A California bill that would increase housing density near transit stations moved a significant step further toward becoming law as the result of a deal struck between a legislator and labor. Senate Bill 79 author Senator Scott Wiener (D-San Francisco) and California YIMBY CEO Brian Hanlon worked with the State Building and Construction Trades Council to overcome the labor group’s opposition by agreeing to include requirements for the use of union workers for some of the developments.
It was the latest major hurdle cleared by the bill. Though it doesn’t ensure SB 79’s passage, it does remove a powerful group from the opposition, and it brings the state closer to adopting more widely the principle of transit-oriented development.
Thirty years ago, thanks to urban designer Peter Calthorpe, transit-oriented development and “new urbanism” were all the rage at least at conferences, in think tanks, and in magazine articles. The “nerdocrat” class loved the idea of walkable communities that can create harmonious interplay between residential, business, transport, and recreation space.
Wiener’s SB 79 isn’t that ambitious. It’s simply about focusing housing development around transit hubs and trying to make that a reality. Despite a six- or seven-story maximum height (hey, I live in Chicago; that’s not very tall), Wiener’s plan has run into the usual California buzz saw of opposition from people who claim it would harm preservation, provide insufficient affordable housing, override local planners (you know, the ones who work to block most housing development), and doesn’t incentivize organized labor (which was the point of the agreement with the State Building and Construction Trades Council).
To which one might respond that no, it does not solve every problem. That brings to mind the old Saturday Night Live skit about a product being both a floor wax and a dessert topping. Because of the broad-based organized opposition to housing in California, Wiener and his pro-housing cohorts in state government have had to take a piecemeal approach to increasing housing in the state. This bill is only addressing the floor wax problem; other bills can tackle the dessert topping needs.
This bill is only addressing the floor wax problem; other bills can tackle the dessert topping needs.
For some historical perspective, consider that the bill’s goal is kind of the opposite of a city Henry Ford and Thomas Edison planned to build in Tennessee a century ago, which would have been a long, narrow city that mixed small farms with housing and factories, all powered by renewable hydro energy. The 1920s plan was also designed for people to get around by automobile, a novelty then, a commonplace thing today. The plan, which never came to fruition despite decades of work by Ford and southern supporters, is told in the fascinating 2021 book Electric City: The Lost History of Ford and Edison’s American Utopia by Thomas Hager.
Despite having two of the world’s richest and most influential businessmen behind it, the Tennessee project failed because it couldn’t get the necessary legislation passed through Congress. We’ll see if Wiener can continue to make progress on his much more modest proposal in Sacramento.
Headline of the week
“Cheryl Hines Has ‘Ordered RFK Jr.’ To Move Her to DC From $6.6 Million California Home After Olivia Nuzzi Sexting Scandal”
— Realtor.com
Go figure
01915: The ZIP code of Beverly, Mass., the top-ranked “hot ZIP Code” measuring home-buying and time-on-market (Realtor) . . . $12 trillion: value of the U.S. “defined contribution retirement plan market” that can be tapped by real estate and other “alternative investments” under a new executive order by Trump (Morgan Lewis) . . . China: origin country of the largest percentage of foreign purchasers of U.S. homes, representing 15 percent; Canada was second with 14 percent (CBS News) . . . 5 percent: amount of reduced net operating income of commercial landlords due to cancellation of federal leases by DOGE (Yale Insights) . . . 39 percent: drop in value of undamaged homes located near buildings destroyed by tornadoes. “We were very surprised by this at first,” said Jeffrey P. Cohen, a real estate professor. The results of his work were related in an article with the very unsurprising headline “Real Estate Professor Cohen: Study Confirms that Properties Adjacent to Tornado Destruction Initially Plunge in Value” (UConn Today).
Say what?
California has the highest cost of living of any state, primarily due to our extreme housing shortage. At the same time, overly restrictive zoning laws prevent millions of Californians from living near public transit, making train and bus systems impractical for many. Building an abundance of homes at all income levels, in close proximity to major transit stops, will address our housing shortage to lower costs while making public transportation feasible for millions of families to use. Building these homes starts with legalizing [the building of] multifamily housing near major transit stops, also known as transit-oriented development.
— Press release from the office of Senator Scott Wiener (D-San Francisco)
