This week, California lawmakers began the long process of introducing every potential new bit of legislation into committee, including dozens of new housing laws. As in recent years, new housing bills are focused almost entirely on building more and building it faster, with density skeptics relegated to playing spoiler — or sidelined altogether.
The raft of new bills, many from Bay Area legislators, makes up roughly 10 percent of the session’s total so far, according to a UC Berkeley Terner Center report. The slate has potentially huge implications for San Francisco as the city struggles to make room for 82,000 new homes in coming years. That struggle stems in part from economic conditions and also from some of SF’s own lawmakers, who are balking at the creation of substantial opportunities for more development.
The decades-old resistance to new housing across much of the Bay Area spurred local lawmakers, including SF’s Scott Wiener and David Chiu and Berkeley’s Buffy Wicks, to run for state office in the 2010s and dismantle local housing control from Sacramento. “Many cities that once kept new developments at bay have been recording relatively strong housing growth in recent years — Berkeley, Oakland, and San Francisco included,” says Carolina Reid, professor of city and regional planning at UC Berkeley.
In SF, despite abysmal output in 2022 and 2023, the past decade has been productive relative to historical numbers.
In the new legislative session, others are joining the fray with a combination of policy carrots and sticks, among them LA-based Steve Padilla’s Senate bill (SB 1032) that would wipe away certain state debts for developers who set aside at least 50 percent of units in new projects for low-income housing.
Meanwhile, SF’s Assemblymember Matt Haney is pushing AB 3068, which would legalize office-to-residential conversions in all types of zoning. The idea is to add state muscle to local efforts (including SF’s recently passed Prop C) to make conversions — which remain mostly pie-in-the-sky — practical and attractive for builders and to bring life back to quiet downtown cores. In SF, Prop C gives builders a tax break; Haney’s statewide bill would grant conversions “by-right” approval “in all zones,” planning-speak for a free ride past almost all SF red tape.
With an eye toward the current market slump, Wiener’s Senate bill (SB 937) aims to give developers an extra 18 months to extend building entitlements that would expire next year. With the market doldrums right now, many big projects have legal permission to break ground but no capital to start construction; SB 937 would give them more time to come up with the money.
Wiener’s proposal would also allow developers to put off certain fees until construction is complete. “We must not allow high interest rates to grind housing production to a halt,” Wiener said in a statement.
Assemblymember Chris Ward, from San Diego, also has an indirect enticement for developers. His AB 2934 would allow the state’s housing department to study building code reform. The bill has a goal of reducing by 30 percent the cost of new home construction, which has gone — pardon the pun — through the roof in recent years. Recommendations would have to be approved by a separate legislative act. San Francisco has recently seen its own version of this debate, with Sup. Connie Chan pushing for stricter safety codes, including sprinklers for all ADU or “granny flat” additions. Local housing hawks have worried that the proposals are less about safety and more about adding obstacles to new housing.
One big stick threatening localities is called the Builder’s Remedy. The rule lets the state suspend virtually all housing roadblocks in cities that make no effort to meet their quotas. Once a city is slapped with the remedy — it happened briefly to Santa Monica in 2022 — practically any project can be approved as long as it has at least 20 percent affordable units. Berkeley’s Assemblymember Wicks wants to add more weight to this cudgel of last resort with AB 1893. The bill would slash the affordable housing minimum to 10 percent, making the remedy even more of a nightmare for development-phobes.
‘I really thought Scott Wiener was committing career suicide’ by crusading for YIMBYism at a state level. ‘I’m quite surprised at the change in attitudes, and it’s a nationwide change.’
land use economist and professor William Fischel
Lawmakers are also pushing tenant protections, something to watch closely in SF, where tenants are the majority of residents and where the largest landlord has continued to sell off its buildings under economic duress. The bills include an extension of a 2019 rent cap (AB 846) in apartment buildings whose owners benefited from low-income housing tax credits. Another extension (SB 924) would continue to let renters apply rent payments toward their credit scores.
Another tenant-focused bill would require the state to publish the maximum allowable annual rent hikes in each jurisdiction every year. There’s even a bill (AB 2785) that would force landlords to keep security deposits in interest-earning accounts — with interest accruing to the tenants, not the landlords.
Making waves on the coast
In a true sign of the times, several lawmakers want to relax some rules along the coast. Historically, California’s coastline has been sacrosanct, with most kinds of development along beaches off-limits.
One new bill, AB 2560, aims to extend looser density and streamlining rules to coastal areas within the boundaries of an urban center, while Wiener’s SB 951 originally aimed coastal housing reform squarely at San Francisco — about five percent of the city coastline in all. However, Wiener this week struck all SF-specific language from the bill, and its impact and fate are unclear. As recently demonstrated by fears over a soaring 2700 Sloat proposal, few things spur California housing ire like the prospect of obstructed ocean views.
As with Wiener’s coastal bill, many will fail or face dilution as they maneuver through the Byzantine process of committees and floor votes, but the momentum is clearly on the side of building more. Aside from playing defense, there’s little legislative counterpoint to all this YIMBYish enthusiasm.
YIMBY-backed politicians control key housing committees, and Gov. Gavin Newsom wields a veto pen, so there’s not much point pushing a NIMBY bill that’s destined to die an early death.
Still, a couple lawmakers are giving it a shot. Republican Sen. Kelly Seyaro, who represents an inland swath of Southern California, proposes with SB 968 that a local government that exceeds its state-mandated housing goal in one eight-year cycle can apply the surplus to the next cycle. To make the case for the bill, Seyaro’s statement cites rising construction costs and the stiff penalties cities face for flouting their goals. (In true GOP fashion, Seyaro also takes a swipe at San Francisco, noting the city’s current pace of permitting won’t get it close to its goals — which has nothing to do with his bill. Seyaro’s office did not return requests for comment.)
In another specific technical maneuver, Orange County Sen. Steve Min’s new bill (SB 1055) would make it harder for cities to approve ADUs taller than 16 feet, but only in cities that have already hit their RHNA goals for low and very-low income housing.
These rather pallid measures would return a modicum of authority to cities, but they’re barely rocking the boat. To build momentum, the housing skeptic lobby would need some progressive Democrats and the state’s remaining Republicans to work together — two groups that have problems standing next to each other on the best of days.
What happened to the old-fashioned California NIMBY in the Capitol? “The League of Cities tends to be the closest thing to a ‘local control’ [organization] that has power in Sacramento, but they’re not NIMBYs in the way we have them locally,” says Housing Action Coalition spokesperson and YIMBY advocate Corey Smith. The league lobbies against housing bills that undermine its mission statement — “defend and expand local control” — but it also takes more nuanced positions, at times pushing the state to allocate billions of dollars for new construction.
“NIMBYs at a state level are really back on their heels,” says former Dartmouth economist William Fischel. “I really thought Scott Wiener was committing career suicide” by crusading for YIMBYism at a state level, but “I’m quite surprised at the change in attitudes, and it’s a nationwide change,” Fischel says.
With housing boosters in key committee positions and in the governor’s mansion, bills to reverse the tide toward city control have little room to flourish. “There are many people who are hesitant to submit anything except a bill that will pass, and we know who controls that is Scott Wiener,” says Susan Kirsch, founder of the North Bay nonprofit Catalysts For Local Control and disparager of YIMBYism, which she calls a “Mack truck rolling over community control.”
But as Wiener’s about-face on the San Francisco coast showed, the “truck” isn’t unstoppable. Kirsch holds out hope that more robust challengers will step up against YIMBY-backed candidates in future elections, but her wish wasn’t granted when it comes to her main foe. Running for re-election, Wiener won his Senate seat primary earlier this month with 74 percent of the vote.