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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".
What, realistically, are the consequences of this actually going to be?
I have a family member that lives in SoCal and they've recently built higher density housing along the freeway and metrolink stop there. The result has been a massive spike in local traffic, the shopping centers nearby are so crowded that they no longer even bother going to them and generally avoid businesses near the freeway, opting to drive to grocery stores and shopping further away. Lights back up to the point that they routinely get stuck stopped at green lights waiting for the intersection in front of them to empty near these areas.
Doesn't really seem like it'd take a genius to figure this out, but it turns out that just because you live next to a metrolink or freeway or other "quality public transit" doesn't mean you will hop on one or hop on the freeway and drive 30 minutes every time you want to leave your house for basic things. Maybe some people use it to commute, but the local area is still negatively effected. Whatever small shopping centers they might build into these higher density housing can't compete with all the amenities offered by the preexisting suburban sprawl. So you basically just end up plopping a bunch more people in an area with roads and parking lots not equipped for it. Also, the rent on these places wasn't any lower and rent has continued to rise precipitously in the area.
Sounds like Los Angeles to me. I grew up in the Los Angeles area during the best time to grow up there (I might make a top level post about this some time) and it is essentially unrecognizable. I'm no stranger to city living, but whenever I go back, it's almost an anxiety attack as every street, every home, every parking spot is filled beyond its natural capacity in every sense of the word. Small streets are covered in towering luxury apartments that replaced the more meager (and more charming) buildings that preceded them. Single family homes are filled with people, leaving 3-5 cars to somehow fill out the driveways and street parking to the point that visiting is almost impossible unless you coordinate in advance with the people that you are visiting. Shopping centers, as you mention, are plopped down in areas that cannot support them, and the traffic (and light pollution, which is never something I thought I'd care about) make the entire area unpleasant. I know Los Angeles hate has been low hanging fruit for decades, but the city is in such an unlivable state these days I can hardly believe it.
Literally every problem you mentioned could be fixed by building more. More houses so people don't pile into single family homes, more transit, more shopping centers. It seems the problem with LA is shitty development, not development per se.
The problem of "towering luxury apartments" can't be fixed by building more. Nor can the problem of filling places with people. Nor can parking; transit is so bad that the only way to get people to take it is to make driving worse, and the only way to do that is to allow driving infrastructure to become highly oversubscribed.
You can reduce the number/duration of total car trips if you manage to densify the other infrastructure too: if your towering apartments are walking distance (within a block or two?) of the grocery store, bar, gym, or employer. Probably not to zero, but it'd help.
Yes, if you get everyone to do everything they want and need to do within their little neighborhood, you can do that. Places like that in the US either tend to be planned retirement villages, or places which are extremely not-nice to live.
I've heard some anecdotes at times describing Manhattan positively this way. Sometimes Boston or SF, too. If you can afford rent downtown, some blue places can be like this. But for some reason in the nicer places the rent is really high...
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