Berkeley Housing Litigation Aftershock

Saturday, June 18, 2022

After a local group's almost successful lawsuit to block a Berkeley enrollment expansion, the legislature stepped in:

From the Sacramento Bee: California’s’ public colleges and universities, plagued by a shortage of student housing, would be permitted to expedite construction under a bill cleared by an Assembly committee Monday. SB-886, sponsored by state Sen. Scott Weiner (D-San Francisco), would require the state to grant UC, CSU and Community College campuses an exemption from regulations under the California Environmental Quality Act, or CEQA.*

The bill, which has already passed the Senate, cleared the Assembly’s Natural Resources Committee Monday afternoon. “SB 886 is designed to address a very real issue in California, and that is the profound lack of available student housing,” Wiener told assembly members on Monday. “We have high rates of student homelessness, students that are living in their cars, living from motel to motel, couch surfing, living in very overcrowded situations — which is not conducive to actually learning.”

The legislation follows a major lawsuit that illustrated just how crowded California schools are becoming. The suit, spearheaded by NIMBY group Save Berkeley’s Neighborhoods, alleged that the University of California, Berkeley was admitting too many students for its available space. After the California Supreme Court ruled that the university would have to cut its student enrollment by several thousand — meaning it would need to revoke acceptance letters — the legislature and Gov. Gavin Newsom quickly passed legislation effectively reversing the court’s decision through a CEQA exception. The Berkeley case underscored the vast reach of CEQA. Outraged legislators said that it demonstrated the need for revisions to the law...

Full story at https://www.sacbee.com/news/california/article262520122.html.

Since the governor has not been a fan of the use of CEQA in blocking projects, it seems likely that he would sign the bill.

*Text of the bill is at:

https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billTextClient.xhtml?bill_id=202120220SB886.

Watch the Regents' Health Services Committee Meeting of June 15, 2022

Sunday, June 19, 2022

We are catching up with the Regents and their two off-cycle meetings last week, one being the Health Services Committee on June 15th. (We will post about the other offcycle meeting at a later time.)

The meeting began with an announcement that the meeting would be the last hybrid session. From now on, all members must attend in-person and those who testify must also attend in-person. However, public comments will continue in both in-person and byphone formats. (There may be exceptions to these rules.)

The public comments dealt with the "affiliations" issue, i.e., Catholic and other religious hospitals that don't provide certain services such as abortions.

Some of the highlights of the various agenda items:

• Uncompensated care - which is characterized as a community benefit - was said to be 10% of revenues. It was said that this percentage put UC at the 75th percentile among comparable institutions. There were some questions about the calculation and the identity of those systems that were higher than 10%. • There was discussion about "long COVID" (long-lasting after-effects of COVID) including among children. The mechanisms by which long COVID occurs are not understood. A common symptom is fatigue. • There was an overview of UCLA Health's strategic planning. It was said that the power plant at UCLA poses a capacity limit on expansion at the Westwood campus. There is a plan for building an off-campus mental health facility. Telehealth is now much more in use since COVID. • There will be a full report on the "affiliations" issue at the August meeting. • There is concern about a capacity limit on the ability to handle out-of-state abortion patients after the Supreme Court issues its expected decision voiding Roe v. Wade. As always, we preserve the recordings of Regents meetings since the Regents - for no particular reason - delete them after one year. You can see the Health Services meeting at:

22/Regents+Health+Services+Committee+6-15-22.mp4

or

https://ia902505.us.archive.org/23/items/regents-health-services-committee-6-1522/Regents%20Health%20Services%20Committee%206-15-22.mp4.