there will be cases of cities resisting this by dragging their feet and it will be interesting to see. if a city wants to make it really expensive or dangerous to develop this opportunity then they certainly can. zoning is not the only consideration. and there are other things that elevate the cost of development like overbearing safety and accessibility regulations that are nation-wide. still, if this bill adds hundreds of thousands of units that will take a pretty meaningful bite out of the total shortage
California lawmakers pass SB 79, housing bill that brings dense housing
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Re: California lawmakers pass SB 79, housing bill that brings dense housing
#92Earlier quoted context omitted.
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
Single stair is one of the reforms I'd most like to see.
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.
Re: California lawmakers pass SB 79, housing bill that brings dense housing
#93A 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...
This really shows how limited the effect of this bill is, but it's still much better than nothing.
A big question is whether these areas actually turn into denser housing, or whether something else in the process manages to bog it down. Plenty of housing bills have seemed like a big deal when you looked at the area they impacted, but in practice they led to little new housing.
Re: California lawmakers pass SB 79, housing bill that brings dense housing
#94A 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...
Ug. I'm a 'yimby' and a Weiner voter. 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. Make sure the utilities are in place. Developers will then flock to the place. This whole thing is using inside-out logic. Have a…
We DID build good transit. It takes 15 minutes to get from the MacArthur BART to downtown San Francisco! But the walkable area around that station is full of single-family housing. It's a huge waste building all of this incredible public transit and then not allowing apartment buildings near it.
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.
Re: California lawmakers pass SB 79, housing bill that brings dense housing
#95The problem with ant zoning laws is that they pick winners and losers. They need abolished state-wide to ever have a true affect. Otherwise, these limited pockets get bought up by investors and again, are limited to tiny areas. Abolish it state wide and people will over build and then true affordability will return.
Correct, given that housing in one location is significantly fungible with housing in another location, barring some economic frictions. The total stock (both state-wide and nation-wide) is the metric that needs to be increased.
> Correct, given that housing in one location is significantly fungible with housing in another location, barring some economic frictions
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.
Re: California lawmakers pass SB 79, housing bill that brings dense housing
#96"Bring dense housing" misses the plot. It prevents 50% of all development projects (in recent years) from being thwarted for no reason under the veil of environment laws. Some municipalities also had requirements to "get your neighbors approval", which resulted in bizarre interactions where residents would actually ask developers for things that cost millions of dollars. "Can you build a ground floor office for my de…
Not many transit stops in either of those areas.
There probably will be, but they don't need transit to transform development because no one wants three years of competing with their neighbor for developer and contractor resources. 80% will rent or buy elsewhere. Some may return and purchase into a new Palisades development.
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.
Re: California lawmakers pass SB 79, housing bill that brings dense housing
#97This happened in Oregon a few years ago: any cities with 25k or more people had to permit greater density. I'm optimistic about housing on the West Coast for the first time in a long, long time. This will transform things in a big way.
It happened in WA two years ago as well, but Seattle dragged its feet as long as humanly possible in implementing a compliant zoning policy. https://www.theurbanist.org/2025/05/27/seattle-just-rezoned-...
Oddly enough, it's Spokane that is lapping everyone on a lot of these reforms. They're just doing one thing after another without making a big deal out of it.
Re: California lawmakers pass SB 79, housing bill that brings dense housing
#98The problem with ant zoning laws is that they pick winners and losers. They need abolished state-wide to ever have a true affect. Otherwise, these limited pockets get bought up by investors and again, are limited to tiny areas. Abolish it state wide and people will over build and then true affordability will return.
This bill barely passed (they got a majority +1, which they needed to pass) so a further reaching bill might have been difficult to sell.
The LA area in particular, has some really bad elected officials in terms of housing.
Re: California lawmakers pass SB 79, housing bill that brings dense housing
#99Earlier quoted context omitted.
Correct, given that housing in one location is significantly fungible with housing in another location, barring some economic frictions. The total stock (both state-wide and nation-wide) is the metric that needs to be increased.
> Correct, given that housing in one location is significantly fungible with housing in another location, barring some economic frictions 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 hous…
I think they're talking about a matter of blocks, not hours of transportation.