Challenging the construction of new Navigation Centers in California got significantly harder last week, after lawmakers and Gov. Gavin Newsom quietly passed legislation intended to speed up creation of the service-rich homeless shelters statewide.

State Sen. Scott Wiener, D-San Francisco, introduced a bill in December to require cities to approve new Navigation Centers, as long as they comply with local zoning laws, building codes and safety requirements, and if they provide the intensive health and housing services the centers are intended to offer.

The legislation was folded into and passed as part of AB101, a budget trailer bill, and went into effect immediately. Such bills are meant to help enact the priorities outlined by the state budget, but can also be used to pass new laws quickly.

As California grapples with the double-headed crisis of homelessness and soaring housing costs, lawmakers have sought to lower some of the barriers holding back construction of new homeless shelters. Homelessness has risen in San Francisco by 17% since 2017, to 8,011 people this year.

“We are forcing people to live in conditions in which human beings should not be living,” Wiener said Monday. “We have an opportunity to help people transition off the street. We know Navigation Centers work, and we just need to do it.”

The new law eliminates the public’s ability to appeal approval of new shelters if they meet the baseline building and zoning requirements. Laws like the California Environmental Quality Act can be exploited by anyone seeking to slow down or block homeless shelters and other types of development. Critics say that forcing environmental reviews on Navigation Centers that meet all other requirements is antithetical to solving the homeless crisis.

Recently, a group of residents in San Francisco’s Rincon Hill and South Beach neighborhoods unsuccessfully challenged the city’s decision to exempt a proposed 200-bed Navigation Center on the Embarcadero near their homes from an environmental review. The residents, united under a community organization called Safe Embarcadero for All, argued the city skipped important steps in greenlighting the proposal and that building the center would turn their neighborhood into a dirty, dangerous place.

The Board of Supervisors denied their appeal, so the group sued, though construction of the center is already under way. Wiener’s legislation doesn’t prevent anyone from suing to block a shelter’s construction.

Wiener said Monday he wanted to ensure that local governments could get access to the $650 million the state set aside in this year’s budget for emergency homeless shelters and Navigation Centers — rather than have the money sit idly while cities sort out appeals, which can take months.

“The last thing we wanted was to make this huge investment to try to move the needle on homelessness, and the money can’t be deployed because we’re having a thermonuclear war over every single siting decision,” he said. “I want to make sure the city of San Francisco has all the tools it needs to solve his problem, and this is one of those tools.”

Dominic Fracassa is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: dfracassa@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @dominicfracassa