10 ms·

California lawmakers pass SB 79, housing bill that brings dense housing

238 points by mji 1y ago

ggm 1y ago
... near transit hubs. It should be a net positive if it doesn't die in the courts for every single proposal. It's also not enough by itself but Rome wasn't built in a day.
- mayneack 1y ago
  With the CEQA reform from a couple months ago, those court cases should be lessened a bit.
- Analemma_ 1y ago
  SB 79 is just the latest in a long sequence of pro-housing bills to get passed in California in the last 5-6 years. I’d rather them do one or two small winnable battles per year than bet it all on a giant do-everything bill which might galvanize more opposition. Frankly, this strategy seems to be a good one considering what a winning streak CA YIMBYs have been on.
- nilsbunger 1y ago
  This law (and other recent CA YIMBY laws) don't create much surface area to sue or slow a project: * The approvals are designed to be "ministerial", meaning there is no discretion on whether to approve or not. If the project meets the objective criteria spelled out in the law, it must be approved. * If the city doesn't approve in a limited time window, it's deemed "approved" by default. * Ministerial approval protects the project from CEQA lawsuits. CEQA requires the government to consider the environment when making decisions. When the approval is ministerial, the government doesn't make any decisions, so there is no CEQA process to sue against.
- jimt1234 1y ago
  > ... near transit hubs. I don't understand this narrative that California has been pushing the last few years - basically, "There's a bus stop in the neighborhood, therefore we can add a bunch of new housing without doing any other infrastructure upgrades." I just don't see it. What I do see after new housing is added is insufferable traffic and no parking - and empty buses.
  - Rebelgecko 1y ago
    Probably 99% of bus stations aren't relevant for SB79. I think the goal is to make it more like dense cities outside of California (NYC, Paris, Tokyo, etc) where car ownership can be unnecessary or even a liability. Public transit is a lot more scalable than cars. A train that only has 50 people on it may look nearly empty but it's better than having 40 cars on the road.
  - SilverElfin 1y ago
    HN has one particular view, which is to keep increasing density without care for any other factor. But density does change neighborhoods and quality of life in many negative ways, including the example you shared. Someone may get to move into that area at a lower price. But someone else loses what they had. I don’t understand why those who demand lower priced housing are more valid. And too often, the response here is to attack anyone who brings up the negatives of high density living (edit: here come the oh-so-predictable downvotes). I suspect that is partly ideological, and partly due to age skewing younger here. But I wish there was more tolerance for mid-size towns that don’t get density forced on them, but can stay a healthy balanced size because that’s what the locals want to hold onto for their own quality of life.
    - AlotOfReading 1y ago
      The people who want small, mid-sized towns are free to live literally anywhere they want outside major metro areas. There's 90+% of the state by land area left to them. This discussion is and has always been centered around the housing crisis in urban centers, where it's been illegal to build density for decades. This has caused issues where those urban centers can't afford for people to provide critical services ( like teachers, laborers, medical staff, social services workers, etc) because housing simply doesn't exist at a price they can afford. Unless the suggestion is to make do with crumbling community services, housing reform is mandatory.
      - SilverElfin 1y ago
        > The people who want small, mid-sized towns are free to live literally anywhere they want outside major metro areas. This is what I was referring to, in terms of HN’s attitudes on this topic. Why should a “major metro area” change to accommodate newcomers? It should just stay serving its current residents, who may want it to stay the size it is. The ones desiring to live there at a price they can afford are the entitled ones. They could be the ones to choose to live “anywhere they want outside major metro areas”. Major metro areas also don’t just come in one size. There are larger cities and smaller ones, denser ones and less dense ones. And it is perfectly valid to want a smaller one.
- klooney 1y ago
  There may never be another transit hub built
- TulliusCicero 1y ago
  California spent decades digging this hole and it's gonna take decades to dig themselves out, even with bills like these. But that's still better than refusing to fix the problem.
standardUser 1y ago
https://archive.is/a5Mwi https://archive.is/a5Mwi
TinkersW 1y ago
Nine stories anywhere in the state near a bus stop seems abit much, most small towns don't have anything over 2 or 3 stories(nor do they have a housing shortage). CA lawmakers seem to pass laws focused on cities, and ignore the fact that maybe this isn't such a good idea in smaller towns & rural areas.
- cortesoft 1y ago
  No one is going to build a 9 story building in a small town or rural area, it wouldn’t make any economic sense. Only places where land is valuable and scarce are economically viable for a 9 story building.
- nilsbunger 1y ago
  I don't think we're going to see much of that: * The projects won't be profitable in smaller towns, because rents aren't high enough to recoup the cost. * Tall buildings cost MORE per square foot than short buildings, so tall buildings only get built where land costs are very high. * This law's top density (7-8 floors I think?) only applies in a narrow window (0.25 to 0.5 miles) around major transit stops with LOTS of service, like < 15 minute bus intervals with dedicated BRT lanes, or trains with > 48 arrivals per day each way. Small towns don't have that kind of infrastructure. * The law only applies in cities with > 35,000 people.
- Rebelgecko 1y ago
  9 stories buildings are only for areas with heavy rail. It's a lower limit for bus stops, and my understanding is that bus stations only count if they have dedicated bus lanes, <15 minute headways, and meet some other requirements. I've never seen dedicated bus lanes in a rural area (which are basically exempt for the law for other reasons) and you're lucky if your headways are under an hour lol
- nullc 1y ago
  I don't believe it applies in any smaller towns or rural areas, the area has to cross some threshold. If not for that the headline we might see in the news: California towns rip out transit systems. Already this might create some weird incentives to oppose transit expansions.
mutator 1y ago
The discourse around high density housing does not make it clear what specific type of development do advocates prefer. Its likely that the market will have to decide for itself, but if we end up with an abundance of just 1/2 bedroom rental apartments, targeted towards transient younger people, I fear it's just going to enrich the property management class, and families with kids/older parents looking for larger places and hoping to establish roots are still going to stuck fighting the pricing/supply wars.
- nilsbunger 1y ago
  The economics of 3BR family units are typically hard for developers to make money on. Bobby Fijan (https://x.com/bobbyfijan https://x.com/bobbyfijan) is an example of a developer who is a vocal advocate of family-centric apartments and townhomes. His projects look amazing. He also talks about the challenges creating family housing.
  - davidw 1y ago
    Single stair reform is something that helps in terms of making more family sized units (aka 'homes'). I saw the author of this book give a talk earlier this year and found his point of view pretty convincing: https://islandpress.org/books/building-people#desc https://islandpress.org/books/building-people#desc
    - theluketaylor 1y ago
      Single stair is one of the reforms I'd most like to see. At the time 2 stair requirements were adopted it was vital, with devastating urban fires a common occurrence. We have so many new options for both preventing fire and keeping evacuation routes accessible for hours that it's no longer required. The regulation has a huge impact on the layout and form it's possible to build, and I think it's a huge driver of the visceral reaction against apartment living in the US and Canada. Being able to build 4-8 storey apartments on a single lot with a central stair where every unit has windows on at least 2 walls would be a game-changer for north american urban spaces and a pathway out of the housing crisis.
nilsbunger 1y ago
A Redditor created a great interactive map showing where SB 79 applies in California here: https://www.reddit.com/r/yimby/comments/1ne2q87/sb_79_interactive_map/ https://www.reddit.com/r/yimby/comments/1ne2q87/sb_79_intera...
- avidiax 1y ago
  This really shows how limited the effect of this bill is, but it's still much better than nothing.
  - lacker 1y ago
    A big question is whether these areas actually turn into denser housing, or whether something else in the process manages to bog it down. Plenty of housing bills have seemed like a big deal when you looked at the area they impacted, but in practice they led to little new housing.
    - nilsbunger 1y ago
      A lot of the California bills had various poison pills in them that reduced their effectiveness. For example, SB684 allowed building and subdividing up to 10 units on a multifamily lot. BUT, the lot wasn’t eligible if you had to knock down a building that had tenants in the past N years to avoid displacement of people. You can probably guess how many multifamily lots are out there where you don’t have to tear down an existing building with tenants. There are other issues too. Interest rates and tariffs make a lot of projects not viable financially.
    - jerlam 1y ago
      Yes, sadly just because the zoning has changed does not mean that any of the buildings that already exist will be torn down and rebuilt for decades, if not longer. And localities have all kinds of restrictions and fees that still prevent building to take place.
    - nerdponx 1y ago
      The problem we are seeing in suburban MA right now is that they're building the wrong kind of housing to address the greatest shortage, and doing it in a way that does not promote the long-term community well-being. Developers are jamming in large numbers of small "luxury" units with insufficient parking in a car-dependent area in whatever lot they can get their hands on, instead of density increasing organically throughout the immediate area around downtown, adding ADUs and replacing large single family homes with 2/3/4-unit condos. Why is this happening? Because zoning boards don't allow reasonable multifamily development in densifying areas, so developers do the only thing they can do, which is build in already-built-up areas with looser zoning, and/or ram projects through using a state low income housing provision called 40B. The effect is that while the apartment market for young professionals is going to continue to soften, the market for comfortable family dwellings remains brutal and increasingly unaffordable. There are 80+ unit apartment buildings literally surrounded by multi-lane stroads, while less than a mile away there are single family homes on quiet tree lined streets where you could easily have the same number of units in multifamily condo buildings and garden apartments, and still retain the comforts of suburbia. So whatever poison pills are in here, it cannot be worse than the status quo in MA, in which the development is too much of the wrong thing and everyone loses in the end except the developers and real estate agents.
davidw 1y ago
It has been really amazing to see this finally come to fruition. This has been years in the making, and is real progress in starting to fix California's massive housing shortage. I know a number of the people involved in this work and they have put so much effort into it. They are going to be in a partying mood at the YIMBYTown conference taking place shortly: https://yimby.town/ https://yimby.town/ !
Schnitz 1y ago
[flagged]
- ezfe 1y ago
  [flagged]
- lalaland1125 1y ago
  What middle class SFHs? There are no middle class SFH neighborhoods remaining in Los Angeles or the Bay Area. Take a look at Zillow. Your average young person isn't buying anything anyways. Your information is at least two decades, maybe three, out of date. But this bill will help lower rents, which is a very worthy goal in and of itself.
- epistasis 1y ago
  Those SFH are already rentals, from small landlords that bought a second, then a third, then a fourth home. The ship has already sailed on the redistribution, because 1) California created an artificial housing shortage from regulatory capture by home owners, and 2) condo defect law differs so much from SFH defect law that it's almost always insane to sell condos instead of renting apartments. This is not the doing of SB 79, this was Boomers deciding to milk future generations and prevent them from having the same easy opportunity that they enjoyed.
- platevoltage 1y ago
  Oh no! the thing thats already happening might happen some more!
danans 1y ago
Credit to State Senator Senator Scott Wiener (SF) who has been the primary champion of this and other related legislation.
xrd 1y ago
This happened in Oregon a few years ago: any cities with 25k or more people had to permit greater density. I'm optimistic about housing on the West Coast for the first time in a long, long time. This will transform things in a big way.
- davidw 1y ago
  Oregon - thanks to governor Tina Kotek - pushed those reforms further this year: https://oregoncapitalchronicle.com/2025/07/29/gov-kotek-signs-laws-to-boost-housing-supply-but-more-work-to-be-done-to-solve-crisis/ https://oregoncapitalchronicle.com/2025/07/29/gov-kotek-sign... I got to play a small part in that, going to Salem to say my piece in favor: https://oregoncapitalchronicle.com/2025/03/04/oregon-gov-kotek-housing-advocates-push-for-more-options-fewer-regulations/ https://oregoncapitalchronicle.com/2025/03/04/oregon-gov-kot... She liked my hoodie! https://bsky.app/profile/tinakotek.bsky.social/post/3lkea36k64c26 https://bsky.app/profile/tinakotek.bsky.social/post/3lkea36k... That said, what her bills have accomplished is a bit different than CA: rather than larger buildings close to transit, we legalized 4-plexes and a variety of other housing types that use land more efficiently, throughout cities.
  - xrd 1y ago
    That article you posted is terrific. I love the story of the "grandmother" in Cully Grove. Thank you for your work on this. You'll leave a great legacy in Oregon!
- dmoy 1y ago
  It happened in WA two years ago as well, but Seattle dragged its feet as long as humanly possible in implementing a compliant zoning policy. https://www.theurbanist.org/2025/05/27/seattle-just-rezoned-the-entire-city/ https://www.theurbanist.org/2025/05/27/seattle-just-rezoned-...
  - davidw 1y ago
    Oddly enough, it's Spokane that is lapping everyone on a lot of these reforms. They're just doing one thing after another without making a big deal out of it.
ec109685 1y ago
In addition to condos next to transit, California should be fixing roads, so people can move further from their job. I know it’s unpopular nimby opinion but hoping people in these homes won’t be driving cars is misguided. Give them parking, fix roads for further commute and let people live where they want. Save money by reducing regulations on elevator size, allow for single egress buildings and ensure we aren’t kowtowing to labor too much. Future Waymo like technology makes driving your own car even less stressful and furthers the gap between public transit and cars. “ California Senate Bill (SB) 79 reduces or eliminates parking minimums for new residential developments located near Transit-Oriented Development (TOD) stops”
- stouset 1y ago
  More roads just does not scale. Look at LA. Look at San Francisco. More capacity isn’t just going to magically appear. Waymo is only going to increase overall utilization by reducing the marginal cost of running a car. They aren’t magic traffic-solving devices, they are traffic-adding like DoorDash and Uber have been.
  - fooker 1y ago
    It doesn't matter what you think scales. If you don't design infrastructure based on what people want, they are going to do it anyway. And things will be extremely chaotic. No amount of fees, fines, etc will change that.
    - stouset 1y ago
      If you design infrastructure based on what you think people want instead of what actually produces good outcomes, you end up with gridlock. Travel some time. Take a look at what’s happened in Paris over the last several years. See what’s happened in Utrecht and Amsterdam. These are far from the only examples.
      - fooker 1y ago
        The zeitgeist of what produces good outcomes tends to change somewhat fast. This is the line of thought that led the US to tear down railways, city center train stations, and built freeways through the middle of cities. They thought they were planning for good outcomes too. I have traveled all over the world, and have lived in Amsterdam for half a year. I like that model sure, but doesn't change the fact that Americans want suburban sprawl. You should move to where you like though.
m463 1y ago
I kind of wonder if this can be gamed, by closing train stations or moving bus stops, or bus lines.
- ehnto 1y ago
  edit: I should preface, I am very pro dense housing. Probably, but there is a lot of money on the table for developers and so I think capitalism will be aligned with denser housing for a bit of time. Developers with deep pockets aren't interested in maintaining property values for single family homes, they will want to buy up land cheap and build station/commercial complexes for dense housing to build up around. That's my view anyway. The upside of dense living is the affordability for individuals, one of the downsides is that it can favour big corporate developers. Shared ownership structures are really important to help mitigate that for residential developments. In a society that works together this can be symbiotic, and really efficient way to build. For a country that lets the rich eat the poor, there is potential for exploitive scenarios to arise without the right regulation in place.
- gs17 1y ago
  There's another way it will be gamed without having to close or move anything: > (e) “High-frequency commuter rail” means a commuter rail service operating a total of at least 48 trains per day across both directions, > (r) “Very high frequency commuter rail” means a commuter rail service with a total of at least 72 trains per day across both directions I bet some schedules will be changed to fall below these requirements.
modeless 1y ago
Seems like cities will fight transit much harder than before. Add it to the pile of unintended consequences, growing as fast as new legislation is passed, and never shrinking. To be clear, I'm strongly in favor of more development. But when we solve the problems of bad legislation by adding more legislation instead of removing legislation, we are just kicking the can down the road.
wewewedxfgdf 1y ago
[flagged]
yahway 1y ago
The problem with ant zoning laws is that they pick winners and losers. They need abolished state-wide to ever have a true affect. Otherwise, these limited pockets get bought up by investors and again, are limited to tiny areas. Abolish it state wide and people will over build and then true affordability will return.
- wongarsu 1y ago
  The optimistic view is that a lot of small spots of dense housing exposes more people to it, which in time could lead to more people being in favor of zoning additional land for dense housing
- energy123 1y ago
  Correct, given that housing in one location is significantly fungible with housing in another location, barring some economic frictions. The total stock (both state-wide and nation-wide) is the metric that needs to be increased.
  - lotsofpulp 1y ago
    > Correct, given that housing in one location is significantly fungible with housing in another location, barring some economic frictions What do you mean by economic friction, because in real estate, “location, location, location” is the most important phrase. The economic opportunities available to someone in living within 1 hour of SF and San Jose are vastly different to someone living 4 hours away, hence the house in one location is not fungible with the house in another. Even on the more local level, the school district a house is located in will make a big difference.
    - davidw 1y ago
      I think they're talking about a matter of blocks, not hours of transportation.
- davidw 1y ago
  This bill barely passed (they got a majority +1, which they needed to pass) so a further reaching bill might have been difficult to sell. The LA area in particular, has some really bad elected officials in terms of housing.
y-curious 1y ago
I don't see anyone talking about it in the comments: Marin, the wealthy exurb north of SF, has always had a laughably aggressive hate towards public transit. I wonder if this was something they saw coming, as they are completely unaffected by this bill.
- aurareturn 1y ago
  [flagged]
  - username135 1y ago
    Unless those poor people are needed to clean and maintain their homes.
    - aurareturn 1y ago
      Yes but still no public transportation.
FilosofumRex 1y ago
It's joke... MA has had an affordable housing law (chapter 40B)for over 50 years. when it was passed housing affordability was a rising problem, today it's a crisis! Politicians are bound to the interests of property owners not those who can't afford it. Besides high density bring high crimes, and high concentrated poverty
- kstrauser 1y ago
  When I think concentrated poverty and crime, I definitely picture Manhattan and Tokyo.
Hilift 1y ago
"Bring dense housing" misses the plot. It prevents 50% of all development projects (in recent years) from being thwarted for no reason under the veil of environment laws. Some municipalities also had requirements to "get your neighbors approval", which resulted in bizarre interactions where residents would actually ask developers for things that cost millions of dollars. "Can you build a ground floor office for my dentist husband"? (Actual question). For those wondering, 80% of Palisades/Eaton fire residents will not rebuild and will sell. The process will take over three years and is frustrating even with the new legislation. This could result in some interesting multi-tenant developments in those areas.
- username135 1y ago
  Not many transit stops in either of those areas.
  - Hilift 1y ago
    There probably will be, but they don't need transit to transform development because no one wants three years of competing with their neighbor for developer and contractor resources. 80% will rent or buy elsewhere. Some may return and purchase into a new Palisades development. Probably worth noting that Rick Caruso, an LA developer and mayoral candidate, has one of the few developments ("Palisades Village") that was not burned due to it was designed with fire resistant exteriors, roofs and cladding.
smeeger 1y ago
there will be cases of cities resisting this by dragging their feet and it will be interesting to see. if a city wants to make it really expensive or dangerous to develop this opportunity then they certainly can. zoning is not the only consideration. and there are other things that elevate the cost of development like overbearing safety and accessibility regulations that are nation-wide. still, if this bill adds hundreds of thousands of units that will take a pretty meaningful bite out of the total shortage
atcon 1y ago
SB79 was “meant to address two crises at once: The state’s long-term housing shortage and the financial precarity of its public transit agencies.”[a] The 3rd crisis is the enormous budgetary deficits the state and cities are also facing: San Diego has a $300m deficit, SF $728m, LA $1b, CA $45b. One suspects the 2nd and 3rd crises are the intended targets. But it’s unclear how SB79 would fix transit’s fiscal cliffs. The SF BART system is facing a 2026 cliff and ascribes its steep revenue declines to high work from home rates and a struggling downtown area [c] The SD MTS system has a 2028 cliff LA Metro uses sales tax increases (measures M and R) to fund 50% of its budget (fare revenue funds only 1%), yet it still faces a 2030 cliff. RTO remains deeply unpopular and downtown commercial real estate has seen steep losses [d] However, SB79 does allow transit agencies to develop and acquire land adjacent to transit stops as an additional revenue source [e] SB79 supporters seemed to be focused on lowering multifamily rental prices, but again it’s unclear how SB79 would accomplish this, since it still depends on market incentives to add multifamily units. Banks or investors won’t loan money to developers unless the net operating income (rent) is high enough to justify investment. The other factor is interest rates, but SB79 can’t change that. Many existing multifamily properties struggle to break even and now have the highest loan delinquency rate after offices [e] Manville points out new multifamily supply is constrained by recent “mansion taxes” (eg 2023 ULA measure in LA, 2020 Prop 1 in SF)[f]. Also, SB79 reserves only 10% of a multifamily building to low income and allows market rate rents in the other units. SB79 would give even more leverage to institutional investors and developers over municipalities and communities. Their concerns are valid (eg zoning and development plans balanced over decades, gentrification, eminent domain, etc.) and shouldn’t be dismissed automatically as collateral damage in an attempt to drive down rental prices. One housing coalition estimates 2/3 of multifamily units in LA are owned by investment vehicles which historically have shown higher annual rent increases and eviction rates than local operators [g] [a] <https://calmatters.org/housing/2025/09/neighborhood-transit-upzoning/ https://calmatters.org/housing/2025/09/neighborhood-transit-...> [b] SF <https://sfstandard.com/2025/05/30/san-francisco-budget-screwed-lurie/ https://sfstandard.com/2025/05/30/san-francisco-budget-screw...> LA <https://calmatters.org/commentary/2025/03/california-bails-los-angeles-budget/ https://calmatters.org/commentary/2025/03/california-bails-l...> CA <https://apnews.com/article/california-budget-deficit-18ff9c1ec885ec5bc69e790a836d9bdd https://apnews.com/article/california-budget-deficit-18ff9c1...> [c] <https://www.bart.gov/sites/default/files/2025-01/FiscalCliff_Factsheet_2025.pdf https://www.bart.gov/sites/default/files/2025-01/FiscalCliff...> [d] <https://www.sfexaminer.com/news/business/stressed-sf-commercial-property-valuations-plunge-post-covid/article_a6c62592-5c06-11ef-97dd-2b79304c9eca.html https://www.sfexaminer.com/news/business/stressed-sf-commerc...> [e] <https://laist.com/news/housing-homelessness/sb79-heads-for-newsom-signature-bill-would-override-local-zoning-to-boost-transit-oriented-development https://laist.com/news/housing-homelessness/sb79-heads-for-n...> [f] <https://www.trepp.com/trepptalk/cmbs-delinquency-rate-increases-again-in-august-2025 https://www.trepp.com/trepptalk/cmbs-delinquency-rate-increa...> [g] <https://www.lewis.ucla.edu/research/the-consequences-of-measure-ula-some-clarifications/ https://www.lewis.ucla.edu/research/the-consequences-of-meas...> [h] <https://knock-la.com/los-angeles-rental-speculation-4022d16a0d28/ https://knock-la.com/los-angeles-rental-speculation-4022d16a...>

238 points by mji 1y ago

ggm 1y ago

... near transit hubs. It should be a net positive if it doesn't die in the courts for every single proposal. It's also not enough by itself but Rome wasn't built in a day.

mayneack 1y ago
With the CEQA reform from a couple months ago, those court cases should be lessened a bit.
Analemma_ 1y ago
SB 79 is just the latest in a long sequence of pro-housing bills to get passed in California in the last 5-6 years. I’d rather them do one or two small winnable battles per year than bet it all on a giant do-everything bill which might galvanize more opposition. Frankly, this strategy seems to be a good one considering what a winning streak CA YIMBYs have been on.
nilsbunger 1y ago
This law (and other recent CA YIMBY laws) don't create much surface area to sue or slow a project: * The approvals are designed to be "ministerial", meaning there is no discretion on whether to approve or not. If the project meets the objective criteria spelled out in the law, it must be approved. * If the city doesn't approve in a limited time window, it's deemed "approved" by default. * Ministerial approval protects the project from CEQA lawsuits. CEQA requires the government to consider the environment when making decisions. When the approval is ministerial, the government doesn't make any decisions, so there is no CEQA process to sue against.
jimt1234 1y ago
> ... near transit hubs. I don't understand this narrative that California has been pushing the last few years - basically, "There's a bus stop in the neighborhood, therefore we can add a bunch of new housing without doing any other infrastructure upgrades." I just don't see it. What I do see after new housing is added is insufferable traffic and no parking - and empty buses.
- Rebelgecko 1y ago
  Probably 99% of bus stations aren't relevant for SB79. I think the goal is to make it more like dense cities outside of California (NYC, Paris, Tokyo, etc) where car ownership can be unnecessary or even a liability. Public transit is a lot more scalable than cars. A train that only has 50 people on it may look nearly empty but it's better than having 40 cars on the road.
- SilverElfin 1y ago
  HN has one particular view, which is to keep increasing density without care for any other factor. But density does change neighborhoods and quality of life in many negative ways, including the example you shared. Someone may get to move into that area at a lower price. But someone else loses what they had. I don’t understand why those who demand lower priced housing are more valid. And too often, the response here is to attack anyone who brings up the negatives of high density living (edit: here come the oh-so-predictable downvotes). I suspect that is partly ideological, and partly due to age skewing younger here. But I wish there was more tolerance for mid-size towns that don’t get density forced on them, but can stay a healthy balanced size because that’s what the locals want to hold onto for their own quality of life.
  - AlotOfReading 1y ago
    The people who want small, mid-sized towns are free to live literally anywhere they want outside major metro areas. There's 90+% of the state by land area left to them. This discussion is and has always been centered around the housing crisis in urban centers, where it's been illegal to build density for decades. This has caused issues where those urban centers can't afford for people to provide critical services ( like teachers, laborers, medical staff, social services workers, etc) because housing simply doesn't exist at a price they can afford. Unless the suggestion is to make do with crumbling community services, housing reform is mandatory.
    - SilverElfin 1y ago
      > The people who want small, mid-sized towns are free to live literally anywhere they want outside major metro areas. This is what I was referring to, in terms of HN’s attitudes on this topic. Why should a “major metro area” change to accommodate newcomers? It should just stay serving its current residents, who may want it to stay the size it is. The ones desiring to live there at a price they can afford are the entitled ones. They could be the ones to choose to live “anywhere they want outside major metro areas”. Major metro areas also don’t just come in one size. There are larger cities and smaller ones, denser ones and less dense ones. And it is perfectly valid to want a smaller one.
klooney 1y ago
There may never be another transit hub built
TulliusCicero 1y ago
California spent decades digging this hole and it's gonna take decades to dig themselves out, even with bills like these. But that's still better than refusing to fix the problem.

standardUser 1y ago

https://archive.is/a5Mwi https://archive.is/a5Mwi

TinkersW 1y ago

Nine stories anywhere in the state near a bus stop seems abit much, most small towns don't have anything over 2 or 3 stories(nor do they have a housing shortage). CA lawmakers seem to pass laws focused on cities, and ignore the fact that maybe this isn't such a good idea in smaller towns & rural areas.

cortesoft 1y ago
No one is going to build a 9 story building in a small town or rural area, it wouldn’t make any economic sense. Only places where land is valuable and scarce are economically viable for a 9 story building.
nilsbunger 1y ago
I don't think we're going to see much of that: * The projects won't be profitable in smaller towns, because rents aren't high enough to recoup the cost. * Tall buildings cost MORE per square foot than short buildings, so tall buildings only get built where land costs are very high. * This law's top density (7-8 floors I think?) only applies in a narrow window (0.25 to 0.5 miles) around major transit stops with LOTS of service, like < 15 minute bus intervals with dedicated BRT lanes, or trains with > 48 arrivals per day each way. Small towns don't have that kind of infrastructure. * The law only applies in cities with > 35,000 people.
Rebelgecko 1y ago
9 stories buildings are only for areas with heavy rail. It's a lower limit for bus stops, and my understanding is that bus stations only count if they have dedicated bus lanes, <15 minute headways, and meet some other requirements. I've never seen dedicated bus lanes in a rural area (which are basically exempt for the law for other reasons) and you're lucky if your headways are under an hour lol
nullc 1y ago
I don't believe it applies in any smaller towns or rural areas, the area has to cross some threshold. If not for that the headline we might see in the news: California towns rip out transit systems. Already this might create some weird incentives to oppose transit expansions.

mutator 1y ago

The discourse around high density housing does not make it clear what specific type of development do advocates prefer. Its likely that the market will have to decide for itself, but if we end up with an abundance of just 1/2 bedroom rental apartments, targeted towards transient younger people, I fear it's just going to enrich the property management class, and families with kids/older parents looking for larger places and hoping to establish roots are still going to stuck fighting the pricing/supply wars.

nilsbunger 1y ago
The economics of 3BR family units are typically hard for developers to make money on. Bobby Fijan (https://x.com/bobbyfijan https://x.com/bobbyfijan) is an example of a developer who is a vocal advocate of family-centric apartments and townhomes. His projects look amazing. He also talks about the challenges creating family housing.
- davidw 1y ago
  Single stair reform is something that helps in terms of making more family sized units (aka 'homes'). I saw the author of this book give a talk earlier this year and found his point of view pretty convincing: https://islandpress.org/books/building-people#desc https://islandpress.org/books/building-people#desc
  - theluketaylor 1y ago
    Single stair is one of the reforms I'd most like to see. At the time 2 stair requirements were adopted it was vital, with devastating urban fires a common occurrence. We have so many new options for both preventing fire and keeping evacuation routes accessible for hours that it's no longer required. The regulation has a huge impact on the layout and form it's possible to build, and I think it's a huge driver of the visceral reaction against apartment living in the US and Canada. Being able to build 4-8 storey apartments on a single lot with a central stair where every unit has windows on at least 2 walls would be a game-changer for north american urban spaces and a pathway out of the housing crisis.

nilsbunger 1y ago

A Redditor created a great interactive map showing where SB 79 applies in California here: https://www.reddit.com/r/yimby/comments/1ne2q87/sb_79_interactive_map/ https://www.reddit.com/r/yimby/comments/1ne2q87/sb_79_intera...

avidiax 1y ago
This really shows how limited the effect of this bill is, but it's still much better than nothing.
- lacker 1y ago
  A big question is whether these areas actually turn into denser housing, or whether something else in the process manages to bog it down. Plenty of housing bills have seemed like a big deal when you looked at the area they impacted, but in practice they led to little new housing.
  - nilsbunger 1y ago
    A lot of the California bills had various poison pills in them that reduced their effectiveness. For example, SB684 allowed building and subdividing up to 10 units on a multifamily lot. BUT, the lot wasn’t eligible if you had to knock down a building that had tenants in the past N years to avoid displacement of people. You can probably guess how many multifamily lots are out there where you don’t have to tear down an existing building with tenants. There are other issues too. Interest rates and tariffs make a lot of projects not viable financially.
  - jerlam 1y ago
    Yes, sadly just because the zoning has changed does not mean that any of the buildings that already exist will be torn down and rebuilt for decades, if not longer. And localities have all kinds of restrictions and fees that still prevent building to take place.
  - nerdponx 1y ago
    The problem we are seeing in suburban MA right now is that they're building the wrong kind of housing to address the greatest shortage, and doing it in a way that does not promote the long-term community well-being. Developers are jamming in large numbers of small "luxury" units with insufficient parking in a car-dependent area in whatever lot they can get their hands on, instead of density increasing organically throughout the immediate area around downtown, adding ADUs and replacing large single family homes with 2/3/4-unit condos. Why is this happening? Because zoning boards don't allow reasonable multifamily development in densifying areas, so developers do the only thing they can do, which is build in already-built-up areas with looser zoning, and/or ram projects through using a state low income housing provision called 40B. The effect is that while the apartment market for young professionals is going to continue to soften, the market for comfortable family dwellings remains brutal and increasingly unaffordable. There are 80+ unit apartment buildings literally surrounded by multi-lane stroads, while less than a mile away there are single family homes on quiet tree lined streets where you could easily have the same number of units in multifamily condo buildings and garden apartments, and still retain the comforts of suburbia. So whatever poison pills are in here, it cannot be worse than the status quo in MA, in which the development is too much of the wrong thing and everyone loses in the end except the developers and real estate agents.

davidw 1y ago

It has been really amazing to see this finally come to fruition. This has been years in the making, and is real progress in starting to fix California's massive housing shortage. I know a number of the people involved in this work and they have put so much effort into it. They are going to be in a partying mood at the YIMBYTown conference taking place shortly: https://yimby.town/ https://yimby.town/ !

Schnitz 1y ago

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ezfe 1y ago
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lalaland1125 1y ago
What middle class SFHs? There are no middle class SFH neighborhoods remaining in Los Angeles or the Bay Area. Take a look at Zillow. Your average young person isn't buying anything anyways. Your information is at least two decades, maybe three, out of date. But this bill will help lower rents, which is a very worthy goal in and of itself.
epistasis 1y ago
Those SFH are already rentals, from small landlords that bought a second, then a third, then a fourth home. The ship has already sailed on the redistribution, because 1) California created an artificial housing shortage from regulatory capture by home owners, and 2) condo defect law differs so much from SFH defect law that it's almost always insane to sell condos instead of renting apartments. This is not the doing of SB 79, this was Boomers deciding to milk future generations and prevent them from having the same easy opportunity that they enjoyed.
platevoltage 1y ago
Oh no! the thing thats already happening might happen some more!

danans 1y ago

Credit to State Senator Senator Scott Wiener (SF) who has been the primary champion of this and other related legislation.

xrd 1y ago

This happened in Oregon a few years ago: any cities with 25k or more people had to permit greater density. I'm optimistic about housing on the West Coast for the first time in a long, long time. This will transform things in a big way.

davidw 1y ago
Oregon - thanks to governor Tina Kotek - pushed those reforms further this year: https://oregoncapitalchronicle.com/2025/07/29/gov-kotek-signs-laws-to-boost-housing-supply-but-more-work-to-be-done-to-solve-crisis/ https://oregoncapitalchronicle.com/2025/07/29/gov-kotek-sign... I got to play a small part in that, going to Salem to say my piece in favor: https://oregoncapitalchronicle.com/2025/03/04/oregon-gov-kotek-housing-advocates-push-for-more-options-fewer-regulations/ https://oregoncapitalchronicle.com/2025/03/04/oregon-gov-kot... She liked my hoodie! https://bsky.app/profile/tinakotek.bsky.social/post/3lkea36k64c26 https://bsky.app/profile/tinakotek.bsky.social/post/3lkea36k... That said, what her bills have accomplished is a bit different than CA: rather than larger buildings close to transit, we legalized 4-plexes and a variety of other housing types that use land more efficiently, throughout cities.
- xrd 1y ago
  That article you posted is terrific. I love the story of the "grandmother" in Cully Grove. Thank you for your work on this. You'll leave a great legacy in Oregon!
dmoy 1y ago
It happened in WA two years ago as well, but Seattle dragged its feet as long as humanly possible in implementing a compliant zoning policy. https://www.theurbanist.org/2025/05/27/seattle-just-rezoned-the-entire-city/ https://www.theurbanist.org/2025/05/27/seattle-just-rezoned-...
- davidw 1y ago
  Oddly enough, it's Spokane that is lapping everyone on a lot of these reforms. They're just doing one thing after another without making a big deal out of it.

ec109685 1y ago

In addition to condos next to transit, California should be fixing roads, so people can move further from their job. I know it’s unpopular nimby opinion but hoping people in these homes won’t be driving cars is misguided. Give them parking, fix roads for further commute and let people live where they want. Save money by reducing regulations on elevator size, allow for single egress buildings and ensure we aren’t kowtowing to labor too much. Future Waymo like technology makes driving your own car even less stressful and furthers the gap between public transit and cars. “ California Senate Bill (SB) 79 reduces or eliminates parking minimums for new residential developments located near Transit-Oriented Development (TOD) stops”

stouset 1y ago
More roads just does not scale. Look at LA. Look at San Francisco. More capacity isn’t just going to magically appear. Waymo is only going to increase overall utilization by reducing the marginal cost of running a car. They aren’t magic traffic-solving devices, they are traffic-adding like DoorDash and Uber have been.
- fooker 1y ago
  It doesn't matter what you think scales. If you don't design infrastructure based on what people want, they are going to do it anyway. And things will be extremely chaotic. No amount of fees, fines, etc will change that.
  - stouset 1y ago
    If you design infrastructure based on what you think people want instead of what actually produces good outcomes, you end up with gridlock. Travel some time. Take a look at what’s happened in Paris over the last several years. See what’s happened in Utrecht and Amsterdam. These are far from the only examples.
    - fooker 1y ago
      The zeitgeist of what produces good outcomes tends to change somewhat fast. This is the line of thought that led the US to tear down railways, city center train stations, and built freeways through the middle of cities. They thought they were planning for good outcomes too. I have traveled all over the world, and have lived in Amsterdam for half a year. I like that model sure, but doesn't change the fact that Americans want suburban sprawl. You should move to where you like though.

m463 1y ago

I kind of wonder if this can be gamed, by closing train stations or moving bus stops, or bus lines.

ehnto 1y ago
edit: I should preface, I am very pro dense housing. Probably, but there is a lot of money on the table for developers and so I think capitalism will be aligned with denser housing for a bit of time. Developers with deep pockets aren't interested in maintaining property values for single family homes, they will want to buy up land cheap and build station/commercial complexes for dense housing to build up around. That's my view anyway. The upside of dense living is the affordability for individuals, one of the downsides is that it can favour big corporate developers. Shared ownership structures are really important to help mitigate that for residential developments. In a society that works together this can be symbiotic, and really efficient way to build. For a country that lets the rich eat the poor, there is potential for exploitive scenarios to arise without the right regulation in place.
gs17 1y ago
There's another way it will be gamed without having to close or move anything: > (e) “High-frequency commuter rail” means a commuter rail service operating a total of at least 48 trains per day across both directions, > (r) “Very high frequency commuter rail” means a commuter rail service with a total of at least 72 trains per day across both directions I bet some schedules will be changed to fall below these requirements.

modeless 1y ago

Seems like cities will fight transit much harder than before. Add it to the pile of unintended consequences, growing as fast as new legislation is passed, and never shrinking. To be clear, I'm strongly in favor of more development. But when we solve the problems of bad legislation by adding more legislation instead of removing legislation, we are just kicking the can down the road.

wewewedxfgdf 1y ago

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yahway 1y ago

The problem with ant zoning laws is that they pick winners and losers. They need abolished state-wide to ever have a true affect. Otherwise, these limited pockets get bought up by investors and again, are limited to tiny areas. Abolish it state wide and people will over build and then true affordability will return.

wongarsu 1y ago
The optimistic view is that a lot of small spots of dense housing exposes more people to it, which in time could lead to more people being in favor of zoning additional land for dense housing
energy123 1y ago
Correct, given that housing in one location is significantly fungible with housing in another location, barring some economic frictions. The total stock (both state-wide and nation-wide) is the metric that needs to be increased.
- lotsofpulp 1y ago
  > Correct, given that housing in one location is significantly fungible with housing in another location, barring some economic frictions What do you mean by economic friction, because in real estate, “location, location, location” is the most important phrase. The economic opportunities available to someone in living within 1 hour of SF and San Jose are vastly different to someone living 4 hours away, hence the house in one location is not fungible with the house in another. Even on the more local level, the school district a house is located in will make a big difference.
  - davidw 1y ago
    I think they're talking about a matter of blocks, not hours of transportation.
davidw 1y ago
This bill barely passed (they got a majority +1, which they needed to pass) so a further reaching bill might have been difficult to sell. The LA area in particular, has some really bad elected officials in terms of housing.

y-curious 1y ago

I don't see anyone talking about it in the comments: Marin, the wealthy exurb north of SF, has always had a laughably aggressive hate towards public transit. I wonder if this was something they saw coming, as they are completely unaffected by this bill.

aurareturn 1y ago
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- username135 1y ago
  Unless those poor people are needed to clean and maintain their homes.
  - aurareturn 1y ago
    Yes but still no public transportation.

FilosofumRex 1y ago

It's joke... MA has had an affordable housing law (chapter 40B)for over 50 years. when it was passed housing affordability was a rising problem, today it's a crisis! Politicians are bound to the interests of property owners not those who can't afford it. Besides high density bring high crimes, and high concentrated poverty

kstrauser 1y ago
When I think concentrated poverty and crime, I definitely picture Manhattan and Tokyo.

Hilift 1y ago

"Bring dense housing" misses the plot. It prevents 50% of all development projects (in recent years) from being thwarted for no reason under the veil of environment laws. Some municipalities also had requirements to "get your neighbors approval", which resulted in bizarre interactions where residents would actually ask developers for things that cost millions of dollars. "Can you build a ground floor office for my dentist husband"? (Actual question). For those wondering, 80% of Palisades/Eaton fire residents will not rebuild and will sell. The process will take over three years and is frustrating even with the new legislation. This could result in some interesting multi-tenant developments in those areas.

username135 1y ago
Not many transit stops in either of those areas.
- Hilift 1y ago
  There probably will be, but they don't need transit to transform development because no one wants three years of competing with their neighbor for developer and contractor resources. 80% will rent or buy elsewhere. Some may return and purchase into a new Palisades development. Probably worth noting that Rick Caruso, an LA developer and mayoral candidate, has one of the few developments ("Palisades Village") that was not burned due to it was designed with fire resistant exteriors, roofs and cladding.

smeeger 1y ago

there will be cases of cities resisting this by dragging their feet and it will be interesting to see. if a city wants to make it really expensive or dangerous to develop this opportunity then they certainly can. zoning is not the only consideration. and there are other things that elevate the cost of development like overbearing safety and accessibility regulations that are nation-wide. still, if this bill adds hundreds of thousands of units that will take a pretty meaningful bite out of the total shortage

atcon 1y ago

SB79 was “meant to address two crises at once: The state’s long-term housing shortage and the financial precarity of its public transit agencies.”[a] The 3rd crisis is the enormous budgetary deficits the state and cities are also facing: San Diego has a $300m deficit, SF $728m, LA $1b, CA $45b. One suspects the 2nd and 3rd crises are the intended targets. But it’s unclear how SB79 would fix transit’s fiscal cliffs. The SF BART system is facing a 2026 cliff and ascribes its steep revenue declines to high work from home rates and a struggling downtown area [c] The SD MTS system has a 2028 cliff LA Metro uses sales tax increases (measures M and R) to fund 50% of its budget (fare revenue funds only 1%), yet it still faces a 2030 cliff. RTO remains deeply unpopular and downtown commercial real estate has seen steep losses [d] However, SB79 does allow transit agencies to develop and acquire land adjacent to transit stops as an additional revenue source [e] SB79 supporters seemed to be focused on lowering multifamily rental prices, but again it’s unclear how SB79 would accomplish this, since it still depends on market incentives to add multifamily units. Banks or investors won’t loan money to developers unless the net operating income (rent) is high enough to justify investment. The other factor is interest rates, but SB79 can’t change that. Many existing multifamily properties struggle to break even and now have the highest loan delinquency rate after offices [e] Manville points out new multifamily supply is constrained by recent “mansion taxes” (eg 2023 ULA measure in LA, 2020 Prop 1 in SF)[f]. Also, SB79 reserves only 10% of a multifamily building to low income and allows market rate rents in the other units. SB79 would give even more leverage to institutional investors and developers over municipalities and communities. Their concerns are valid (eg zoning and development plans balanced over decades, gentrification, eminent domain, etc.) and shouldn’t be dismissed automatically as collateral damage in an attempt to drive down rental prices. One housing coalition estimates 2/3 of multifamily units in LA are owned by investment vehicles which historically have shown higher annual rent increases and eviction rates than local operators [g] [a] <https://calmatters.org/housing/2025/09/neighborhood-transit-upzoning/ https://calmatters.org/housing/2025/09/neighborhood-transit-...> [b] SF <https://sfstandard.com/2025/05/30/san-francisco-budget-screwed-lurie/ https://sfstandard.com/2025/05/30/san-francisco-budget-screw...> LA <https://calmatters.org/commentary/2025/03/california-bails-los-angeles-budget/ https://calmatters.org/commentary/2025/03/california-bails-l...> CA <https://apnews.com/article/california-budget-deficit-18ff9c1ec885ec5bc69e790a836d9bdd https://apnews.com/article/california-budget-deficit-18ff9c1...> [c] <https://www.bart.gov/sites/default/files/2025-01/FiscalCliff_Factsheet_2025.pdf https://www.bart.gov/sites/default/files/2025-01/FiscalCliff...> [d] <https://www.sfexaminer.com/news/business/stressed-sf-commercial-property-valuations-plunge-post-covid/article_a6c62592-5c06-11ef-97dd-2b79304c9eca.html https://www.sfexaminer.com/news/business/stressed-sf-commerc...> [e] <https://laist.com/news/housing-homelessness/sb79-heads-for-newsom-signature-bill-would-override-local-zoning-to-boost-transit-oriented-development https://laist.com/news/housing-homelessness/sb79-heads-for-n...> [f] <https://www.trepp.com/trepptalk/cmbs-delinquency-rate-increases-again-in-august-2025 https://www.trepp.com/trepptalk/cmbs-delinquency-rate-increa...> [g] <https://www.lewis.ucla.edu/research/the-consequences-of-measure-ula-some-clarifications/ https://www.lewis.ucla.edu/research/the-consequences-of-meas...> [h] <https://knock-la.com/los-angeles-rental-speculation-4022d16a0d28/ https://knock-la.com/los-angeles-rental-speculation-4022d16a...>