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/ !
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.
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.
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.
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.
This bill is going to result in massive redistribution of wealth from the bottom to the top 0.1%. It’ll blow up middle class SFH neighborhoods where people own their homes and replace them with forever rentals owned by developers that’ll jack up rents every year. You will own nothing and be happy. Now get in line to be milked by the system!
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
> 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.
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...
Credit to State Senator Senator Scott Wiener (SF) who has been the primary champion of this and other related legislation.
... 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.
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.
> ... 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.
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.
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.
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.
https://archive.is/a5Mwi
This bill is going to result in massive redistribution of wealth from the bottom to the top 0.1%. It’ll blow up middle class SFH neighborhoods where people own their homes and replace them with forever rentals owned by developers that’ll jack up rents every year. You will own nothing and be happy. Now get in line to be milked by the system!
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.
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.
lol we already own nothing suck it
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'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
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.
> 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.
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
You are spreading basic misinformation, please read the article so that you do not continue to do more of it.
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.