‘Gimme Shelter’: How recall candidates say they’d fix California housing problems

Californians will decide Tuesday whether to recall Gov. Gavin Newsom. In the campaign against him, all the higher-profile candidates — Larry Elder, Kevin Paffrath, Kevin Faulconer, Kevin Kiley and John Cox — have attacked the governor’s record on the state’s housing affordability and homelessness problems.

On this episode of “Gimme Shelter: The California Housing Crisis Podcast,” we assess what the current governor has done on housing and detail the plans of his challengers. One proposal among those challengers is to change the California Environmental Quality Act, or CEQA, a 50-year-old state law that requires developers to disclose and lessen a project’s environmental effects.

For a long time, the law has served as a punching bag for those who believe it unfairly stymies development while others believe it’s been essential in protecting the state’s natural beauty. Our guest is UC Berkeley researcher Moira O’Neill, who is studying CEQA’s effects on housing production.

“Gimme Shelter,”a biweekly podcast that looks at why it’s so expensive to live in California and what the state can do about it, features Liam Dillon, who covers housing affordability issues for the Los Angeles Times, and Manuela Tobias, housing reporter for CalMatters.

You can subscribe to “Gimme Shelter” on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, Soundcloud and Google Podcasts.