It’s been known as a sport changer and the YIMBY Holy Grail, a reference to each the pro-housing motion that has change into a power in native and state politics lately, and the anticipated affect it’ll have on housing manufacturing in infamously costly California cities. Senate Invoice 79 has additionally been labeled a destroyer of neighborhoods, usurper of municipal political energy, and a ticking time bomb that may wreck native infrastructure.
Now, in a extremely anticipated determination, Governor Gavin Newsom has signed the invoice, which presents a focused instance of what’s known as transit-oriented growth. Actual property builders can be allowed to construct taller, denser residential buildings close to high-volume transit strains, with the thought being that close by entry to transit will lower the necessity for automobiles and extra parking whereas including a major variety of housing items. Right here’s what to learn about SB 79.
What’s SB 79 and the way did it come about?
Repeatedly reworked and moderated throughout its contentious path by means of the state legislature, SB79 will upzone areas round main transit stops (rail or bus speedy transit stops), overruling native legal guidelines limiting constructing heights and density. In eight city counties throughout the state, principally within the Bay Space and Southern California: San Francisco, San Mateo, Santa Clara, Alameda, Sacramento, Los Angeles, San Diego, and Orange, buildings websites inside a half-mile of such a cease can construct 80 items an acre, as much as a peak of 55 toes, with extra peak and density for buildings nearer to the station, as much as 95 toes tall and 160 items an acre.
YIMBYs have celebrated the regulation as an antidote to the glacial tempo of housing development within the state. Advocates level to the sluggish progress of cities in zoning for extra housing or getting anyplace near assembly state-mandated housing objectives—often known as the Regional Housing Wants Allocation, or RHNA—as a purpose why the state must overrule native management.
“I imagine SB 79 would handle that subject in a really significant manner by actually opening up a variety of capability for mixed-income housing and inexpensive housing round transit stops, land that traditionally mixed-income housing and inexpensive housing is just not allowed to be constructed on,” says Mahdi Maji, Director of Coverage at Inside Metropolis Regulation Middle. “It’s essential housing is inbuilt areas the place individuals have traditionally been excluded.”
Because it handed, what does that imply?
There aren’t actual figures or estimates on what number of such tasks will get accomplished within the first few years; labor and materials prices, financing, and the methods the regulation will get interpreted regionally will affect the preliminary wave of growth. Nevertheless it’s more likely to be seen as a major YIMBY victory, and a supply of consternation and pushback for native authorities and lots of residents against the plan.
“In case you go a regulation like this, you don’t get housing on each eligible parcel in a single day,” says Brian Hanlon, president and CEO of California YIMBY. “However the finish aim right here is to construct a ton extra housing to make California inexpensive, so people don’t must get up each morning with a pit of hysteria of their chest, questioning if that is the day they order a U-Haul to Arizona. We wish individuals who stay right here to have the ability to construct a future right here.”
Probably the most important change is that SB 79 will permit growth in areas and neighborhoods beforehand meant only for single-family housing. Detractors have been vocal, particularly in Los Angeles. Mayor Karen Bass and the Metropolis Council—on an 8-5 vote—opposed the invoice on the grounds that it negates native zoning management and shoehorns density into inappropriate areas.
Assemblymember Rick Chavez-Zbur, a Los Angeles Democrat who represents parts of Santa Monica, Beverly Hills, and Hollywood, summed up many constituent’s emotions when he informed CalMatters, “This blunt, one-size-fits-all invoice won’t work for a district like mine. For a lot of Californians, residing in a single-family neighborhood fulfills a lifelong dream—the American Dream.”
How a lot housing may this add?
There aren’t actual figures but—Hanlon estimates it may imply a whole lot of 1000’s of items over the subsequent decade—however the principle benefit of this invoice is that it removes zoning distinctions that made earlier adjustments much less efficient. As an example, municipalities throughout the state have already got native packages to develop denser housing close to transit. In Los Angeles, the Transit Oriented Communities (TOC) program offers incentives to construct extra close to transit.
Nonetheless, it’s severely restricted; it doesn’t permit for constructing within the three-quarters of Los Angeles that’s zoned for single-family houses. SB 79 permits for extra density in additional locations, and which means a a lot increased ceiling when it comes to complete items produced. California YIMBY estimates that if 10 % of the housing allowed by SB 79 have been constructed out in L.A., it will cowl roughly two-thirds of town’s housing scarcity (now at roughly 270,000 items).
Why California wants extra housing
State information exhibits the price of housing in California continues to rise; since 2020, lease is up 30 % or extra in lots of elements of the state, month-to-month mortgage funds common $5,900, and homes price twice as a lot as they do in different elements of the nation. Residents and cities pay the worth, together with monetary hardships, decrease native tax income, elevated homelessness, and even decreased political illustration nationally, as inhabitants declines affect Congressional delegations. And cities have struggled to construct extra items. Take Los Angeles, the place housing permits hit a 10-year low final yr. Whereas New York Metropolis may construct 50,000 houses in 2025, Los Angeles has solely permitted 3,100 as of July, per CalMatters.
The invoice’s passage additionally offers a lift to public transit, which has weathered important pandemic-era ridership drops. It might increase ridership by including extra potential clients close to transit stops, and permit for growth on land owned by transit businesses, providing further sources of income.
Has a invoice like this been proposed earlier than?
Democrat State Senator Scott Wiener, a progressive San Francisco consultant, has been a YIMBY champion for years, and has repeatedly tried to go legal guidelines like SB 79 since 2018. That is the primary time he’s been in a position to get the laws out of the Senate, handed within the State Meeting, and signed by the Governor, a feat that partially was resulting from his means to compromise (the invoice went by means of 13 adjustments earlier than last approval, together with the usage of solely high-frequency transit stops, and limiting constructing to principally city, not suburban, counties.)
Wiener has lengthy seen the housing problem as central to so many different points dealing with California, saying in a press release after SB 79 was handed within the legislature, that “many years of overly restrictive insurance policies have pushed housing prices to astronomical ranges, forcing tens of millions of individuals away from jobs and transit and into lengthy commutes from the suburbs.
What occurs subsequent?
The regulation is ready to enter impact starting on July 1, 2026. Signing the invoice into regulation will bolster Governor Newsom’s case that he has taken the housing disaster significantly and brought daring steps ahead to repair the state’s stronger coverage subject.
Within the interim, last maps of the areas that might be impacted by SB 79 must be created by related native authorities, such because the Southern California Affiliation of Governments. In debates across the invoice’s passage, native authorities posted maps with the asterisk that these weren’t last determinations of the place SB 79 tasks could be constructed, main opponents to cry foul; there’s certain to be robust pushback across the creation of the ultimate maps. Many housing advocates throughout the nation will seemingly be watching to see how SB 79 in the end works in follow to go comparable payments in statehouses throughout the nation.
Prime picture: Adobe Inventory
