California is dangerously behind on cutting carbon emissions, but this year’s budget surplus can be a weapon in the fight to address climate change, with Governor Newsom announcing plans to spend $37 billion over the next six years on climate resilience. Here are SPUR’s suggestions for how to focus those resources on eliminating fossil fuels in buildings, securing safe and abundant water, ending car dependence, improving transit, building affordable housing where we need it and more.

With the California State Legislature back from its spring recess, key SPUR-sponsored housing legislation is making its way through the Assembly Local Government and Housing and Community Development committees. We’re supporting bills to prohibit minimum parking requirements for new buildings near transit, allow faster permitting of shelters for unhoused people, make development fees more transparent and more.

One of the root causes of San Francisco’s high housing costs is the city’s ongoing failure to build enough housing, a problem that’s been compounding for decades. A measure that SPUR and others are proposing for San Francisco’s November ballot would take two approaches to building more affordable housing: streamlining the permitting process and deepening the bench of construction workers.

For the second year in a row, California will have a sizable budget surplus — and a host of critical needs to be funded. Governor Newsom’s proposed budget spending plan continues to include significant investments in affordable housing and solutions to homelessness. SPUR is especially pleased to see a strategy that makes an explicit link between locating housing in urban areas and reducing climate change, a key idea in our Civic Vision for Growth.