Advertisement

A California bill pitted affordable housing against golf. Guess which one won

Most California politicians will agree that housing is important. The trouble is that so many things are more important — like convenient parking, neighborhood “character” and other idiosyncratic comforts of the more affluent segments of the population.

Assemblywoman Cristina Garcia’s bill to encourage affordable housing development on a small fraction of California’s acres and acres of golf courses therefore warranted more admiration than confidence. When the Los Angeles area lawmaker’s fellow Democrats dispatched the measure this week via the so-called “suspense file,” where droves of controversial bills are quietly murdered by the appropriations committees each year, the only surprise was that it took this long.

Like most California housing bills, Garcia’s was moderate and incremental. And like most such legislation, it was treated in some influential circles as an intolerable assault on the pastoral fantasy that preoccupies the state to the exclusion of dealing with its actual problems.

Opinion

Garcia’s bill would not have put high-rises on every fairway, an accessory dwelling unit on every green or public housing on Pebble Beach. Rather, it would have funded grants to help local governments develop housing on land dedicated to municipal golf courses should they choose to do so, provided that at least a quarter of the housing is affordable and 15% of the land remains public open space. It earned the support of an array of housing and environmental groups.

It also faced the registered opposition of more than 80 organizations, nearly all of them golf clubs, courses and services. The Southern California Golf Association opposed it with almost comic fervor, calling it the “Public Golf Endangerment Act” and warning that the purported sport was “under attack” and “being singled out.”

In a letter of opposition to a legislative committee, the group asserted that golf courses “preserve open space, sequester carbon, provide habitat” and “promote biodiversity.” Moreover, “in times of global warming and record high temperatures, golf courses reduce temperatures in their surrounding areas.” And perhaps most weightily, once golf courses are gone, “they are gone forever.”

There is no danger of that happening anytime soon. As the Legislative Analyst’s Office noted, California is home to about 1,100 golf courses, less than a quarter of which are the municipal facilities that could be affected by the bill. Still, at an average of 150 acres each, those public courses have enough room at moderate density for about 375,000 homes.

The city of Sacramento alone has four public golf courses, with another four operated by Sacramento County. Los Angeles County, an epicenter of the statewide housing and homelessness crisis, has 19, making it the largest public golf system in America. While some public courses make money for local governments, others lose millions of dollars a year subsidizing a relatively rarefied hobby.

One of the groups backing Garcia’s bill, People for Housing Orange County, argued that it could help cities leverage public resources that “serve hundreds” to build “housing that saves thousands from homelessness.”

All of which sounds important. It’s just not as important, according to the Legislature, as golf.