Controversial Housing-Near-Transit Bill Advances to Next Stop in Legislature

A controversial bill that would allow more apartments near public transit stations throughout California narrowly squeaked through the state Senate on Tuesday.

The bill, SB 79, needed 21 “yes” votes to pass, and it had none to spare, with senators voting 21–13 to advance it to the Assembly. Authored by Sen. Scott Wiener, D-San Francisco, SB 79 would enable the construction of buildings between four and nine stories tall near certain high-frequency bus stations, train and ferry stops. Wiener said the goals of the bill are twofold: to buoy beleaguered public transit agencies still recovering from pandemic-era ridership dips and to boost housing construction.

“We see that we do have [transit] systems in California that don’t have a lot of housing around it, and they have low ridership as a result,” Wiener said on the Senate floor on Tuesday. “And so the purpose of this bill is to say, ‘Let’s focus more housing around the highest-quality public transportation, where we have made significant public investments of tax dollars.”

Previous attempts to pass similar measures — most recently SB 50 in 2020 and its predecessor, SB 857, which was first introduced in 2018 — died in the legislature before making it to the governor’s desk. The latest iteration comes as the state’s Democratic legislature, reeling from the results of the 2024 national election, has vowed to take on the issue of affordability, but without a clear consensus on just how to achieve it.

On the Senate floor on Tuesday, those differences were on display, with opponents of the bill claiming it lacks clear affordability requirements and supporters pointing to the state’s housing shortage as the primary driver of rising home costs.

Sen. Lola Smallwood Cuevas, D-Los Angeles, agreed with the bill’s basic premise to prioritize new housing around transit, but worried that without stronger anti-displacement measures, it would allow new development to push out lower-income residents, who are also most likely to ride public transportation.

“And I don’t see enough opportunity in this bill to stop the massive displacement,” she said before ultimately abstaining from a vote. “There is no mention of community benefits. There’s no mention in terms of — how do we ensure that our most vulnerable communities, that are at the most risk of being displaced, how do we ensure that they have an opportunity to fully participate?”

The bill requires developers to abide by local inclusionary housing mandates and allows them to take advantage of existing permit streamlining and density bonus laws, which would trigger built-in affordability requirements, Wiener noted. If developers opt out, they would have to go through the same public process they undergo now. But he added, the bill’s premise — to allow apartments in areas where they wouldn’t otherwise be permitted — also makes affordable housing easier to build.

“Low-density housing means no affordable housing because you’re not going to have affordable housing unless you have a certain level of multi-unit density,” he said, noting that the Nonprofit Housing Association of Northern California, which had earlier been opposed to the bill, was now in support.

The bill also faced bipartisan opposition from senators who said it would override cities’ ability to plan for housing in their communities by allowing transit agencies to have more control over what gets built near stations.

“The bill also allows transit agencies to become de facto land developers,” Sen. Kelly Seyarto, R-Murrieta, said. “And the need to make land use decisions based on agency fiscal needs will taint the need to act in the best interest of the public and the community.”

Under the proposed legislation, apartment buildings would be the tallest directly adjacent to a transit stop, stepping down with a quarter-mile and again within a half-mile. The transit systems would be further separated into “tiers” based on the type of system, frequency of service and where the transit agencies are located.

Heavy rail and high-frequency commuter trains — such as BART, Caltrain and LA Metro’s B and D lines — would have the most intensive housing development near stations and ferry stops or commuter rail, such as the SMART Rail, having the least.

Transit stops located in counties with fewer than 15 rail stations would be subject to the least intensive development standards.

Sen. Josh Becker, D-Menlo Park, who ultimately voted in support of the measure, said he was concerned that cities are already required to demonstrate to the state how they plan to accommodate new housing in their communities through a process called the Regional Housing Needs Allocation, and this bill undermines it.

“Many cities only recently completed those [plans], where we told them, ‘Hey, you pick where you zone,’” he said. “And then, here, we’re coming along and saying, ‘Hey, and by the way, we’re gonna choose for you in these areas.’”

A recent amendment to the bill allows jurisdictions to present their own proposals to the state’s housing department to increase density around transit stops. That could mean allowing more housing near one station within a city and less around another, or building taller apartments on one side of a station.

“It is very important to me to give cities additional flexibility to say, ‘We understand what you’re trying to do. We want to do it in a somewhat different way,’” Wiener said, adding that flexibility is already written into the bill. “I know we can make it even better, and I’m committed to doing that work.”