California faces 'existential' dilemma in tackling climate change, housing crisis

Trying to figure out how to house 40 million residents while protecting natural resources and dealing with climate change-fueled wildfires and drought.

LOS ANGELES :Santa Monica resident Leonora Camner only has to open her windows to escape Southern California's worsening heatwaves.

Where millions of Los Angeles County residents must sit in a car for more than an hour to drive to the beach, Camner can get there in minutes. Coastal access is an equity issue, however, one that she said inspired her to join Abundant Housing LA, a nonprofit organization that advocates for solutions to the region’s affordable housing crisis. She is now the group's executive director.

“I’m very fortunate to live in a place where we still have a cool breeze,” she said. “So many people work here in Santa Monica, but they are constantly having to leave because of the rising cost and lack of housing.”

As home prices soar and wildfires rage across California, the state is increasingly confronted with the herculean task of addressing climate change while creating more affordable housing. A series of new mandates recently issued by Gov. Gavin Newsom has plunged the state deeper into what some say is an “existential” dilemma generations in the making: how to house the state’s 40 million residents while also protecting its natural resources.

It’s a complicated task in a state where both homelessness and home prices are on the rise as climate change is fueling wildfires and drought.

“It’s such an existential issue for a California facing climate change,” Camner said. “With these extreme fires, I don't see how we can ever address housing in a way that doesn't plan for that fact. There is no getting around it.”

Last month, Newsom, a Democrat, signed more than two dozen housing bills aimed at spurring new development and addressing the state’s affordable housing shortage. He also approved a bill that curtails single-family zoning by allowing up to four units on single lots and another that encourages creating more housing density near transit and urban centers.

Combined, the bills usher in a new era of growth for California at a time when millions of people struggle to afford rising rents and exclusive home pricing. Across the state, million-dollar houses have become the norm as the pandemic economy pushed an already competitive market into overdrive. While high earners scramble to outbid each other for single-family housing stock, renters are faced with an eviction moratorium that expired at the end of September.

Intertwined with California’s housing shortage is climate change, which has contributed to severe drought, rising sea levels, historic wildfires and unprecedented heatwaves. The state has already outlined a goal of becoming carbon neutral by 2045, a target that advocates say can be achieved in part by creating more housing near jobs and transportation centers and thereby eliminating hourslong commutes.

At the center of the debate in Southern California is a yet-to-be completed tool that could bridge the gap between conservation and development. The SoCal Greenprint will be an interactive mapping platform providing access to more than 100 data sets that highlight natural resources. Inspired by similar projects around the country, the tool will include information on agricultural land, green spaces, habitats and biodiversity and clean water and air.

The tool would be free for all users and would not constitute binding policy or regulation.

“We feel very strongly that people want to come live in Southern California because of the environment, because of the nature of where we live,” said Kome Ajise, executive director of the Southern California Association of Governments, a metropolitan planning organization overseeing the development of the Greenprint. “You can go from the ocean to the mountains in a few hours, and there's some quality to that everybody felt we needed to preserve.”

Source NBC