Exclusive | Jane Fonda, Google billionaires wife wage war on fix to make Californias housing cheaper from their lavish estates

Lefty Hollywood legend Jane Fonda and the wife of multi-billionaire Google founder Eric Schmidt are teaming up to nix a popular proposal designed to make California’s housing more affordable.Fonda and ultra-green activist Wendy Schmidt, who lives in a $100 million home bigger than the Taj Mahal, are waging war on Prop.45 — a ballot measure designed on watering down the California Environmental Quality Act, a draconian 1970s law widely criticized for slowing down housing developments.

The group’s ”No on 45” campaign kicks off in Sacramento on Wednesday.CEQA allows opponents to challenge major developments on environmental grounds, not only housing, but mass transit and other infrastructure projects.Prop.

45 has rare bipartisan support amid rising frustrations about California’s cumbersome layers red tape— with 73% of voters backing it, including 80% of Democrats and 61% of Republicans, according to the Public Policy Institute of California.The pair are heading the campaign through Clean and Healthy California, an environmental PAC seeded with more than $5 million from Schmidt.Schmidt, 71, splurged on the 100-plus-room Spelling estate, known as the Manor, in Holmby HIlls, Los Angeles, in 2025.The woke PAC, which also received funding from billionaires Laurene Powell Jobs and venture capitalist John Doerr to fight oil drilling in California, is now a main opponent of Prop.

45 along with progressive union the Building and Construction Trades Council.Proponents say it will make housing more affordable, arguing CEQA delays add building costs that are passed on to renters and homebuyers.Fonda, the 88-year-old “Barbarella” actress turned left-wing activist who lives in a $6 million Century City home, has blasted Prop.

45 campaign as a plot by polluters to destroy the environment.“This measure would gut the law that stands between reckless development and the air we breathe, the water we drink, and the health of our communities,” said Fonda in a J...