On December 26, 2005, the California Chamber of Commerce received an official Title & Summary from the Attorney General’s office for the Building an Affordable California Act (referred to here as the “Affordable CA”), and began signature gathering the first week of January. Early response has been strong—California voters are eager to sign a petition that cuts delays and lowers the cost of housing, electricity, and other everyday necessities. The Chamber is well on its way to qualifying Affordable CA for the November 2026 ballot, with signature collection on track to conclude by mid-April.

Based on our combined decades of experience advising, entitling, litigating, and defending projects subject to the California Environmental Quality Act (“CEQA”) throughout California, we have reviewed Affordable CA from a legal, procedural, and implementation perspective. Our analysis reflects extensive, first-hand experience with CEQA compliance, agency review, administrative records, and judicial review at every stage of project development.

Affordable CA represents the most comprehensive and consequential CEQA reform in more than 50 years. It eliminates open-ended delays by imposing enforceable timelines on all reviewing agencies, creates predictability in permitting processes through reliance on objective standards and vested rights, and curbs abusive litigation practices that delay projects without environmental benefit. Unlike prior CEQA reforms, which relied on narrow exemptions or project-specific streamlining, Affordable CA delivers systemwide, enforceable process reforms across eight essential project categories.

Based on our analysis, we conclude that the Building an Affordable California Act is legally sound, carefully calibrated, and extraordinarily effective. If enacted, it would materially reduce approval timelines and litigation risk for essential projects — often by multiple years — while preserving meaningful environmental review, public participation, and strong worker and tribal protections.

Core Reforms & Essential Projects

Affordable CA applies its reforms to a defined set of essential projects central to California’s affordability, climate, and public safety goals, including:

• Housing: New single-family homes, apartments, senior and student housing, supportive and farmworker housing, and conversion of commercial buildings for residential use.
• Public Health: Hospitals, community clinics, and medical office facilities that expand access to care.
• Clean Energy: Solar, wind, geothermal, clean hydrogen, battery storage, fuel cells, clean carbon capture, upgrades to the electric grid, transmission lines, and EV charging networks.
• Water Infrastructure: Water-quality treatment, groundwater recharge, water recycling and desalination plants, dams, stormwater capture, and other projects that deliver safe drinking water and strengthen California’s drought resilience.
• Education Facilities: K–12 schools, community colleges, public and private nonprofit colleges and universities, including CSU/UC campuses, labs, and student support facilities.
• Public Safety & Wildfire Resilience: Fire and police stations, vegetation management, undergrounding utilities, home hardening, and fuel break maintenance.
• Transportation: Road repairs, bridges, public transit expansions, bike and pedestrian safety projects, and electric vehicle infrastructure.
• Broadband & Digital Access: Fiber-optic and wireless broadband projects connecting underserved and rural communities. 

Importantly, Affordable CA applies not only to the primary project, but also to the ancillary infrastructure required to place the project into service, including access roads, interconnections, sewage systems, pipelines, substations, etc. This ensures streamlining applies to the entire project delivery pathway, rather than allowing projects to be stalled through separate, sequential approvals.

Streamlined Approvals

1. Enforceable Timelines Across the Entire Approval Process

For the first time, CEQA timelines are mandatory and enforceable from application submittal through final approval for all types of CEQA documents.

Application Completeness. Agencies have 30 days to determine completeness or the application is deemed complete by operation of law. Any incompleteness notice must include a single, exhaustive list of missing items. Applicants have 90 days to cure identified deficiencies, then agencies receive an additional 30-day review period for any resubmittals. Any incompleteness finding may be appealed and must be resolved within 60 days. These requirements eliminate serial information requests and prolonged front-end delays.

CEQA Review Timelines. Once an application is complete, agencies must select the appropriate CEQA pathway within 30 days and complete environmental review within fixed deadlines:

• 90 days for exemptions and addenda
• 180 days for NDs/MNDs
• 365 days for EIRs

If an agency misses a deadline, the applicant may force a public hearing requiring final action within 60 days.

Concurrent and Coordinated Permitting. Once CEQA review is complete, all other permits, authorizations and approvals required for the same project by other agencies must be issued within 90 days of application completeness or, for exempt projects, within 90 days of the exemption determination. This prevents sequential permitting delays after CEQA compliance has been achieved.

Phased Approvals. Components of a qualifying larger project may proceed independently under Affordable CA timelines, allowing essential projects to advance in phases even if individual phases would not qualify on their own.

Preserves Lead Agency Decision Authority. Importantly, while Affordable CA enforces strict timelines it does not force project approvals. State and local agencies retain full authority to approve, reject and condition projects.

2. Vested Rights

Affordable CA restores predictability by requiring agencies to evaluate projects based solely on the laws, regulations and written standards in effect at the time of application submittal, including statutes, regulations, ordinances, and routinely applied thresholds of significance. This prevents midstream policy shifts or unwritten expectations from derailing pending projects. Applicants may voluntarily waive vested rights if they elect to proceed under newer standards.

3. Streamlined Alternatives Analysis

Affordable CA narrows the required alternatives analysis under CEQA to:

• One applicant-proposed feasible alternative
• The required “no project” alternative

The measure establishes a presumption that the applicant-proposed alternative satisfies CEQA’s feasibility requirement. This reform addresses one of the most common sources of delay, expanded administrative records, and litigation risk, often driven by demands to evaluate speculative alternatives that are not economically, technically, or legally feasible.

4. Firm Public Comment Periods

Affordable CA provides clear, enforceable public comment timelines:

• 20-day public comment period for NDs and MNDs
• 45-day public comment period for EIRs

Late comments are excluded except in limited circumstances involving information that could not reasonably have been raised earlier. Rights to comment at public hearings, even those after the comment period, are preserved. Continued hearings must be set to a date certain and do not reopen comment periods, preserving meaningful public participation while preventing procedural gamesmanship.

Faster, Fairer and More Predictable Judicial Review

1. Judicial Review Shot Clock

CEQA challenges must be filed within 30 days of the notice of determination or exemption. Courts must resolve CEQA challenges, including appeals, within 270 days, subject to a 90-day extension.

2. Severance – Only Fix What’s Broken

Affordable CA replaces CEQA’s all-or-nothing remedy structure. If a court identifies a flaw in one portion of a CEQA document, it may require correction of only that issue while allowing legally compliant portions of the project to proceed on schedule.

3. Objective Standards for Judicial Review

Courts may only overturn a project approval if the lead agency failed to comply with objective, written standards in effect at the time of application submittal. Subjective criteria or unpublished standards may not be used to invalidate approvals.

4. Substantial Evidence Standard

All CEQA documents must be upheld where supported by substantial evidence in the record.

Maintains California’s Strong Environmental, Tribal & Labor Protections

Affordable CA does not exempt projects from CEQA or from compliance with any other state or federal environmental law, and all substantive environmental protections remain fully intact, including the Clean Water Act, Clean Air Act, Endangered Species Act, and California Coastal Act. The measure preserves and strengthens tribal consultation under Assembly Bill 52 by requiring earlier engagement and incorporating Tribal Traditional Knowledge into the consultation process. Affordable CA also maintains California’s strongest labor standards, including AB 130 requirements for essential housing projects and Environmental Leadership Development Project-level labor standards for all other essential projects.

Bottom Line

Affordable CA fundamentally changes the risk profile of building in California by imposing enforceable timelines, objective review standards, and predictable judicial remedies. Based on our experience, we believe Affordable CA will cut years — not months — from project timelines, reduce carrying costs and enable California to deliver housing, infrastructure and essential services at scale without sacrificing environmental integrity or worker protections.

The Building an Affordable California Act represents a once-in-a-generation opportunity to realign CEQA with its intended purpose. We believe the measure is legally sound, carefully drafted, and urgently needed, and we encourage serious engagement with this effort, including consideration of support for its placement and passage on the November 2026 ballot.

[This is a summary for general information and discussion only. It is not a full analysis of the matters presented and should not be relied upon as legal advice. Readers should consult a lawyer regarding the applicability of Affordable CA to a specific project.]