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California YIMBY, "Governor Newsom Signs Historic Housing Legislation: SB 79 Culminates Eight-Year Fight to Legalize Homes Near Transit" Also covered in Politico, LA Times, CalMatters, SF Chronicle, SF Standard, Berkeleyside, Streetsblog SF... this is a big deal. (Part of a long-running series on housing, mostly in California. Now also at TheSchism.)
To quote the Governor's press office, "HUGE NEWS!! YIMBY'S REJOICE !!". Signing statement here, press release from Scott Wiener here. Bill text here.
For more details about how we got here, see this recap from Jeremy Linden, the vote lists from CalMatters, and my previous recap from when SB 79 first made it out of committee. This was the last of ten veto points this bill had to pass, and it changed markedly over the process: most counties were exempted, ferries and high-frequency bus routes without dedicated lanes no longer count, projects over 85 feet must now use union labor, there are now below-market-rate set-asides, and other such bagel toppings. It only applies to "urban transit counties", those with more than fifteen rail stations; that's only eight of California's fifty-eight counties: Los Angeles, San Diego, Orange, Santa Clara, Alameda, Sacramento, San Francisco and San Mateo, but those counties contain sixty percent of the state's population.
But of those ten veto points, it passed five of them by a single vote. (It depends exactly how you count.) Every compromise, every amendment, every watering-down was necessary to get this across the finish line. Aisha Wahab, Senate Housing chair and villain of the previous post, switched her vote to support SB 79 in the final concurrence in the Legislature, as did Elena Durazo, Senate Local Government chair, who had also opposed it originally. This has, as noted above, been eight years in the making. It will largely go into effect next July 1.
Newsom also signed a variety of other housing bills, though none were specifically as important as SB 79: AB 253 allows for third-party permit approvals if the city drags their feet, for example.
This completes a remarkably victorious legislative cycle for the YIMBYs. Along with surprise CEQA reform, Jeremy White of Politico called it: "from upzoning to streamlining to CEQA exempting, the biggest housing year I've seen in 10+ years covering Sacramento".
I come from a Unix background where we are taught that programs should do one thing and do it well. Seeing all this bullshit makes me seethe in a way very little else does.
California's constitution, Article IV, Section 9:
(More details here.) And even still, this is, unfortunately, the way the sausage is made, because bagel toppings are baked into the progressive mindset, it seems. But ADU laws, for example, have been successful precisely because they were straightforward simplifications or liberalizations of the law, with few or no compensating tradeoffs. Chris Elmendorf has a good law review article about this.
I think to the extent that something is a big change or faces stiff opposition, this kind of nonsense will creep in. Here, it's not because apartments near transit are anathema per se, but because "local governments know best" is an article of faith here, despite where it's led us, and more importantly for progressives, a lot of new construction means a lot of business for builders, and it's very important ideologically that the benefit the legislature produces be appropriately socialized rather than captured by developers. The mistake being made here is that the benefit is homes for people to live in, and the benefits are already going to incumbent homeowners.
On the gripping hand, much as with ADU law, there will be simplifications and cleanups in future sessions.
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