Shared from the 5/20/2023 San Francisco Chronicle eEdition

State bill on noise would shield housing developers

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Photos by Brontë Wittpenn/The Chronicle

Police create a barrier between protesters and access to People’s Park in Berkeley last August. Protesters gathered to decry the clearing out of the park in preparation for the development of student housing.

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Protesters climb equipment after halting workers from clearing trees at People’s Park.

After the state Supreme Court agreed to decide whether neighbors could challenge UC Berkeley’s plan to build housing in People’s Park, California lawmakers are considering a measure to shield all housing projects from one of the neighborhood groups’ claims — that developers must protect nearby residents from loud noises at student parties and other gatherings.

AB1307 by Assembly Member Buffy Wicks, D-Oakland, whose district includes Berkeley, would declare that noise from occupants of new housing does not create a “significant effect on the environment for residential projects” and therefore does not have to be considered in an agency’s environmental review of proposed housing construction.

State agencies could still consider loud noises from other sources, like construction equipment and heavy traffic, and require developers to ease their impact on local residents. The bill’s purpose, Wicks’ office said, is to prohibit classification of “people as pollution” under CEQA, the California Environmental Quality Act.

AB1307, supported by housing advocates and real estate organizations with no declared opposition, won unanimous approval in two Assembly committees last month and is scheduled for an Assembly floor vote on Monday, according to Wicks’ office. If approved by two-thirds of both houses and signed into law, it would take effect immediately.

Gov. Gavin Newsom has taken a similar position in a court filing arguing that the university had no legal duty to shield neighbors from noise generated by residents of the planned housing at People’s Park. Otherwise, he said, courts could invoke “noise concerns” to slow construction of new housing in urban areas throughout California.

“It is not difficult to imagine, for example, existing residents citing this case in opposing low- and moderate-income housing, or developments likely to attract young-adult residents or families with children,” state lawyers told the court.

UC Berkeley, which now provides housing for only 23% of its students, has proposed a $312 million plan to build housing for more than 1,100 students and 100 homeless people on the park just south of campus, while leaving more than half of the 2.8 acres as open space. The site was named People’s Park by protesters of a previous UC housing plan in 1967 who took over the land, planted a garden and fought off demolition in 1969 in a clash with officers, dispatched by then-Gov. Ronald Reagan, who fatally shot one person and wounded others.

The current housing plan is opposed by neighborhood groups, who say the university has identified other, less disruptive nearby sites for student housing. In February a state appeals court blocked the housing plan and said UC Berkeley’s environmental review was inadequate for two reasons: It had failed to consider alternative locations for additional housing, or to analyze “potential noise impacts from loud student parties in residential areas near the campus” or propose measures to reduce the noise.

Announcing her legislation, Wicks, in a news release from her office, said the court’s requirement to shield residents from noise generated by occupants of new housing would set a “dangerous new precedent” that could “substantially delay the delivery of housing” in a state already suffering from a severe housing shortage.

On Wednesday, the state Supreme Court voted unanimously to set the appeals court ruling aside and hold a hearing on UC Berkeley’s appeal, which was supported in filings by Newsom and the city of Berkeley.

The hearing has not yet been scheduled. If AB1307 is passed and signed into law, it would affect the legal case if the court has not ruled by then.

It comes a year after state lawmakers approved another measure, SB886 by Sen. Scott Wiener, D-San Francisco, that eliminated any requirement of environmental review for on-campus housing proposed before January 2030 at the University of California, California State University or community colleges in the state. The bill was a response to court rulings allowing neighborhood groups to sue UC Berkeley for failing to consider the local impact of increased enrollment.

Reach Bob Egelko: begelko@sfchronicle.com ;

Twitter: @BobEgelko

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