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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Thank you for your work on this. You'll leave a great legacy in Oregon!
https://www.theurbanist.org/2025/05/27/seattle-just-rezoned-...
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.
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.
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.
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.
> (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.
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.
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.
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.
* 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.
Frankly, this strategy seems to be a good one considering what a winning streak CA YIMBYs have been on.
But that's still better than refusing to fix the problem.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
When I lived in socal, almost every person under 35 i knew there was living in a 2-4bd with roommates.
1bd and studios were very scace, and almost often prohibitively expensive.
So I second that creating a real offer for 1bd and studios would definitely free up family housing.
On top of that 1 and 2-person households still need housing. Building some for them is a good thing in my book
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 only people who don't like to see "young people" paying $2500 in rent instead of $3500 for a 400sqft studio are landlords.
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
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.
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.
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.
Not if society wants to own their 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.
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...>
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
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”
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 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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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
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.