With just a few short weeks before the end of the legislative session, the clock is ticking on Gov. Jerry Brown’s proposal to streamline the approval process for certain kinds of new housing developments (ones that conform to local zoning rules and include affordable housing units). The governor’s plan would make it easier and faster to build new housing in California. Over time, it would ease the state’s housing crisis.

A sensible observer might believe that California leaders are desperate for housing solutions. The cost of housing in California is directly related to the fact that we haven’t built enough of it over the past several decades.

Housing costs are one of the biggest factors on our state’s high functional poverty rate, and a shortage of housing is a drag on our economic growth. Our current housing crisis has had devastating consequences for communities up and down the state, in the forms of everything from gentrification to an increase in homelessness.

Yet the governor’s plan is facing stiff headwinds — and the sheer number of interest groups against the governor’s housing measure is a fine example of how deeply entangled the roots of California’s housing crisis are.

Local officials, such as San Francisco’s Board of Supervisors, are furious at the idea that the governor wants to sidestep the endless layers of local approvals that bog down badly needed housing construction. (The supervisors passed a resolution opposing Brown’s plan in July, which Mayor Ed Lee wisely vetoed.)

Major labor, environmental and tenants groups walked away from negotiations over the plan this week, citing the need for “real affordable housing solutions that don’t directly undermine local voices and place communities and our environment at risk.”

But our communities and environment are already at risk. Meanwhile, the loudest local voices too often have been short-sighted.

Asked for a response to the outcry, the governor’s office said that Brown’s offer to spend $400 million on low-income housing subsidies would be contingent on the Legislature passing a “by-right” approval process.

This is a formidable carrot for the Legislature. But even $400 million may not be enough to convince California’s powerful interest groups that the state must change policies that no longer work for our future.