Wiener’s Controversial Bill to Allow Housing Near Transit Is Back

Updated 1:30 p.m. Friday

State Sen. Scott Wiener is back with another bill to allow medium-rise apartment buildings near transit across California — his fourth attempt in seven years.

SB 79 by state Sen. Scott Wiener (D-San Francisco) would allow apartments up to seven stories tall within a quarter-mile of certain train stations. Allowable building heights would decrease farther from the train station or bus rapid transit stop, dropping to as low as four stories within a half-mile.

At a Friday press conference outside the Daly City BART station, Wiener said the bill is aimed at boosting both housing and public transportation agencies across the state.

“It will offer more housing overall, and it will support our public transportation systems with increased revenue and increased ridership,” Wiener said. “We really need more housing, more and better transit, and the two truly go hand in hand.”

The bill echoes the ethos — if not all the myriad provisions — of SB 50, which failed to advance in early 2020 after an earlier iteration of the bill was held in committee the year prior. That bill built off SB 857, which was first introduced in 2018.

The final version of SB 50 would have not only allowed four- and five-story apartment buildings near train stations, along major bus lines and in job-rich neighborhoods, but also duplexes and fourplexes in many single-family neighborhoods throughout the state.

Wiener said the new bill is much more focused. It only applies to areas around train and ferry stations, along with stops for bus-rapid-transit, a type of bus that has dedicated travel lanes. Height limits scale down depending on the type of transit, so heavy rail and frequent commuter trains — such as BART, LA Metro subway, CalTrain and Burbank Metrolink — would have the tallest limits. The areas around ferries and less frequent commuter-rail services, such as Capitol Corridor, would have the lowest limits.

“So it’s really focusing on our highest-quality transit,” Wiener said. “And I hope that in the future we have more of that highest-quality transit.” SB 50 faced major backlash from suburban homeowners worried about neighborhood change and advocates who were concerned that lower-income residents would be evicted as a result of increased development, among others. The California League of Cities took an “oppose unless amended” position because of provisions in the bill they said were too ambiguous.

Matthew Lewis, a spokesperson for the pro-housing lobbying group, CA YIMBY, said the latest iteration of the proposal is more straightforward.

“The main way to describe this that’s different from those that came before is that it’s a clean upzoning,” Lewis said. “It’s seven stories, and there’s no other conditions.”

And, he said, other new laws, adopted in the intervening years, have since overridden or addressed other concerns.

SB 9, by former state Sen. Toni Atkins, was signed into law in 2021. It allows homeowners to subdivide their lots and add up to two duplexes in most single-family neighborhoods. Another law, SB 330 by former state Sen. Nancy Skinner requires developers offer tenants the right of first refusal in new apartments if they are displaced by development.

“The lens is different now because the legislative landscape is different than it was,” Lewis said.

Shanti Singh, however, with advocacy group Tenants Together, said she isn’t convinced. Her organization opposed SB 50 over concerns that it would accelerate displacement of lower-income tenants. Although she hadn’t seen a draft of SB 79 when she spoke to KQED, she said the same concerns very likely still apply.

“We don’t have any objection to going after exclusionary communities or making housing easier to build. And we’re certainly not against the idea of buildings being tall,” Singh said. “It’s when you pick a fight with our communities, who desperately need affordable housing, who are facing eviction and displacement, that’s when we get involved.”

While the Legislature has, over nearly a decade, passed dozens of laws aimed at cutting regulatory red tape and boosting new construction, the bills largely haven’t translated into meaningful increases in new homes, Singh said.

What will make a difference, she said, is investing more money into building affordable housing. A $10 billion bond to do that failed to make it to the November ballot last year, after facing competition from competing bonds. Assemblymember Buffy Wicks (D-Berkeley) reintroduced the bond measure in February.

“The issue is money,” Singh said. “We just want to keep hammering that point home.”

Other bills have sought to streamline housing near transit. AB 2923, signed into law in 2018, provided some minimum standards for housing near BART stations in Alameda, Contra Costa and San Francisco counties. While that bill has helped the agency develop housing on land it owns, BART Director Edward Wright said it’s still too difficult to get new apartments approved.

“It lets BART do our own zoning for more homes, for more businesses,” Wright said. “And it lets us do it quickly, simply, and effectively. Not with months to process, but with a clear purpose.”

But, perhaps even more critically, Wright said, SB 79 could help boost ridership that hasn’t recovered from the pandemic.

“It supports more homes near our stations, and that means more people taking our trains,” he said, “instead of clogging up our streets and our bridges with more cars.”