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/ !
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.
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.
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.
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.
Ug. I'm a 'yimby' and a Weiner voter. But his take on San Francisco transit is just like really bad. Pokey streetcars and buses, doomed to fail. You build out there in those blue areas, and they are mostly all driving.
My take is you build it, and THEN they come. Put in some GOOD transit. Make sure the utilities are in place. Developers will then flock to the place. This whole thing is using inside-out logic. Have a real plan first.
Nah, if you build high-density housing near transit stops the transit will definitely get more ridership (and ergo more funding). You're painting with broad strokes saying "they'll drive anyway!" but really a lot of car trips will get replaced with transit or walking, and that trend will only increase as more dense housing gets built.
We DID build good transit. It takes 15 minutes to get from the MacArthur BART to downtown San Francisco! But the walkable area around that station is full of single-family housing. It's a huge waste building all of this incredible public transit and then not allowing apartment buildings near it.
The same is true for so many of the East Bay BART stops. Amazing transit but apartment buildings are banned so it's much more expensive to live there than it should be.
Because developers are going to include the parking so everyone out there can drive where they are going. Which is my point. The "transit" aspect of this bill is total bullshit. If you like cars, and want more traffic, this is for you.
Those areas are fairly small, and their number is limited. That might drive more space efficient solutions like underground parking or selling spots in a parking garage that serves multiple buildings
But his take on San Francisco transit is just like really bad. Pokey
streetcars and buses, doomed to fail. You build out there in those blue
areas, and they are mostly all driving.
One of the best parts about where I lived in San Francisco was that I was around the corner from a streetcar stop. Pre-pandemic the streetcar was absolutely packed during commute hours because people absolutely do take advantage of "pokey streetcars and buses".
My take is you build it, and THEN they come. Put in some GOOD transit.
What is GOOD transit? The Bay Area's spent a fortune building out BART (yuck) and every extension has only succeeded in siphoning money away from other transit.
Yep, me (and my politician Weiner) have some great public transit, so that's certainly true of some places.
Those folks that he is up-zoning out in the avenues, they are driving. Different culture out there. Downvote reality to the left.
GOOD transit it obvious, and it certainly is not a gigantic tunnel deep under downtown San Jose which is 400% over budget. Do not claim there is a lack of money for any of this. The political machine is just totally malfunctional.
Just curious exactly what neighborhood and how long did you live there? (duboce triangle, a long time)
I know a bunch of people who live/d out there, they take muni downtown but mostly have a car. Perhaps you could regal in tales of your car-free lifestyle in the Sunset, but i'm not seeing it. Weiner wants condos out there and he does not give a shit about your bus ride.
As I pointed out earlier streetcar, not a bus ride.
but i'm not seeing it
Look harder.
Pre-pandemic the L and N were the two busiest rail routes (and the busiest lines systemwide) even considering they share most of the underground portion with four other lines. Somewhere around 75,000 daily trips.
e-bikes seem to have been invented for SF. They solve the hill problem and long lines at school drop offs. I see their growth continuing to reduce car needs in SF.
Sadly, I say this as someone who lives in Duboce Triangle and owns two cars.
> My take is you build it, and THEN they come. Put in some GOOD transit. Make sure the utilities are in place.
The problem is, that costs money that, for a few years at the very least, will not be recouped. Not many politicians have the ability to push such efforts through regardless of profitability, especially not when the topic in question will be abused by the opposition in their usual culture war bullshit.
It costs a lot less to build transit infrastructure before or at the same time as everything else compared with adding it later, even if the line is underused as density is added.
The best alternative is a well-planned phased line with carefully protected right-of-way and a dedicated source of long term funding. Bonus points for it being a combination of value capture taxes and the transit agency being a property developer in their own right around stations. The early phase can be inside the boundary of current development so there are people to ride right away. Developers can build and market using the upcoming line, and prospective residents can be confident it will happen with funding secured.
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.
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.
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.
"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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
In this case specifically, northern California was mostly in favor, and the wider LA area was mostly against. I almost said southern California, but actually San Diego was in favor too.
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
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.
> 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.
Is "ant" antiquated? Zoning is a good thing. If you abolished all zoning, construction would be completely disorganized as it was in the California Gold Rush.
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
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.
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.
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.
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.
You are mistaken on the basic facts of where this permits more hosing.
You also do now understand people in urban areas and their desires. For example look at Seattle, which has added a lot of population, but only added 1 car per 30 new people:
For a few generations, 99% of housing that was built was car dependent. That's not what the market wants. So when options are provided that allow living without a car, people flock to it.
While I wholly support density and bike everywhere myself, I don’t know if “people are getting poorer in Seattle” is the win “The Urbanist” thinks it is.
I can only guess what you mean here, but if you assume that people who don't own cars are poorer than those with cars, you are wrong and don't understand wealth.
Those who move to cities and can live without cars have far higher incomes than median, and because they are not burning the average of $700/month on a car, they accumulate wealth far faster.
If I have misunderstood your assumption, please correct me, but the "only poor people don't have cars" fallacy is the only way I can make sense of your comment, and the only people I have heard express it are deeply out of touch with the modern world.
Seattle median income growth is the lowest it has ever been in the last three years, since 2022, in low single digits compared to its past high-to-double-digit growth since 2013. In a completely positivist sense, it would be really improbable for that to occur and also for reduced car ownership to be associated with greater wealth. Of course, reduced car ownership is pretty much associated with lower wealth everywhere in the world, like with pretty much owning anything, like homes or expensive degrees or whatever.
There are a FEW things that decline with greater wealth, like number of children, that buck intuition, but it’s not super clear what the cause and effect is. Suffice it to say, if what you were saying is true, which is improbable - I’m not saying impossible, just really improbable - we would be talking about it way more.
Now why you have to go and call me out of touch and all these big harrowing names, I don’t know. I’m just trying to talk about what is likely to be occurring. People make less money and cars are more expensive so fewer people own cars: that shouldn’t be a controversial POV.
Median income growth slowing or decreasing does mean things are working well. We don’t want middle class families being shut out of our housing markets and working class folks needing two hour commutes to come support our cities.
Every affordable housing project that gets built slows the growth of the area AMI.
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.
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.
> 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.
As I explained in the previous post, it causes issues because it results in people who would otherwise fill jobs providing critical services to the community like teaching either moving to cheaper areas or switching careers entirely. This article mentions several of the cities impacted by SB 79:
Are you arguing that large urban areas shouldn't have schools and vet offices? Because that's where we've been heading absent meaningful housing reform.
Normally, this situation would result in wages rising, but there's a few issues.
1) The scale of the shortage is so severe that demand far outstrips supply, which means price-based solutions simply result in high wage earners taking all of the available supply.
2) Prices are rising faster than wages.
3) These industries don't have the cost basis to compete with high wage earners. Are you happy with your local vet prices? Are you willing to triple or quadruple the education taxes you currently pay?
4) Even adjusted wages still cause fewer people to enter these industries from other parts of the US, or switch into more lucrative careers. That's socially problematic.
Because "current residents" also include the children and teenagers currently living there? You act like young adults are 100% flown in by storks, as if the city doesn't itself procreate, as if school children doesn't grow up into young adults.
Major metro areas have overbuilt commercial properties and underbuilt residential properties because commercial properties provide much more (property and sales) tax revenue than residential properties.
This is anti-social, and puts the burden of housing all these workers on the rest of the region, as well as forcing the rest of the region to share transportation costs.
This is pretty obviously unfair. Why should poorer midsized towns and suburbs have to lose money so that large metro areas can maintain a housing density level that lets them cosplay as small towns while overbuilding commercial density?
I confess that this attitude infuriates me. How did these become major metro areas in the first place? You changed the quality of life in your neighborhood when you moved there. You don’t get to say “that’s it, stop here, it’s on its final, perfect form” any more than the previous residents were before you arrived.
> 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.
Whether good or bad, it's important to realize this is not true in California, with regard to these laws. They apply everywhere, not only in urban centers.
So if there are people who want small towns without dense development, that option has been taken away entirely.
I live in a tiny town (population < 10K) surrounded by forest, far from any urban center. An d even here some of the wooded areas are being clearcut to build dense apartments due to these laws.
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.
I think you are incorrectly missing that many larger units (both 3+ bedroom apartments and houses) are currently filled with singles or couples with roommates who would rather live alone in 1 or 2 bedrooms, but can't due to inadequate supply.
Building 1/2 bedrooms would help those people move out, freeing up larger units for families.
> I fear it's just going to enrich the property management class
The property management class benefits most from the current system with no construction and high rents. Building a bunch of 1/2 bedrooms, triggering lower rents, would cause them to lose money.
I wonder if this is true. There is significant risk in price changes for renting (or even HOA fees for condominiums), such that many middle class people might feel more secure living in their home with a near zero interest rate mortgage, if not a paid off mortgage.
On top of that, most jurisdictions (in the US) subsidize property tax rates for senior citizens, so there is a lot less price volatility for simply remaining in one’s home (or even moving to a different, but smaller detached single family home).
Unless a person specifically wants an urban lifestyle in a shared building, I don’t see much impetus to move out. Worst case, they get to stay in their home they have gotten used to and have space for visitors, best case they save a bunch of money and sleep easy knowing their costs are more controlled.
I was talking about renters moving out of larger apartments or shared homes into 1/2 bedroom apartments.
Middle class homeownership is basically dead in California due to the absurd price of housing. Almost everyone young who didn't inherit wealth or earn 90th percentile income is renting
The economics of 3BR family units are typically hard for developers to make money on. Bobby Fijan (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.
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.
> I think it's a huge driver of the visceral reaction against apartment living in the US and Canada.
On the one hand, maybe, but on the other hand, apartments (with the same number of bedrooms for the same COL-adjusted price) in the US are enormous compared to those in Asia and in Europe. I think the real source(s) of the visceral reaction(s) is, in no particular order, Americans' prioritization of personal independence over pragmatism (and I don't mean that pejoratively, though it can get stubborn at times), America's fairly weak renter protections/regulations, and the poor build quality of many American apartments (with dogshit sound and climate-proofing). I think it's a mix of a fundamentally American aversion to adding an additional person telling you what to do with genuine issues in the paradigm where you're paying up the ass for heating/cooling because your landlord doesn't particularly feel like installing double-pane windows, and at the same time your neighbors and neighborhood are obnoxiously loud.
You don't think that younger people need housing too?
How about all the empty nesters that are sitting on 4 bedroom homes but are unwilling to move. Are you going to propose legislation to make them?
Will you propose legislation to specially encourage more multi bedroom homes?
The attitude of "this doesn't benefit a narrow band of people that I want to benefit, therefore it must be stopped" is why California is in such a housing mess right now.
Unless we see unexpected side effects (like a lower number of housing or even more housing demands due to SB 79) I guess this will indirectly help the buyers looking for larger properties since so many people have no choice but purchasing a unnecessarily spacious house thanks to inflexible zoning.
Anything larger gets smeared as a "luxury apartment". There is no winning. Build, build, build, build. Public housing AND private housing. Just build. That's it.
> but if we end up with an abundance of just 1/2 bedroom rental apartments
That's still a massive win. To replace 10 single family homes supporting 2-3 people each with a 9 story building supporting many multiples of that is a win for society.
If the people chasing 3 and 4 bedroom apartments accepted smaller rooms, they could still be economical vs studio/1/2 BR apartments and condos.
> That's still a massive win. To replace 10 single family homes supporting 2-3 people each with a 9 story building supporting many multiples of that is a win for society.
I am curious what percentage of people would (or do) forego having kids if they do not think they can afford to buy (or eventually buy) a detached single family home.
I can’t say I would have been keen on having kids if I had to live in the quality of pretty much all the apartment buildings I have been in.
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]
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.
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.
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
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”
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.
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.
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.
> furthers the gap between public transit and cars.
It doesn't have to. If Waymo (and other autonomous taxis) were clever -- and maybe they are -- they would spend their lobbing money on high speed trains and then capture the "last mile" market.
Some years ago I was riding with a friend north on the 15 (San Diego, after a decade+ absences) and my noticeable wtf face prompted a "yeah, they built a freeway in the center of the freeway". It's an abomination. When I was there, I-15 was generally for the longer drives. My friends that lived in Temecula/North County etc would spend hours of their life driving (or slowly rolling) into SD for school/work/play.
A high speed train would have fit where they put the supplemental freeway. Now there is no more room to expand once they need more capacity; extra trains or cars could be added to a train to solve the same thing and placed along the freeway there is minimal to no neighborhood inconvenience. Then companies like waymo can take people to their final destination.
People who pay a premium to live in a condo close to transit will almost certainly have vastly lower VMT than people who live in a SFH in a non-walkable area. Do they need more roads than the handful of houses that condo building replaced? Sure, so I can't disagree with you there. But they're all going to have massive underground garages, so a spot per unit on average is probably plenty.
Robotaxis are good, but everyone owning a driverless car is bad.
Imagine you get to your destination, there’s no parking (or no free parking), so you tell your car to just circle the block while you’re inside. You spend an hour there at the tanning salon, and the car has just been circling, using the street as a parking lot and creating congestion. What happens when everyone does that?
I’m a big proponent of driverless cars, but we will need laws that ban individual private ownership. We’re going to have to experience the tragedy of the commons first because people really won’t want to give up their cars.
Private driverless cars will surely be a thing in the future because people will want them and be willing to pay for them. I sure would buy a Waymo style car if I could. I think it would be cool if they could drop you off at your destination and then circle around until it finds parking.
I paid $40 to park for 3 hours in Boston yesterday. I could drive around the city at an average speed of 10-15 miles per hour for under $3 in gas per hour.
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.
* 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.
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.
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
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.
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/ !
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_intera...
This really shows how limited the effect of this bill is, but it's still much better than nothing.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Ug. I'm a 'yimby' and a Weiner voter. But his take on San Francisco transit is just like really bad. Pokey streetcars and buses, doomed to fail. You build out there in those blue areas, and they are mostly all driving.
My take is you build it, and THEN they come. Put in some GOOD transit. Make sure the utilities are in place. Developers will then flock to the place. This whole thing is using inside-out logic. Have a real plan first.
Nah, if you build high-density housing near transit stops the transit will definitely get more ridership (and ergo more funding). You're painting with broad strokes saying "they'll drive anyway!" but really a lot of car trips will get replaced with transit or walking, and that trend will only increase as more dense housing gets built.
We DID build good transit. It takes 15 minutes to get from the MacArthur BART to downtown San Francisco! But the walkable area around that station is full of single-family housing. It's a huge waste building all of this incredible public transit and then not allowing apartment buildings near it.
The same is true for so many of the East Bay BART stops. Amazing transit but apartment buildings are banned so it's much more expensive to live there than it should be.
How are developers going to flock to the place if it’s zoned for Single Family Homes? The whole point of the bill is to upzone
Because developers are going to include the parking so everyone out there can drive where they are going. Which is my point. The "transit" aspect of this bill is total bullshit. If you like cars, and want more traffic, this is for you.
Those areas are fairly small, and their number is limited. That might drive more space efficient solutions like underground parking or selling spots in a parking garage that serves multiple buildings
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Yep, me (and my politician Weiner) have some great public transit, so that's certainly true of some places.
Those folks that he is up-zoning out in the avenues, they are driving. Different culture out there. Downvote reality to the left.
GOOD transit it obvious, and it certainly is not a gigantic tunnel deep under downtown San Jose which is 400% over budget. Do not claim there is a lack of money for any of this. The political machine is just totally malfunctional.
Just curious exactly what neighborhood and how long did you live there? (duboce triangle, a long time)
I know a bunch of people who live/d out there, they take muni downtown but mostly have a car. Perhaps you could regal in tales of your car-free lifestyle in the Sunset, but i'm not seeing it. Weiner wants condos out there and he does not give a shit about your bus ride.
Pre-pandemic the L and N were the two busiest rail routes (and the busiest lines systemwide) even considering they share most of the underground portion with four other lines. Somewhere around 75,000 daily trips.
Yeah, I know, I take the N, it goes downtown, everywhere else you need a bus (or practically, a car). Sorry if that was confusing.
e-bikes seem to have been invented for SF. They solve the hill problem and long lines at school drop offs. I see their growth continuing to reduce car needs in SF.
Sadly, I say this as someone who lives in Duboce Triangle and owns two cars.
> My take is you build it, and THEN they come. Put in some GOOD transit. Make sure the utilities are in place.
The problem is, that costs money that, for a few years at the very least, will not be recouped. Not many politicians have the ability to push such efforts through regardless of profitability, especially not when the topic in question will be abused by the opposition in their usual culture war bullshit.
It costs a lot less to build transit infrastructure before or at the same time as everything else compared with adding it later, even if the line is underused as density is added.
The best alternative is a well-planned phased line with carefully protected right-of-way and a dedicated source of long term funding. Bonus points for it being a combination of value capture taxes and the transit agency being a property developer in their own right around stations. The early phase can be inside the boundary of current development so there are people to ride right away. Developers can build and market using the upcoming line, and prospective residents can be confident it will happen with funding secured.
I was posting about specifics.
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.
Oregon - thanks to governor Tina Kotek - pushed those reforms further this year:
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-kot...
She liked my hoodie!
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.
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!
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-...
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.
Credit to State Senator Senator Scott Wiener (SF) who has been the primary champion of this and other related legislation.
"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.
Not many transit stops in either of those areas.
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.
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.
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.
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Unless those poor people are needed to clean and maintain their homes.
Yes but still no public transportation.
I kind of wonder if this can be gamed, by closing train stations or moving bus stops, or bus lines.
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.
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.
https://archive.is/a5Mwi
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.
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.
> The LA area in particular, has some really bad elected officials in terms of housing.
LA in particular? Naaah, mate. Those elected officials are fucking everywhere.
Yours, an Eu resident.
In this case specifically, northern California was mostly in favor, and the wider LA area was mostly against. I almost said southern California, but actually San Diego was in favor too.
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
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.
> 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.
I think they're talking about a matter of blocks, not hours of transportation.
Is "ant" antiquated? Zoning is a good thing. If you abolished all zoning, construction would be completely disorganized as it was in the California Gold Rush.
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
... 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.
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.
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.
With the CEQA reform from a couple months ago, those court cases should be lessened a bit.
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.
There may never be another transit hub built
> ... 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.
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.
You are mistaken on the basic facts of where this permits more hosing.
You also do now understand people in urban areas and their desires. For example look at Seattle, which has added a lot of population, but only added 1 car per 30 new people:
https://www.theurbanist.org/2025/09/07/while-seattle-populat...
For a few generations, 99% of housing that was built was car dependent. That's not what the market wants. So when options are provided that allow living without a car, people flock to it.
While I wholly support density and bike everywhere myself, I don’t know if “people are getting poorer in Seattle” is the win “The Urbanist” thinks it is.
I can only guess what you mean here, but if you assume that people who don't own cars are poorer than those with cars, you are wrong and don't understand wealth.
Those who move to cities and can live without cars have far higher incomes than median, and because they are not burning the average of $700/month on a car, they accumulate wealth far faster.
If I have misunderstood your assumption, please correct me, but the "only poor people don't have cars" fallacy is the only way I can make sense of your comment, and the only people I have heard express it are deeply out of touch with the modern world.
Seattle median income growth is the lowest it has ever been in the last three years, since 2022, in low single digits compared to its past high-to-double-digit growth since 2013. In a completely positivist sense, it would be really improbable for that to occur and also for reduced car ownership to be associated with greater wealth. Of course, reduced car ownership is pretty much associated with lower wealth everywhere in the world, like with pretty much owning anything, like homes or expensive degrees or whatever.
There are a FEW things that decline with greater wealth, like number of children, that buck intuition, but it’s not super clear what the cause and effect is. Suffice it to say, if what you were saying is true, which is improbable - I’m not saying impossible, just really improbable - we would be talking about it way more.
Now why you have to go and call me out of touch and all these big harrowing names, I don’t know. I’m just trying to talk about what is likely to be occurring. People make less money and cars are more expensive so fewer people own cars: that shouldn’t be a controversial POV.
Median income growth slowing or decreasing does mean things are working well. We don’t want middle class families being shut out of our housing markets and working class folks needing two hour commutes to come support our cities.
Every affordable housing project that gets built slows the growth of the area AMI.
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.
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.
> 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.
As I explained in the previous post, it causes issues because it results in people who would otherwise fill jobs providing critical services to the community like teaching either moving to cheaper areas or switching careers entirely. This article mentions several of the cities impacted by SB 79:
https://www.nea.org/nea-today/all-news-articles/teachers-str...
Are you arguing that large urban areas shouldn't have schools and vet offices? Because that's where we've been heading absent meaningful housing reform.
Normally, this situation would result in wages rising, but there's a few issues.
1) The scale of the shortage is so severe that demand far outstrips supply, which means price-based solutions simply result in high wage earners taking all of the available supply.
2) Prices are rising faster than wages.
3) These industries don't have the cost basis to compete with high wage earners. Are you happy with your local vet prices? Are you willing to triple or quadruple the education taxes you currently pay?
4) Even adjusted wages still cause fewer people to enter these industries from other parts of the US, or switch into more lucrative careers. That's socially problematic.
Because "current residents" also include the children and teenagers currently living there? You act like young adults are 100% flown in by storks, as if the city doesn't itself procreate, as if school children doesn't grow up into young adults.
Any good sources showing how much various cities' fertility rate contributes to their population growth?
They don’t contribute, as they are all below replacement rate.
https://www.newgeography.com/content/007550-total-fertility-...
Probably true worldwide except maybe Africa and Middle East.
Major metro areas have overbuilt commercial properties and underbuilt residential properties because commercial properties provide much more (property and sales) tax revenue than residential properties.
This is anti-social, and puts the burden of housing all these workers on the rest of the region, as well as forcing the rest of the region to share transportation costs.
This is pretty obviously unfair. Why should poorer midsized towns and suburbs have to lose money so that large metro areas can maintain a housing density level that lets them cosplay as small towns while overbuilding commercial density?
The state is passing laws to serve its current residents.
The state believes local control has not benefited Californians as a whole.
I happen to live in an expensive home in a dense area and I agree with the state.
I confess that this attitude infuriates me. How did these become major metro areas in the first place? You changed the quality of life in your neighborhood when you moved there. You don’t get to say “that’s it, stop here, it’s on its final, perfect form” any more than the previous residents were before you arrived.
> 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.
Whether good or bad, it's important to realize this is not true in California, with regard to these laws. They apply everywhere, not only in urban centers.
So if there are people who want small towns without dense development, that option has been taken away entirely.
I live in a tiny town (population < 10K) surrounded by forest, far from any urban center. An d even here some of the wooded areas are being clearcut to build dense apartments due to these laws.
Would it be better if the forest was cut down to build single family detached homes?
It would be better if a tiny town was allowed to remain tiny. Not every place has to be forced to be the same.
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.
I think you are incorrectly missing that many larger units (both 3+ bedroom apartments and houses) are currently filled with singles or couples with roommates who would rather live alone in 1 or 2 bedrooms, but can't due to inadequate supply.
Building 1/2 bedrooms would help those people move out, freeing up larger units for families.
> I fear it's just going to enrich the property management class
The property management class benefits most from the current system with no construction and high rents. Building a bunch of 1/2 bedrooms, triggering lower rents, would cause them to lose money.
I wonder if this is true. There is significant risk in price changes for renting (or even HOA fees for condominiums), such that many middle class people might feel more secure living in their home with a near zero interest rate mortgage, if not a paid off mortgage.
On top of that, most jurisdictions (in the US) subsidize property tax rates for senior citizens, so there is a lot less price volatility for simply remaining in one’s home (or even moving to a different, but smaller detached single family home).
Unless a person specifically wants an urban lifestyle in a shared building, I don’t see much impetus to move out. Worst case, they get to stay in their home they have gotten used to and have space for visitors, best case they save a bunch of money and sleep easy knowing their costs are more controlled.
I was talking about renters moving out of larger apartments or shared homes into 1/2 bedroom apartments.
Middle class homeownership is basically dead in California due to the absurd price of housing. Almost everyone young who didn't inherit wealth or earn 90th percentile income is renting
I'll choose tall apartments with 1/2 bedroom rental units over nothing every day.
The only people who don't like to see "young people" paying $2500 in rent instead of $3500 for a 400sqft studio are landlords.
The economics of 3BR family units are typically hard for developers to make money on. Bobby Fijan (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.
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
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.
> I think it's a huge driver of the visceral reaction against apartment living in the US and Canada.
On the one hand, maybe, but on the other hand, apartments (with the same number of bedrooms for the same COL-adjusted price) in the US are enormous compared to those in Asia and in Europe. I think the real source(s) of the visceral reaction(s) is, in no particular order, Americans' prioritization of personal independence over pragmatism (and I don't mean that pejoratively, though it can get stubborn at times), America's fairly weak renter protections/regulations, and the poor build quality of many American apartments (with dogshit sound and climate-proofing). I think it's a mix of a fundamentally American aversion to adding an additional person telling you what to do with genuine issues in the paradigm where you're paying up the ass for heating/cooling because your landlord doesn't particularly feel like installing double-pane windows, and at the same time your neighbors and neighborhood are obnoxiously loud.
You don't think that younger people need housing too?
How about all the empty nesters that are sitting on 4 bedroom homes but are unwilling to move. Are you going to propose legislation to make them?
Will you propose legislation to specially encourage more multi bedroom homes?
The attitude of "this doesn't benefit a narrow band of people that I want to benefit, therefore it must be stopped" is why California is in such a housing mess right now.
Yeah they currently could sell their 4 bedroom and buy a 2 bedroom for the same monthly mortgage because the high interest rates. No thanks.
Yeah, these incentives should be changed.
Unless we see unexpected side effects (like a lower number of housing or even more housing demands due to SB 79) I guess this will indirectly help the buyers looking for larger properties since so many people have no choice but purchasing a unnecessarily spacious house thanks to inflexible zoning.
Anything larger gets smeared as a "luxury apartment". There is no winning. Build, build, build, build. Public housing AND private housing. Just build. That's it.
> but if we end up with an abundance of just 1/2 bedroom rental apartments
That's still a massive win. To replace 10 single family homes supporting 2-3 people each with a 9 story building supporting many multiples of that is a win for society.
If the people chasing 3 and 4 bedroom apartments accepted smaller rooms, they could still be economical vs studio/1/2 BR apartments and condos.
> That's still a massive win. To replace 10 single family homes supporting 2-3 people each with a 9 story building supporting many multiples of that is a win for society.
Not if society wants to own their home.
A condo is still property.
I am curious what percentage of people would (or do) forego having kids if they do not think they can afford to buy (or eventually buy) a detached single family home.
I can’t say I would have been keen on having kids if I had to live in the quality of pretty much all the apartment buildings I have been in.
An abundance of 1/2 bedroom rental apartments would reduce the price of larger places, because there would be lower demand.
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-...> [b] SF <https://sfstandard.com/2025/05/30/san-francisco-budget-screw...> LA <https://calmatters.org/commentary/2025/03/california-bails-l...> CA <https://apnews.com/article/california-budget-deficit-18ff9c1...> [c] <https://www.bart.gov/sites/default/files/2025-01/FiscalCliff...> [d] <https://www.sfexaminer.com/news/business/stressed-sf-commerc...> [e] <https://laist.com/news/housing-homelessness/sb79-heads-for-n...> [f] <https://www.trepp.com/trepptalk/cmbs-delinquency-rate-increa...> [g] <https://www.lewis.ucla.edu/research/the-consequences-of-meas...> [h] <https://knock-la.com/los-angeles-rental-speculation-4022d16a...>
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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.
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.
Oh no! the thing thats already happening might happen some more!
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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
When I think concentrated poverty and crime, I definitely picture Manhattan and Tokyo.
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”
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.
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.
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.
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.
Dense neighbourhoods are very expensive in the US as well, so it seems like there is a big market for that type of housing.
> furthers the gap between public transit and cars.
It doesn't have to. If Waymo (and other autonomous taxis) were clever -- and maybe they are -- they would spend their lobbing money on high speed trains and then capture the "last mile" market.
Some years ago I was riding with a friend north on the 15 (San Diego, after a decade+ absences) and my noticeable wtf face prompted a "yeah, they built a freeway in the center of the freeway". It's an abomination. When I was there, I-15 was generally for the longer drives. My friends that lived in Temecula/North County etc would spend hours of their life driving (or slowly rolling) into SD for school/work/play.
A high speed train would have fit where they put the supplemental freeway. Now there is no more room to expand once they need more capacity; extra trains or cars could be added to a train to solve the same thing and placed along the freeway there is minimal to no neighborhood inconvenience. Then companies like waymo can take people to their final destination.
People who pay a premium to live in a condo close to transit will almost certainly have vastly lower VMT than people who live in a SFH in a non-walkable area. Do they need more roads than the handful of houses that condo building replaced? Sure, so I can't disagree with you there. But they're all going to have massive underground garages, so a spot per unit on average is probably plenty.
People who want to live in less dense houses farther from the city can already do that!
The commutes end up being awful.
Yes! That's the tradeoff and the market prices it in.
Or fix transportation and you don’t have an awful commute! Everybody wins.
How can one fix car transportation? More lanes?
Robotaxis are good, but everyone owning a driverless car is bad.
Imagine you get to your destination, there’s no parking (or no free parking), so you tell your car to just circle the block while you’re inside. You spend an hour there at the tanning salon, and the car has just been circling, using the street as a parking lot and creating congestion. What happens when everyone does that?
I’m a big proponent of driverless cars, but we will need laws that ban individual private ownership. We’re going to have to experience the tragedy of the commons first because people really won’t want to give up their cars.
Private driverless cars will surely be a thing in the future because people will want them and be willing to pay for them. I sure would buy a Waymo style car if I could. I think it would be cool if they could drop you off at your destination and then circle around until it finds parking.
This is only a problem if the energy to drive around for an hour is cheaper than the cost to park for an hour, which it isn't.
I paid $40 to park for 3 hours in Boston yesterday. I could drive around the city at an average speed of 10-15 miles per hour for under $3 in gas per hour.
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.
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.
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.
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
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.
What developer is going to throw up a residential high-rise outside of Bakersfield?
You are spreading basic misinformation, please read the article so that you do not continue to do more of it.