By Stephen Witt
Talk about making an immediate impact.
Freshman Assemblymember Nick Schultz (D-Burbank, Glendale, Sunland-Tujunga, North Hollywood, Sherman Oaks, Studio City, Valley Village) has barely gotten his feet wet in Sacramento, and his legislation is already being lauded as a game-changer.
This comes after Governor Gavin Newsom cited Schultz’s legislation this week as a key ingredient in the most significant overhaul of California’s housing and environmental review laws in decades.
The legislation, AB 306, imposes a six-year moratorium on new updates to the state building code that would affect residential construction and temporarily prohibits local governments from modifying those standards, except for emergency changes necessary to protect health and safety.
“I’m happy to see the language from AB 306 incorporated into the budget,” said Schultz. “We have a housing crisis, and we’re moving with urgency on tools to spur sustainable housing development.”
Schultz’s legislative call to action came after the recent fires in Los Angeles have only exacerbated the State’s long-time housing issues. Much of this stems from the antiquated California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA), which made the state’s building codes – some of the most energy-efficient and protective of health and life safety in the nation – also a detriment to building affordable housing..
With CEQA came ever more aggressive building code updates that has increased the cost of new housing construction. Industry stakeholders estimate the upfront cost increases of the code changes made over the last 15 years to be in the $50,000-$100,000 range per single-family unit, not including further cost pressures from local modifications.
Following the LA fires, the law made rebuilding destroyed structures even more onerous. This resulted in Newsom issuing an executive order requiring several agencies to suspend especially burdensome standards for rebuilding to accelerate rebuilding and housing production to absorb residents displaced by the fires.
Schulz’s measure piggybacked on this executive order in that it paused additional changes to state building standards affecting residential construction for six years, excluding emergency changes necessary for protecting health and safety and home hardening.
This bill also prohibits local governments from making new modifications to residential building standards for six years, with limited exceptions.
This moratorium will bring more certainty to the home construction industry and help stem further construction cost increases, given the demand surge from the volume of homes and apartments that must be rebuilt in Los Angeles. The bottom line is this allows lower permit construction costs for developers, and more certainty in figuring their costs, in that code requirement goalposts can’t be moved.
Schultz’s background and experience have him well-prepared to become a lawmaker to watch. Raised by a single mother, he became the first in his working-class family to graduate from college, let alone become an attorney.
After serving as Deputy Attorney General with the California Department of Justice, Schultz was elected to the Burbank City Council in 2020 and became mayor in 2023. During his tenure, he prioritized housing affordability, approving over 1,000 new units for low-income Californians.
And Newsome cited Schultz’s legislation as a crucial component of his administration’s agenda in advancing faster, more affordable housing and infrastructure. To Schultz, the bill was a no-brainer.
“By pausing updates to the building codes, California can give homebuilders a predictable path forward to increase housing production statewide, and reduce barriers to rebuilding in communities devastated by recent wildfires,” said Schultz.
