Proposition 45
Building an Affordable California Act
What is it?
Prop 45 adds a new chapter to the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA), the state law that requires agencies to study a project's environmental effects before approving it. The chapter sets deadlines and limits lawsuits for eight categories of projects.
The eight categories, which Prop 45 calls "essential projects", are housing, clean energy, water, public health, public safety, broadband, education facilities, and transportation. Using the chapter is the applicant's choice. An applicant, which can be a company, a public agency, or a utility, may use all of it, part of it, or none of it. Essential projects still go through environmental review, and agencies keep the power to approve or deny them.
The housing category covers any housing, including market-rate. There is no affordability requirement anywhere in the definition.
Deadlines
The longest clock is 365 days for an environmental impact report, then 180 days for a negative declaration, 90 days for an exemption, and 30 days to decide whether an application is complete. The main review clocks run in business days, not calendar days, so the 365-day EIR clock works out to roughly 1.4 calendar years, longer than CEQA's existing one-calendar-year deadline.
Only the applicant can extend a review deadline. If an agency misses a deadline, the applicant can demand a hearing where the agency must vote the project up or down using whatever environmental documents exist, and the applicant can sue to force it.
Lawsuits
Prop 45 also narrows what courts can do: a challenger's claims are limited to "objective existing laws", and a court that finds a violation may block only the part of the project affected by it until it is fixed, but may not order the agency to rescind its approval.
Read the full annotated legal text →
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Fiscal impacts
The measure contains no tax, no bond, and no spending program. The Legislative Analyst's Office and the Director of Finance estimate state and local government implementation costs in the tens of millions of dollars annually for the first several years, with uncertain long-term effects but likely net savings from reduced administrative and legal workload.
Why is this on the ballot?
This is a signature-gathered initiative statute, filed with the Attorney General as measure 25-0023. The version linked above is the amended language submitted on November 24, 2025.
According to Article II, Section 8 of the California Constitution, citizens may introduce statutes (laws) by collecting signatures (5% of the votes cast in the most recent Governor's race). The statute must then be approved by voters with a simple majority of 50% + 1.
- Placed on ballot by: Voter signatures
- Sponsor: The California Chamber of Commerce is the sponsor and runs the support campaign through the Committee to Build an Affordable California.