Newsom signs law that will allow mid-rise apartment buildings near major transit stops

Ever since the Legislature narrowly passed Senate Bill 79 last month, legislation that will pave the way for more apartment buildings around major public transit stops in the state’s biggest metro areas, the California political universe has been impatiently awaiting Gov. Gavin Newsom’s signature or veto in a heated statewide game of “will he, won’t he.”

Today, he did.

Newsom’s sign off on the bill means that apartment developers will soon be able to pack more homes into neighborhoods within half a mile of major rail, subway, and bus rapid transit stops, overriding local zoning restrictions and any possible objections of surrounding neighbors. Buildings immediately surrounding these transit hubs will be entitled to max out as high as nine stories, with those further out topping out at roughly four.

“The world looks to California for leadership — it’s time to build modern, connected communities that fulfill California’s promise, meeting the needs of today and the next generation,” the governor wrote in a signing statement.

The signature caps off a legislative year full of housing policy overhauls that even just a few years ago would have seemed unthinkable. It also reaffirms the governor’s political alignment with the “Yes In My Backyard” movement, which has been championing the cause of building more housing in the face of a statewide housing shortage for nearly a decade. This summer Newsom signed YIMBY-backed legislation to exempt most urban apartment projects from review under one of the state’s signature environmental protection laws. “Go YIMBYs,” Newsom said when signing that bill into law.

Senate Bill 79 is, indeed, a signature victory for the movement. The bill’s author, San Francisco Sen. Scott Wiener, a Democrat, introduced an earlier version of the policy in 2018 with the support of the then still relatively new political organization California YIMBY. This year’s version, which narrowly passed both the Senate and Assembly last month with few votes to spare, marks Wiener’s fourth attempt.

“In California we talk a lot about where we don’t want to build homes, but rarely do we talk about where we do—until now,” said Wiener in a statement. “SB 79 unwinds decades of overly restrictive policies that have driven housing costs to astronomical levels, forcing millions of people away from jobs and transit and into long commutes from the suburbs or out of the state entirely. It has been a long road to tackling these decades-old problems, but today’s signing marks a new day for affordable housing in California.”

Newsom’s signature comes as a grave disappointment for many local governments and neighborhood groups, particularly in Southern California. Last month, Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass urged Newsom to veto the bill, saying that it would “erode local control, diminish community input on planning and zoning, and disproportionately impact low-resource neighborhoods.” Irate homeowner groups and state legislators raised concerns that mandating higher levels of housing density would “fundamentally reshape” suburban-style neighborhoods.

The “upzoning” policy was meant to be a two-fer: Allow for much more housing construction as a way to alleviate the state’s housing shortage and its resulting affordability crisis, while also steering more residents towards cash-strapped public transportation systems.

Despite the ferocity of the opposition, the bill that Newsom signed is considerably more modest than the version introduced at the beginning of the year. After 13 separate rounds of amendments, the law will be restricted to just eight highly urbanized counties — Los Angeles, San Diego, Orange, Santa Clara, Alameda, Sacramento, San Francisco and San Mateo — and apply only to select transportation stops (train, subway, light rail and high-frequency buses routes with designated lanes). The law will also give local governments alternative means to comply with their own local programs, require a certain share of units constructed under the bill to be set aside at below-market rents and go into effect on a delayed schedule in certain lower income neighborhoods.

Even in that more muted form, the law is one of most consequential changes to statewide zoning rules in modern California history.

Over the last weeks, Newsom has come under sustained pressure from both supporters and opponents. Advocates for historic preservation, tenant rights, local control and affluent neighborhood groups, along with Republican gubernatorial candidate Steve Hilton and former reality TV star Spencer Pratt, have rallied their respective audiences to inundate the governor’s office with calls and emails urging a veto. Supporters — among them national political commentators, billionaire megadonor Tom Steyer and every corner of the organized YIMBY online universe — have urged their supporters to do the opposite.

Popular interest in the outcome of the bill seemed to escape the confines typical of California legislative debate. Earlier this week, an online betting pool popped up (the odds were always good for Newsom’s signature). The topic even came up during the governor’s guest appearance on the recent livestream of the popular online gamer known as “ConnorEatsPants.”

Responding to a stream of public comments from his audience packed with incessant inquiries about the bill, the streamer prompted Newsom: “I don’t know what this is, but they’re saying you need to talk about SB 79.”

This article was originally published on CalMatters and was republished under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives license.