Scott Wiener has spent eight years representing San Francisco in the state Senate, and it seems he’s spent every minute trying to make it easier to build housing — especially in his hometown.
His latest legislative victory, SB 79, loosens residential height limits near major transit lines, an attempt to create denser neighborhoods where residents have less need for cars.
It passed a final vote last week 21-8. Assuming Gov. Gavin Newsom signs the bill (he has until October 12), developers will have the right to build up to 90 feet, about nine stories, next to train stations. In San Francisco, this means all BART and Caltrain stations.
Update, 10/10/25: Governor Newsom signed SB 79 today.
Within a quarter-mile of stations, the limit would be seven stories, and farther out — up to a half-mile — the limit would be six stories.
Around all Muni light rail stops, both at street level and underground, the limits are about 10 feet lower.
The bill only applies to eight California counties, including San Francisco.
Frequent Wiener allies YIMBY Action hailed it as a “hard-won victory” after Wiener failed in three previous tries to encourage more housing near transit.
Former SF supervisor Aaron Peskin said at a recent City Hall rally SB 79 was “a betrayal” and a giveaway to developers. Four current supervisors — Connie Chan, Chyanne Chen, Jackie Fielder, and Shamann Walton — and several local activists also condemned it.
For all the blood boiling, however, SB 79 is more like a backstop in San Francisco. The city is already plowing toward an overhaul of its housing rules: Mayor Daniel Lurie’s “Family Zoning Plan.” It’s been in the works for years, predating Lurie, thanks in large part to Wiener, whose 2018 bill forced California cities to take seriously their eight-year planning cycles for more homes.
That’s what the Family Zoning Plan promises: taller and denser buildings across many low-rise SF neighborhoods such as the Sunset, Richmond, and Marina.
It still needs Board of Supervisor approval, but it could satisfy SB 79’s “alternate plan” requirements. SB 79 says cities don’t have to stick to its specifics if they have alternate plans to create about the same amount of housing.
Wiener spokesperson Erik Mebust tells The Frisc that the Family Zoning Plan could bypass a few Muni stops, letting SB 79 apply in those spots, but probably not many.
“It would very much surprise me if the [Lurie] plan wouldn’t already cover the low-hanging fruit around transit,” land-use attorney David Rand tells The Frisc. (For example, the plan allows buildings up to 140 feet right at the Glen Park BART station.)
My fear, unlike those who oppose it, is not that it will do too much but too little.
Council of Infill Builders chair Mott Smith
But the product of housing policy is difficult to predict. Recent pro-housing bills have had little effect in San Francisco, meeting neither the hopes of supporters nor the fears of opponents.
With SB 79 now the magnet for those hopes and fears, here’s a look back at recent laws, both local and state, and what kind of dent they’ve made in the city’s housing shortage. At least one is doing what it promised, but several more have failed to produce much new housing.
SB 423: The fast track
At least one bill has opened the gates to a steady stream of housing. Wiener’s own SB 423 lets developers fast-track projects if cities have fallen behind on their state-mandated housing goals.
SB 423 took effect in San Francisco in 2024. Since then, 10 projects totaling 402 homes have been approved. There are 34 more projects under review and 10 that have applications in the system.
Wiener wrote SB 423 with a special gift for his hometown. Because the city is so far out of compliance with housing quotas, SB 423 kicked in here two years earlier than anywhere else.
SB 4: God’s backyard
This Wiener creation made it easier for religious entities and schools to build housing on their properties. At the time, some local temples were eager to break holy ground, but SF’s Mayor’s Office of Housing and Community Development says SB 4 hasn’t been the lever they’ve laid hands on.
“There are a few affordable projects that have been approved on sites owned by religious institutions, but they either predated SB 4 or they chose to use a different streamlining program,” says MOHCD spokesperson Anne Stanley. She adds that “ongoing” efforts may identify likely sites that can use SB 4 to build.
SB 9: No more single-family?
Like SB 79, this 2022 measure was hailed or cursed with equal intensity. Foes and backers alike saw it as the end of single-family zoning in the state. It allows property owners to split their parcels and build as many as four units per lot.
Two years later, it has barely registered a blip in San Francisco. UC Berkeley’s Terner Center reported that in the first year, SF had only 25 SB 9 applications and four approved. As of earlier this year, approvals totaled 32.
The meager output isn’t surprising. Even at the time, the Terner Center projected that the payoff of adding up to three units was not worth the cost of construction for most homeowners. Like so many other development decisions, the calculus can change if construction costs decline.
‘Missing Middle’ bonds
In 2024, in the midst of his bid for mayor, Peskin penned a law to let SF use a kind of municipal bond — debt issued by a city government or agency — to build new affordable housing with “little to no public funds,” Peskin claimed.
Like other cities, SF issues bonds for all kinds of essential infrastructure: sewers, hospitals, roads, and so forth. Peskin’s version were called “missing middle” bonds because they’d build homes for middle-income earners who still need help affording a place in the city. Future rents would create a funding stream to pay off the city’s debt.
“The city has authority to issue bonds under this program and would review any proposed project that came forward,” says MOHCD’s Stanley, but no developers have been interested in the financing.
Inclusionary rollback
Peskin was also a critical vote in the 2023 decision to slash the number of affordable housing units that market-rate developers must build. SF’s so-called inclusionary system requires market-rate projects of 10 units or more to either include a certain number of affordable units on site, or have the developer pay into a city fund.
Peskin blanched but accepted the argument that high inclusionary rates were holding back developers during the economic slump. With Peskin in the president’s seat, the board voted 10-1 to lower the rate until 2026 from 21.5 to 33 percent to 12 to 29 percent. (The range depends upon the particulars of each project.)
No matter: Last year was one of the worst for SF housing production in recent memory. Construction costs, political uncertainty, and the general economy might have blunted any potential advantage of lowering the inclusionary rate. “It’s a difficult question, and we haven’t tried to answer it,” SF chief economist Ted Egan tells The Frisc.
Egan points out that when supervisors lowered the inclusionary rate, his office projected only a handful of potential developments would become more viable. The debate will come up again next year. By law, supervisors must at least consider adjusting the rate every three years.
Density bonuses
Density bonus laws are a set of rules, both state and local, that let developers build higher in exchange for more affordable housing.
California has allowed density bonuses since the 1970s, but few lawmakers bothered to craft them and even fewer developers took advantage of them because of housing politics. Two extra stories wasn’t worth the badmouthing a builder would get in SF by doing such a thing.
But since 2015, SF has added 1,386 affordable homes to its stock thanks to the state’s bonus program, according to the city’s most recent housing inventory. Another 11,000-plus are in the pipeline. That’s no guarantee of completion, but the thousands of units proposed illustrate just how much housing politics have changed. The rise of YIMBYism has provided political cover for building taller.
ADUs
Sometimes dubbed granny flats, illegal secondary apartments or “accessory dwelling units” in basements or backyards might have housed elderly relatives, or perhaps other renters.
In 2017, the city legalized construction of new ADUs and created a process to legalize existing ones. The Planning Department says SF has added 1,864 units in eight years. About a third are new construction, the rest are scofflaw units gone straight. It’s a far cry from the tens of thousands of homes projected at the time, but the trickle has been relatively steady each year.
Cars To Casas
Former Mayor London Breed spent a lot of political capital on this plan to make way for new homes by bulldozing parking lots, defunct gas stations, and auto repair shops. There were estimates SF was home to some 500 potential sites.
The 2022 law has been a clunker, however. Only this year did someone finally put the program into drive, proposing 75 units for a parking lot at 425 Broadway and getting a green light this summer.
While SF’s housing crisis is ever volatile, institutional solutions can take years to have an effect. When asked if the brand-new SB 79 could pay off soon, Council of Infill Builders chair Mott Smith says he expects something like 20 to 30 new buildings over the next five years.
That’s not for San Francisco — that’s the entire state.
“It’s an important step forward,” Smith says about the law, but “my fear, unlike those who oppose it, is not that it will do too much, but too little.”
