To address California’s housing shortage, Assemblywoman Cristina Garcia (D–Bell Gardens) wants to tear up California’s public golf courses and use the land to build new housing. Assembly Bill 672 would provide subsidies, along with an exemption from California’s environmental quality regulations to replace municipal golf fairways with new housing, provided 25 percent of the new construction is for low-income households.
But why pick on golfers? Particularly those who can’t afford to join a private golf club? Why eliminate the jobs of workers who operate and maintain those golf courses? This is what happens when there is no political competition in a state, because only then can legislators try to impose their personal agendas on everyone else. Such an idea should be a nonstarter, but ideas such as this get traction in California because most legislators have de facto job security and thus are free to address issues the way they want to, rather than doing what would best serve the state.
Garcia stated, “Golf courses proliferate in and around California’s urban centers. As golf declines, the state can craft a ‘grand bargain’ to encourage redevelopment of golf courses in a way that promotes equity and affordability, and fights climate change.”
There you have it. No matter how high the costs or how little the benefits, or the distribution of those costs and benefits across Californians, every public policy now has to be wrapped up in claims of equity and fighting climate change. How well do these claims hold up? Let’s begin with changes in “equity” that would arise should municipal golf courses be plowed over.
How is eliminating affordable golf for lower-income Californians, many of whom are minorities, equitable? How is eliminating children’s golf programs, many of which are targeted for at-risk youth, equitable? How is eliminating golf for the disabled, some of whom play golf with prosthetics, and who frequent municipal courses, equitable? How is eliminating golf for the elderly, most of whom play at municipal courses, equitable? How is eliminating one of the world’s oldest sports in any affordable form equitable? There are about 25 million golfers in the United States, with California almost certainly having 3 million or more of those people. Does this sound “equitable”?
As far as fighting climate change, this is a nonstarter. No matter where you stand on this issue, it is a fact that carbon emissions are a global issue, which means that California by itself—much less through converting its golf courses to housing—cannot move the carbon emissions needle. And even if Californians chose to further reduce carbon emissions, plowing over golf courses has got to be one of the most inefficient approaches to achieving carbon-emission reductions among all the other options.
Garcia also has her facts about golf wrong. Golf is not declining in popularity. The pandemic sparked a large increase in the demand for golf, as it is a social and recreational activity that is amenable to social distancing and that is played outside. About 25 million played golf in the US in 2020, and the number of rounds of golf played in 2021 rose by about 16 percent, with many new golfers entering the fray, including many young women.
Would we tear up the courses at Pebble Beach and Torrey Pines, some of the most iconic courses in the world, and home to professional tournaments? Can you imagine the community of Pebble Beach, what author Robert Louis Stevenson called “the most felicitous meeting of land and sea in Creation,” being turned into a bunch of condos?
Garcia is also playing a bit fast and loose with the notion that “golf courses proliferate near urban areas.” The very densely populated Westside of Los Angeles has but one standard public course, Rancho Park, which has long held the distinction of being the busiest golf course in the US, and which has been home to professional tournaments. Now, there is also the “Heroes” Golf Course, in west LA, but as a nine-hole, par-3 course, it takes up just one-sixth of the space of a standard course, and as the name suggests, it was built to accommodate veterans. Should we tear that one up?
Garcia references the state’s 921 courses. But many of these are private courses and thus would not be part of this bill. And some of the public courses are small, like the Heroes course in Los Angeles, meaning that there will be much less land available for development, if this bill were to pass, than suggested by the total number of courses.
Assemblywoman Garcia is right to worry about state housing. But she should spend her time working with her colleagues to modify the very poorly written California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA), which has been weaponized to block development and is used by groups ranging from labor unions to community activist groups to extort developers. This is the single most important change that California legislators can enact to make housing less costly to build.
But environmental groups will fight modifying CEQA tooth and nail and are very powerful supporters of the state’s Democratic Party. Thus, CEQA remains the very same very flawed law that was enacted in 1970. It allows duplicative lawsuits to be filed time and again. It allows self-interested labor unions, community activists, NIMBYs, and other groups to hide behind sham environmentally named shell organizations so they can pretend to be environmentalists who are “worried” about the environmental consequences of development. And unlike other civil suits, the losers of CEQA lawsuits are not required to pay court costs.
Eliminating duplicative lawsuits, requiring transparency, and treating environmental lawsuits like other civil suits is common sense, yet these CEQA deficiencies continue year after year, because lawmakers are not willing to confront their environmental political allies.
Meanwhile, legislators dream up flawed housing schemes based on faulty logic and factually incorrect assumptions. But this is California, where flawed political ideas, based on faulty logic and incorrect assumptions, are business as usual.
