry by imposing new development constraints on land already approved for housing by local governments.  Without the protections proposed by the BIA, anti-housing groups and ambulance-chasing attorneys will be able to misappropriate this database to bring litigation against developments just because they don’t conform with anti-growth/NIMBY views.