The Brief

As lawmakers scramble to turbocharge post-fire recovery efforts in Los Angeles and to tackle a housing shortage across the state, a new addition may be coming to California’s building code: A pause button.

Assembly Bill 306 would freeze the building standards — the rules governing the architecture, the layout, the electrical wiring, the plumbing, the energy use and the fire and earthquake safety features — for all new housing through at least 2031. Local governments, which often tack on their own requirements, would also be kept from doing so in most cases.

Building standards tend to reflect the state’s most pressing concerns. New seismic requirements are added after major earthquakes, home-hardening requirements have followed deadly fires and new green energy mandates have popped up as California has raced to prepare for a warmer planet.

This latest proposed change to the code is meant to tackle another crisis: affordability.

The bill wouldn’t delete any of the current rules, which are widely considered to be among the most stringent of any state’s. It would also include exceptions, most notably for emergency health and safety updates. But on the whole, the California building code would be set on cruise control for the better half of a decade.

Assemblymember Nick Schultz, a freshman Democrat from Burbank and the lead author of the bill, said there’s nothing extreme about leaving the code as it is for a few years, particularly as homeowners in Altadena and the Palisades rebuild.

Though Schultz introduced the bill, the second listed co-author may explain why such a significant policy change swept through the Assembly with little resistance: Speaker Robert Rivas. In early April the bill passed out of the Assembly with 71 “yes” votes. No lawmakers voted against it. Now it heads to the state Senate.

Such smooth legislative sailing notwithstanding, plenty of environmental advocates, renewable energy industry groups, construction unions, structural engineers and code enforcement officials have turned out to oppose the bill.

Building standards need to be nimble because the effects of climate change are unpredictable, said Laura Walsh, policy manager with Save the Bay, a nonprofit focused on conservation and preparing for rising seas. They see it as a radical upending of the way the state regulates buildings, reduces emissions and prepares for a changed climate.

“We’ll get to a place in the trend where things get worse really fast,” she said.

Beyond the specifics of the debate, the bill represents something fairly new in the politics of California housing.

Over the last decade, lawmakers in Sacramento have passed a raft of bills aimed at making it easier to build new homes. Most of those bills have set their sights on the zoning code — the patchwork of land-use standards that dictate which types of buildings can go where. If you recall any high-profile political battles about apartment buildings in exclusive suburbs, dense residential development near transit stops or proposed mountain lion sanctuaries — that’s all about zoning.

Now some lawmakers are considering a new deregulatory target. Schultz’s freeze is the most dramatic example of a handful of bills this year that would take on the impenetrably technical, frequently overlooked and ever-changing building code — all for the cause of cheaper housing.

As California legislators are “finding religion on land use, other issues are sort of bubbling up,” said Stephen Smith, founder of the Center for Building in North America, a nonprofit that advocates for changes to building codes that make it easier to build apartment buildings. “Architects, developers, contractors are pointing out, ‘No, actually, there are barriers in the actual construction process and many of those do go back to the building code.’”

Where does the building code come from?

California’s building code does not originate in California.

As with most states, our code takes as its jumping off point a set of general rules written by the International Code Council, a nonprofit organization governed by a mix of building industry associations, state and local regulators, engineers and architects. Despite the name, the organization is based in Washington D.C. and its model codes are a predominantly North American product.

“It’s like naming the World Series the World Series,” said Eduardo Mendoza, a research associate with California YIMBY, an organization that promotes more housing development.

The Code Council puts out its model codes every three years. The state then gets to work on its own version in a year-long process involving seven state departments.

Framers work to build the Ruby Street apartments in Castro Valley on Feb. 6, 2024.

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These exceedingly arcane deliberations typically receive little attention from the public. The exception is a small cadre of engineers, developers, architects, appliance manufacturers, energy efficiency, solar and climate advocates and other parties with a direct financial or ideological interest in the way new things get built.

For these groups, the triannual code adoption cycle — and the “intervening” amendment process for urgent updates — make for an endless game of regulatory tug-of-war.

“It’s all very bureaucratic, very dry, but still extremely political,” said Mendoza.

Now that behind-the-scenes fight is playing out in public.

On one side are housing developers. Keeping up with the salvo of state and local building code changes is its own full-time job, said Dan Dunmoyer, president of the California Building Industry Association, a trade group for big builders.

“We had the most seismically safe, water-reduced, fire retardant, energy efficient homes in the world two years ago and we just keep on adding more and more and more to it,” he said. “At what point do you just take a pause?”

A potential pause is especially appealing to many affordable housing developers, who typically rely on multiple sources of funding, all with their own restrictions and timelines. If a change in the building code means going back to the architectural drawing board and delaying a permit application, that can put off a potential project “another year or two,” said Laura Archuleta, president of Jamboree Housing Corporation, a nonprofit low-income housing developer in Irvine.

California would not be the first state to consider tapping the breaks on its building code. In 2023, legislators in North Carolina passed a law banning most changes through 2031. That bill, backed by that state’s building industry association, froze in place a significantly older code than California’s; some of North Carolina’s energy efficiency rules hadn’t been changed since 2009.

California’s so-called 2025 code is currently in the works and is set to go into effect in January 2026, but not if Schultz’s measure passes. The bill would freeze the current rules in place starting on June 1.

The experts who help write the state’s building standards have “health and safety and other criteria in mind but they don't have cost as a factor in their decision making — well, they should,” said Assemblymember Chris Ward, a San Diego Democrat who voted for Schultz’s bill. He is also the author of two other building code related bills this year. One would require the state to consider subjecting small apartment buildings to a more relaxed set of standards. The other would reevaluate whether builder should have more flexibility in meeting the state's energy efficiency rules.

Ward said that mining the building code for possible cost savings is an idea embraced by a growing number of his colleagues.

“The theme of the year has been ‘let’s all focus in on the cost of construction and on reducing the cost of housing,” he said.

What's the real cost driver?

Opponents of the bill argue that in their quest for affordability, supporters have either picked the wrong villain — or, at the very least, approached the problem with a sledgehammer when what’s needed is a scalpel.

“There's just this idea that if you simplify things in some ways, it will help,” said Merrian Borgeson, policy director with Natural Resources Defense Council, who calls the bill “well-intentioned” if fundamentally flawed in its premise. “The driver of cost in California for housing is not code.”

The state’s building industry disagrees.

According to estimates provided by the state industry association, major building standard updates over the last 15 years have added between $51,000 and $117,000 to construction costs on each single-family home. By far the largest estimated cost, with an upper end of $65,000, was the price tag on the water utility hook-up required for sprinkler systems mandated in new single-family homes since 2011. California, Maryland and Washington D.C. are the only state-level jurisdictions with this requirement.

For apartment buildings alone, a national study sponsored by the building industry attributed 11% of total development costs to changes in the International Code Council model codes since 2012.

It’s impossible to independently verify any of these estimates. But if code changes don’t cost much, developers certainly seem to act as if they do. Reuben Duarte, a land-use planner with the California Chapter of the American Planning Association, said in the months before a scheduled code update, city planning departments are always the scene of “a mad rush from developers who are trying to get in” before the new rules go into effect.

A code for cheaper construction

Most of the big ticket changes to California’s standards over the last decade have been about energy efficiency and electrification. Some of these requirements have added upfront costs for developers, said Matt Vespa, an attorney with the environmental legal nonprofit Earthjustice, but they ultimately save homeowners in the long-run.

“The cost of housing is just one part of affordability,” he said. He pointed to possible energy code changes that would allow homes to calculate their electricity needs differently, potentially saving on costly capacity upgrades. “Those energy code enhancements could save people money on their energy bills and that is part of affordability. Why is that completely not considered in this equation?”

It’s that prospect of preventing changes to the code that might actually save money that has even some pro-building, “yes in my backyard” advocates concerned about the bill as currently written.

How could the building code make a building less expensive to build? A 2023 law, for example, directs state regulators to consider letting developers build apartment buildings over three stories with just one staircase rather than at least two. Single stair construction is an architectural mainstay outside that United States that allows for more housing to occupy a given lot and is estimated to bring down construction costs on mid-sized apartment buildings by as much as 13% without obviously elevating fire risk.

Schultz’s bill includes a carve out for any future single stair changes. It also includes exceptions for code amendments aimed at making it easier to convert office buildings into apartments and condos, another legislative directive. But additional cost-saving changes could get frozen out.

One possibility: Dallas, Texas recently adopted a new, relaxed set of codes for mid-sized apartment buildings, a considerable step down from the rules in place in most American cities where they share a set of standards with skyscrapers.

Smith with the Center for Building said he understands why someone who “just doesn’t trust that the building code development process is going to appropriately balance affordability and all the other concerns” would support the bill. But “it’s a little upsetting to see everyone throwing the baby out with the bath water,” he said.

The “baby,” in this case, refers to possible cost-reducing changes that Smith said are more likely to be found for apartment buildings.

“If I were a single family developer, I'd be a lot more happy with the code as it is than if I were a multifamily developer and a lot more eager to fix it in place,” said Smith.

Schultz stressed that though the bill has already passed out of the Assembly, it remains a work in progress. He said he is currently negotiating possible changes to the bill that would allow for a general “escape hatch” for any proposed “changes to the code that might actually reduce the cost of housing.”

After all, he added, “that is the goal.”

This article was originally published on CalMatters and was republished under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives license.

Thanksgiving is always the fourth Thursday of November. But many Americans don't wait that long to share a fall feast with their loved ones — that is, if they celebrate Friendsgiving.

Friendsgiving is exactly what it sounds like: A gathering close to the date of Thanksgiving, starring many of its starchy staples, usually served potluck-style, with friends instead of relatives.

Think fewer dinner-table political debates, less travel time, turkey optional (more on that later).

"There are your friends, and there's Thanksgiving," says Emily Brewster, a senior editor at Merriam-Webster. "It's a great example of a word that is just an excellent candidate for adoption as soon as someone thought of it."

This installment of NPR's Word of the Week series takes a look at where Friendsgiving comes from, why it stuck around and how to celebrate it.

A new name for an old tradition 

Of course, people have been celebrating Thanksgiving with friends for centuries.

The concept of Friendsgiving has long permeated pop culture, from 1973's A Charlie Brown Thanksgiving (in which an overburdened Snoopy cooks for the gang after they invite themselves over) to Friends, which went on the air in 1994 and included Thanksgiving plotlines in each of its 10 seasons.

But the proper noun only came along relatively recently.

Merriam-Webster started tracking "Friendsgiving" in 2007, after it appeared in posts on what was then Twitter and the early message board Usenet. The word's obvious meaning and accessible pronunciation helped it catch on quickly, Brewster says.

"Friendsgiving" popped up in lifestyle blogs and news articles over the years before hitting it big in 2011. That year, it was both the focus of a Bailey's Irish Cream ad campaign and a major plot point in a Real Housewives of New Jersey episode (titled "Gobblefellas").

Google searches for "Friendsgiving" spiked that November, and increased every year for the rest of the decade.

"All a word like this really needs is to just have more of a presence in the culture, and then it gets adopted into the language very quickly," Brewster says.

Merriam-Webster added "Friendsgiving" to its dictionary in 2020, 13 years after its first known use. While Brewster wasn't involved in that decision, she says "it was clear that it met our criteria."

"We had been seeing these examples of it for a few years, and … it looked like it wasn't going to go anywhere," Brewster adds.

The made-up holiday has inspired chain restaurant deals and numerous hosting guides, and even counted a sitting president among its participants in 2023. There are no official statistics on how many Americans celebrate Friendsgiving, but online surveys from recent years suggest numbers could be as high as 20%.

Brewster wonders whether we are seeing more Friendsgiving gatherings at least in part because there is now a name for them. It doesn't hurt that it's a catchy "blend word," which she says Americans especially get a kick out of (see: "Barbenheimer" or "Galentine's Day").

"I'm curious … if the existence of the word has somehow generated more of this kind of socializing," she adds. "I think words do have that power, that they can actually influence action."

<em>A Charlie Brown Thanksgiving</em> depicts an early example of Friendsgiving in 1973, well before the term entered the lexicon.

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"Friendsgiving" isn't one-size-fits-all 

Lizzie Post, the co-president of the Emily Post Institute, says the etiquette-focused organization started getting questions about Friendsgiving do's and don'ts around the time the word entered the lexicon.

"They were questions along the lines of: 'Is it OK to host Friendsgiving and go to your family Thanksgiving?' 'Can you only do Friendsgiving if your family isn't around and you can't travel to them?' " she explains.

The answer turned out to be a resounding yes. Many of those who celebrate Friendsgiving typically do so in addition to their family Thanksgiving, not instead of it.

"I think Friendsgiving is a nice way to be able to do both," says Emily Stephenson, a cookbook author whose work includes The Friendsgiving Handbook, published in 2019.

Stephenson says she has been hosting Friendsgiving — even though she never called it by that name — for about two decades, starting when she attended college abroad.

"It kind of implies … a younger person who's maybe doing things that's not going to be super traditional," she says. "And I do think part of what's implied in Friendsgiving is maybe it being the first time you host."

To Stephenson, younger generations' embrace of Friendsgiving makes perfect sense, particularly after the isolation of the COVID-19 pandemic. Throwing a dinner party can be a rare and special experience, especially for 20-something apartment dwellers who are potentially many years away from hosting a family Thanksgiving.

And there's not one right way to do it, considering the holiday is made-up and the real thing is just around the corner. Stephenson says that hopefully takes some pressure off.

"If you are hosting and a turkey stresses you out, you don't need to make turkey," she adds.

Post says these days, most of the questions the institute gets about Friendsgiving revolve around the etiquette of potlucks. The most important thing, she says, is to make clear who is responsible for what.

"I think that as people, we really value spending time with one another, taking a break from the everyday," Post says. "And whether that means eating off of paper plates … in front of a football game on the couch with a big buffet behind us, or whether that's a formally set table, matters not. It's the gathering that makes the big difference."

Every season of <em>Friends</em> had a Thanksgiving plotline, but the show isn't credited with coining "Friendsgiving." It ended in 2004, three years before Merriam-Webster started tracking the word's usage online.

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Tips for your next Friendsgiving 

That said, there are things both hosts and guests should keep in mind to help make Friendsgiving as easy as pie. Here's some of the best advice we got from Post and Stephenson:

For hosts:

• Do ask people if they have allergies or dietary restrictions beforehand. 

• Do keep track of who is bringing what, whether you assign specific dishes or leave guests to fill out a shared spreadsheet. And if someone shows up with something that wasn't on the list, serve it anyway. 

• Do take responsibility for the main dish — but it doesn't have to be a full turkey. Stephenson suggests preparing a less time-consuming turkey leg or breast, or skipping the bird altogether in favor of something like a shepherd's pie, savory galette or lasagna. 

• Do make it easier for out-of-town guests by tasking them with store-bought contributions, like drinks, napkins or a premade crudité platter.  

• Do give guests key details in advance, like what time the meal will actually be served (especially on a weekend) and a dress code if you're planning a more formal event. 

• Don't be afraid to ask guests to help out. Post recalls that when her mom used to host some two dozen Thanksgiving guests, she would ask people to not only bring a dish but sign up for a job — from setting out place cards to lighting candles to checking who wants ice cream with their pie. "Some people faint when I say this," Post laughs. "But … little tasks like that, when spread out over the whole group, not only make it a little bit even more of a communal experience, but they help ease the burden on the host."
  
• Do try to send guests home with leftovers of the dish they brought. "Just because they've brought it to your house doesn't automatically make it yours," Post says. If they don't want it, transfer it into another container so you can clean their original dish and send it home with them. 
  

For guests:

• Do inform the host of any dietary restrictions (if they don't ask), but do so "with an offer to bring something that meets your needs," Post says.  
  
• Don't arrive empty-handed. "I don't think there's many rules for being a guest besides … don't make soup," Stephenson says, since it adds another round of dishes to clean. 
  
• Do the heavy lifting before you leave the house. Since kitchen space will be limited, it's best to bring a dish that is ready to eat, even if it needs a few minutes in the oven first. 
  
• Don't show up expecting leftovers, though of course it's nice if you end up with some. 
  
• Do remember to thank your host — verbally is fine, Post says. If your friends are into group activities, you may well get a chance to share what you're thankful for anyway.

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The University of California’s Board of Regents on Wednesday is slated to vote on a proposal that could hike tuition rates for incoming students beginning in fall 2027.

The UC system is facing state budget cuts and major uncertainty over federal funding as it continues to navigate ongoing conflicts with the Trump administration.

In a recent message to students, faculty and staff, UC President James Milliken said the system is grappling with “one of the gravest threats in [its] 157-year history,” highlighting fears about potential cuts to the $17 billion in federal funding it receives each year — including $1.7 billion in financial aid for students.

What's in the proposal?

The proposal aims to extend UC’s “Tuition Stability Plan,” which went into effect in 2022. Under that plan, annual tuition increases are capped at 5% and tuition is frozen for each incoming class for six years.

The proposal on deck contains key differences, including reducing the rate of undergraduate tuition set aside for financial aid, from 45% to 40%, along with a 1% increase to help pay for new or improved campus facilities.

The University of California Student Association (UCSA), which represents 230,000 undergraduates across nine campuses, opposes the tuition hikes, arguing that many students are already struggling to make ends meet.

“We understand that the university is in a really challenging fiscal period . . . [and] will likely renew the proposal,” said Vincent Rasso, the group’s director of government relations.

If the board adopts the plan, he added, members should, at a minimum, oppose reducing the rate of tuition dollars that support student aid. And instead of using tuition to pay for capital improvements, UCSA asks that a portion of that 1% hike be used to fund retention programs and students' basic needs.

The board's meeting is slated to start at 1:30 p.m. and available to stream online.

The U.S. may be entering another rough winter for flu, according to early data.

"The signs are, it could be a big season," says Richard Webby, who studies the flu at St. Jude Children's Research Hospital in Memphis. "The flu season might have a little bit of a punch to it this year."

The first clue to what may be in store is what influenza did during the Southern Hemisphere's winter. That often predicts what's coming for the Northern Hemisphere.

"They had some pretty decent flu activity in many parts of the Southern Hemisphere," Webby says. "It actually lasted for a longer period of time — the tail of the season went on for longer than typical."

And now, parts of the Northern Hemisphere, such as the United Kingdom, are being hit hard. That often foreshadows what's in store for the U.S.

Another clue is the Northern Hemisphere's dominant flu strain so far. It's an H3N2 flu virus, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention flu tracker.

And H3N2 viruses "tend to be a little bit more problematic," Webby says. "When we have an H3N2 season, we tend to have a little bit more activity, a little bit more disease at the severe end of the spectrum."

The last major flu season dominated by H3N2 was 2016-2017.

In addition, a new H3N2 variant recently evolved and has become the dominant strain in the U.S.

"There is basically a new variant of influenza circulating that has mutated a little bit," says Caitlin Rivers, an epidemiologist at Johns Hopkins. "And that means that it's just different enough from what your body or the vaccine may recognize that it can kind of get around those protections."

And she says the flu shot this year "may not be as good a match as if we hadn't seen this new variant."

That said, data from the U.K. indicates the vaccines still make a difference, Rivers says. In the U.K., the vaccines appear to be about 70% to 75% protective against hospitalization in children and about 30% to 40% protective against hospitalization in adults.

So Rivers and others are urging anyone who hasn't already gotten a flu shot to get one.

"Definitely get it as soon as possible. Because activity is low right now. But it is increasing. And it will continue to increase straight through until we hit peak, which is usually around the holiday season. There's no sense in waiting when we are barreling into flu season," Rivers says.

It takes about two weeks for immunity to kick in. And people don't want to catch or spread the flu over Thanksgiving. The flu kills between roughly 12,000 and 52,000 people in the U.S. every winter.

"I do have concerns that uptake of both the influenza and the annual COVID vaccine won't be as high this year as it had been in previous years," Rivers said. She is concerned by rhetoric coming from federal health officials questioning "whether vaccines are safe and effective."

"We know that they are," she says. "And they are important for protecting against severe illness. So it's really important that people go out and get them this year."

In a written statement to NPR, a Health and Human Services spokesperson said: "It is too early to know what viruses will spread this season, in what proportion, and how well the vaccine will work in the United States."

The statement added: "The decision to vaccinate is a personal one. Individuals should speak to their healthcare provider on the risks and benefits of a vaccine."

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