Editorial: Fighting a phony emergency, California should recognize a real one

Proudly engaged in a legal battle with the Trump administration over its phony border emergency, California has a real crisis that it has rarely treated as such. It’s the housing shortage, which has given the state the nation’s highest poverty rate and nearly a quarter of its homeless population.

Legislation introduced this week by state Sen. Nancy Skinner, D-Berkeley, would begin to treat the housing crisis as the emergency that it is. Comparing the bill to measures designed to promote short-term housing construction after a fire, earthquake or other disaster, Skinner proposes to suspend many of the parochial impediments to development that have saddled California with the paltriest housing supply on the U.S. mainland.

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