The Discourse Lounge · Housing & Cities
TIER 5 Tue, 16 Sep 2025 00:10:45 +0000
Senate Bill 79 is the third version of a transit-oriented upzoning law. After eight years of failed attempts, the proposal will soon be signed by Gavin Newsom and become law. ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ | | ---|---|--- | | | Forwarded this email? Subscribe here for more --- # California Passes Mass Transit Upzoning ### Senate Bill 79 is the third version of a transit-oriented upzoning law. After eight years of failed attempts, the proposal will soon be signed by Gavin Newsom and become law. | | Darrell Owens --- | Sep 16 --- | --- --- | | | --- | | --- | | --- | | --- | | READ IN APP --- | | ---|---|--- This ad from the 1950s shows early concept BART trains with multi-family housing built along side them in Berkeley. BART originally intended to densify around transit stations but this did not come to fruition due to the prioritization of parking and 1960s national revolution against urban growth. _Disclaimer: This article and all my articles do not represent the opinions of my employer, its affiliate university, or any public commissions I serve on. All articles in this publication are the opinions of only myself. Note that I have not worked in state-level advocacy for two years so my theories as to what decisions were made is not first-hand knowledge but observation and speculation._ This is a high-level map of SB 79 made by a third party. It's mostly accurate from my observation, although maps I'm making will be more accurate. Contra Costa County is no longer included. -- Last Friday, the Senate passed the final vote on Senate Bill 79 -- the more homes by transit bill. The passage of SB 79 ranks as one of the largest upzonings in the country. This is the culmination of 8 years of legislative battle started by state senator Scott Wiener of San Francisco and the YIMBYs to allow dense housing by transit and to ensure that taxpayer investment into public transit results in a commensurate amount of riders using it. All that is left now is for the governor to sign it, which I imagine is all but certain. I won't make the mistake I have made before in implying massive change will happen because of this law. Compared to SB 79's initial version, and compared to the original vision in 2018 when it was first proposed as SB 827, SB 79 has been __ considerably __ scaled down. But the scaling down was not in its effectiveness to build housing, but in scope and that's a key difference than prior state laws passed in California. SB 79 zones for multi-family housing near transit. If the transit is a heavy-rail line (a high capacity metro like BART, LA Metro Red-Line, or Caltrain), you can built multifamily homes as tall as 7 stories within a 0.25 mile radius of the station, or 6 stories within a 0.5 mile radius. If the transit is light rail (small train vehicles like a tram or streetcar, or a bus service with a 24 hour bus lane), housing can be 6 and 5 stories within 0.25 and 0.5 mile radius, respectively. Providing that any portion of a parcel is within range of the pedestrian entrance of a transit station, SB 79 can be utilized. There's going to be many legal questions as to what constitutes a transit pedestrian area or whether a parcel is in range. Many suburbanites will be concerned about the tall height limits, but honestly, looking at the parcels on my map, the density limits are quite low. A 5,000 square foot lot (most lots in my city are around 4,000 square feet) allows for 13 homes near a high-frequency rail stop. 13 units in my city is a 3-story building. The tall height limits are ideal for large lots, not small ones. -- Exemptions -- | | ---|---|--- San Francisco is the most re-zoned city of any city by SB 79. It's easier to count neighborhoods not re-zoned than re-zoned. Nevertheless, S.F. has higher density in its eastern neighborhoods that will likely make the law irrelevant there. SB 79 has two exemptions. First, "urban transit categories" stipulates that a county must meet an arbitrary amount of rail stops to be affected by SB 79. This is nonsensical, since county lines drawn in the 1880s have zero bearing on how urban a city is. SB 79 already mandates that no train stations are upzoned unless it is served by at least 48 daily trains. Undoubtedly, this was to exempt rural and certain suburban legislators from having their commuter Amtrak stations upzoned. SB 79 only applies to counties with 16 or more passenger rail stops: Alameda, San Francisco, Santa Clara, San Mateo, Sacramento, Los Angeles, Orange, and San Diego counties. Shortly after SB 79's introduction, legislators sought to exempt themselves as they have with prior housing laws. This began with the infamous "Marin exemption" in SB 79's predecessor proposal, SB 827, and it has become increasingly absurd since. A recent proposal to exempt pro-housing reforms on cities with a peculiar population requirement was discovered to only apply to one city in the state -- the home city of the new leader of state senate. Originally, the threshold for urban transit counties was 15 rail stops, but it was bumped to 16 in Senate Committee. The cause of the bump is unknown, however the impact was significant and singular: only Contra Costa County and its 12 expensive BART stations and 3 Amtrak stops were excluded with the change. Contra Costa's representatives subsequently voted to approve SB 79 in Senate. In cities with population's smaller than 35,000 people, SB 79 only upzones within 0.25 miles and not 0.5 miles. This was done in favor of small town legislators in relatively urban areas, proclaiming to want only half the upzoning of bigger cities due to a swell in housing causing outsized population growth. They actually shrunk the area by 75%, although it's unclear if all legislators understood the formula for an area of a circle. -- Local & State Control -- SB 79 gives a deadline to communities, if they choose, to redraw alternative zoning plans by July 1, 2026. Cities can move around density within a station area or add more density to one station by taking it away from another. However, no variant of a local plan can reduce an individual station area's upzoned density by more than 50%. These plans must be approved by the state housing agency within 90 days and before the July 1st, 2026 deadline. This provision was made to appease suburban legislators who oppose state control of land use. SB 79 still allows for a lot of local control. Beyond the minimums established, cities can otherwise regulate development however they wish. That includes setback requirements, lot coverage rules etc. The only prohibition is that no regulation can apply to SB 79 projects exclusively. However, SB 79 does circumvents local zoning laws and development requirements if it contains low-income housing, which is required of all projects 10 units and above. 1, 2, or 3 local regulations can be ignored depending on whether the low-income housing is for low income, very low income or extremely low or no-income households, respectively. Density bonus projects in California can ignore all local zoning laws if they provide enough low income housing. Density bonus projects in SB 79 areas can as well, but the height limit in SB 79 cannot be ignored. -- Affordability Requirements -- SB 79 mandates that low-income housing must be built in projects 10 units and greater: at least 7% extremely low income, 10% very low income or 13% low income. If housing is on transit company lands, the requirement is increased to 20% subsidized housing and 25% if its mixed use. If a local community has a higher citywide affordability requirement, then projects must defer to that. Note that changing affordability requirements requires a feasibility study, and if proven to be ineffective, the state housing agency will not permit it. Moreover, if a city is behind in its low-income housing quotas, current state law drops their affordability requirements to 10% no matter what it was initially set at. This deals with any attempts to raise subsidized housing mandates to unfeasible levels to avoid state laws. While developers do not like affordability requirements, SB 79's affordability rate was based on existing state law that has proven widely used. Originally, SB 79 simply deferred to local community laws on subsidized housing requirements. Statewide minimums was included after left-wing legislators and nonprofit developers objected to the lack of subsidized housing mandates in the law, especially for public lands. In its first draft, SB 79 was designed to transition American public transit land-use standards to international standards, where transit agencies do not have to rely on high fares thanks to supplemental income from real estate development and economic activity such as commercial and housing. This was too foreign of a concept for the California legislature and advocacy groups and didn't last long. Instead, using public lands for public services was prioritized and transit agency finances reduced in importance. | | ---|---|--- Osaka Station - Japan Railway (taken from my trip to Japan earlier this year). This mixed-use station on transit company land full of residential, hotel and commercial activities provides revenue to JR Railway. This keeps train fares low, trains frequent, and transit less dependent on outside subsidies. This was the vision for SB 79's earliest draft but the bill authors could not sell Americans on the idea. -- Demolition Controls -- To prevent displacement of current renters in low density properties affected by upzoning, SB 79 can only be used on parcels with single-family homes or duplexes / 2 units. SB 79 cannot be used on properties that require the destruction of homes with 3 or more rental units that have been subjected to price controls. State law has imposed price controls on all multi-family homes built before 2014. It's unclear if SB 79 can be used on parcels that simply move 1-2 unit homes to a different location, either on site or off the parcel. If the 3+ unit homes on these parcels are destroyed for whatever reason, SB 79 cannot be used there for at least 7 years, regardless of whether it was vacant or occupied. State law from 2019 in general prohibits the demolition of rent or price controlled housing without a replacement unit at the same rent level and relocation services paid during construction. Since its passage, demolition of price-controlled units have become small in volume. These extra provisions were passed at the request of tenant organizers. -- Labor Requirements -- SB 79's passage was made possible due to the powerful Building Trades dropping their opposition and other labor unions, including unions representing the majority of residential construction workers, endorsing the law. The labor agreement was that housing projects 85 feet and over (so eight stories), and housing projects on transit agency properties would be built exclusively by union labor. Online, some developers seem annoyed with this agreement, but I'm not sure why since 8 story buildings are usually built with steel and typically the labor is exclusively skilled union workers. This satisfied the Building Trades who are construction union laborers that prefer exclusivity on all building contracts. The Carpenters Union, who are primarily residential union laborers, don't prefer exclusivity since employment opportunities allow for opportunities to organize and gain employment. This agreement saved SB 79 from death. -- Enforcement -- | | ---|---|--- MacArthur BART station in North Oakland. The land with the muted colors to the left are areas designated as low resourced by the state. They will not be rezoned until around 2031. The areas to the right are identified as moderate and high resourced and will be upzoned next year. I produced this map based on my understanding of the soon-to-be law. Another major agreement with the Equity Groups and so far very under-reported was delaying the implementation of SB 79 in state-designated low income neighborhoods until 2031. This delays almost half of SB 79's upzoned areas and requires cities to spend a half-decade of time to consider alternative transit plans or accept the default. The Equity nonprofits have consistently tried to exempt low-income areas in prior state housing laws because they believe that market-rate development is likely to cause displacement. Low Resource areas constitute large swaths of Los Angeles, Oakland, and San Jose. SB 79 housing projects were already set to be mostly located in high income areas where area rents and prices can surmount high construction costs and low-income housing requirements. This was not as consequential as it may seem. Any projects proposed in middle class areas (identified as Moderate Resource) that are wrongfully rejected by local governments can go through the standard appeals process in California. But local governments rejecting projects in upper-middle and high income neighborhoods (High and Highest Resource) will be immediately penalized without appeal. This particular provision satisfied most of the Equity nonprofits and they formally announced the removal of their opposition ahead of the Assembly floor vote. You can see a map of resourced areas here. Low Resource areas, in lime green, are delayed areas. With all these concessions, agreements and provisions in place, Senate Bill 79 passed Senate, Assembly and Senate Concurrence. Eight years of battle over transit-oriented upzoning came to an end. It's en-route to the governor's desk where there is little doubt that he'll sign hit at a large press conference. -- Part 2 on the politics and how impactful SB 79 might be will be published tomorrow. You're currently a free subscriber to The Discourse Lounge. For the full experience, upgrade your subscription. Upgrade to paid --- | | | Like --- | | Comment --- | | Restack --- (C) 2025 Darrell Owens 548 Market Street PMB 72296, San Francisco, CA 94104 Unsubscribe