On Friday, September 12, the last day of the legislative session, the California Legislature passed SB-79, a bill supposedly meant to increase high-density affordable housing near urban public transportation hubs. Governor Newson, who indicated his support, will probably sign the bill within the next few weeks.
State Senator Scott Wiener, the bill’s sponsor, claimed it will decrease the cost of housing by removing the need for city approvals to build apartment buildings of up to nine stories within a half mile of a “transportation hub.” But it is a singularly odd bill, packed with caveats, exemptions, and strange definitions of what a transportation hub is. For example:
- The bill only applies to counties with 15 or more train stations, or only eight counties. Affordability is a statewide issue, so why exempt 50 other counties?
- Although advertised as a housing affordability measure, only seven percent of a new development has to include affordable units. The rest can be rented at market or above.
- As originally written, the bill would have applied to all areas within a half mile of most bus stops, encompassing large swaths of residential areas. But Wiener whittled the bill down to target homes within a half mile of train stations, subway stops, and “high-frequency” light-rail and commuter rail stops. Buildings within the nearest quarter mile of Amtrak stations and Los Angeles subway stations can top out at nine stories. But parcels farther out or closer to less used transit stations will be limited to about five stories.
- Cities will be obligated to approve high density development within these zones as a simple ministerial process, regardless of zoning or nearby land uses.
- To force tenants onto public transportation, developments will not be required to provide parking facilities. Nor will builders be required to take infrastructure capacity, such as water and sewer services, into consideration when planning a new development.
Since 2018, Senator Wiener has been trying to gain approval for such policies. He finally succeeded by winning union support when he included prevailing wage language into the bill’s construction requirements. Because of the odd limit of 15 train stations in a county, legislators in suburban and rural counties could support it knowing it wouldn’t affect them. But approval of SB-79 represents more than the usual give-and-take of the legislative process. It is the victory of Wiener’s single-minded obsession with forcing his urban vision statewide. Many legislators didn't listen to their constituents, choosing instead to follow Wiener’s misguided path and the theocrats who have declared single family homes as one of society's greatest evils.
In reality, many of the housing bills Senator Wiener has sponsored have had little impact. As Zelda Bronstein detailed in a 2023 48hills.com column, Wiener's bills haven't produced very much affordable housing but have done a great job weakening local control of land use. Dick Platkin regularly writes about the failure of California's housing policy in CityWatch. The day before the bill passed, Christopher LeGras wrote in his urban community blog Allaspect.com, an excellent piece on how SB-79 will undoubtedly fail to produce the promised results. Yet despite a vast body of evidence showing how density policy fails time after time, our state legislature keeps passing apartment developer-friendly bills.
There are really two things behind SB-79's approval. One is simple corruption. In 2020, Housing as a Human Right, hardly a NIMBY organization, published an expose of Wiener showing he gets major funding from developers and real estate speculators. Although one of his favorite tropes is that single family housing is a relic of institutional racism, his policies s has pushed working-class and communities of color out of their homes in favor of market-rate and luxury development. He's not progressive in any sense of the word--but created bill designed to maximize revenues for his developer sponsors while placing other special interests. This was voting trading at its worst.
The second thing behind SB-79 is more insidious and predates Wiener’s appearance on the political scene; the usurpation of local control by the state. As a “police power,” land use has always been one of the fundamental prerogatives of local government. Cities form as an expression of a community’s collective will. Orange County is geographically one of the state's smallest counties, but it has 34 incorporated cities. One of the reasons is local control. People in Anaheim live in a different city than people in Mission Viejo and need different services. By having direct access to community leaders in their city councils, residents have a say in how their city operates. That is as it should be the state has a role that is distinct from local government; it should set state-wide priorities like highway planning, environmental policy, and indigent health care. Cities should control policies closer to home (literally in this case) like land use and public safety.
But over the last several years the state has been exerting more control over land use and other local policy matters. This trend usually manifests as one-size-fits-all regulations that supersede local ordinances. Cities were expected to adopt extensive sewer regulations, regardless of cost, and the state regulations imposed substantial penalties for noncompliance. The penalties focused on process violations rather than actual environmental damage. In 2008, the state, acting as judge, jury and executioner, fined the City of San Marcos $119,000 for failing to submit sufficient reports on its sewer spill response. Note the fine wasn’t because of the damage the spills caused; it was because the city didn’t file reports to the state’s liking.
What we see in the sewer, housing, and homelessness policy areas is a focus on process over outcomes. The goal should be to increase the stock of affordable housing by the most expedient means available. Instead, the state has adopted policies that focus on vague theories of easing construction of high-density developments under the assumption that the cost of housing will decrease as supply increases. There are two fundamental flaws with that theory. Critically, it ignores other market forces like location, neighborhood amenities, and desirability. In October 2023, I was a member of panel on housing and homelessness that included Senator.
Senator Wiener’s--and therefore the state’s--housing policy is also an example of the paternalistic and arrogant ethos of the state government’s self-labeled New Progressive wing. It is a theocratic belief that only certain officials have the intellectual and moral superiority to make decisions about where and how Californians should live. It is the belief that they can tell people they must live in densely-packed apartment complexes with no green space, even though, as Christopher LeGras points out here, more than 70 percent of California’s families live in single family homes.
High-density is central to the progressive dream of 15-minute cities, communities where people can live, shop and find amenities within a 15-minute walk or bike ride from their apartments. While a potentially admirable dream, the 15-minute city is simply fantasy given the sprawling geography of almost all California cities, with the exception of Wiener’s San Francisco. It also devalues and demonizes the foundational American Dream of owning one’s own home, . the leading way the middle class can build generational wealth. It is a manifestation of an absolute worldview, where housing, as a reflection of economic justice, is either good or evil.
This absolutist view creates some impressive acts of moral acrobatics, where self-professed progressives ally themselves with corporate developers. One of SB-79’s backers were Streets for All-LA, a supposedly grass-roots bicycle advocacy group. Streets for All is aligned with California YIMBY, a nonprofit funded by corporate real estate and tech billionaires. California YIMBY has a reputation for creating housing for high-tech employees at the expense of communities of color and working-class neighborhoods. California YIMBY was also one of Wiener’s SB-79 supporters. It is an odd breed of progressive who say they support affordable housing while simultaneously supporting organizations that seek to destroy it.
What we are really seeing in bills like SB-79 and other state efforts is a concerted effort to make city government obsolete. Like absolutist theocrats from Lenin to the Taliban, new progressives believe being a state official imbues them with a broader vision than someone at the local level, hence authority must come from the top down. The goal, as one California YIMBY spokesperson, is create something “closer to even dismisses the vastly different history, the Danish capital is one of the most expensive cities in Western Europe, especially in terms of housing.
The California elite is betraying what California is and The right of California’s cities, and their citizens, to have some say over their community.
Tim Campbell is a semi-retired veteran public servant who spent his career managing a municipal performance audit program. Drawing on decades of experience in government accountability, he brings a results-driven approach to civic oversight. Campbell emphasizes outcomes over bureaucratic process, offering readers plain English analyses of how local programs perform—and where they fall short. His work advocates for greater transparency, efficiency, and effectiveness in Los Angeles' government.
Photo: Brookings Institute via Flickr, under CC 3.0 License.
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