When Super-Statutes Collide: CEQA, the Housing Accountability Act, and Tectonic Change in Land Use Law

This Article explores the slow-motion collision between two statutes at the center of California’s housing crisis: the California Environmental Quality Act and the state’s Housing Accountability Act. Each statute has a bonafide claim to being a “super-statute”—one that exerts a broad effect on the law. Yet the two statutes came of age in different eras—the California Environmental Quality Act in the 1970s and the Housing Accountability Act in the 2010s—and have fundamentally different institutional and normative premises. After tracing the evolution of the statutes, we explore two problems at their intersection: (1) cities’ use of endless environmental review to launder the denial of housing projects that the Housing Accountability Act means to protect; and (2) analytical confusion about the proper scope of environmental review for projects protected by the Housing Accountability Act. We propose solutions that harmonize the two laws, remaining faithful to the text and purpose of the California Environmental Quality Act while fulfilling the Housing Accountability Act’s instruction that it be interpreted “to afford the fullest possible weight to the interest of . . . housing.”