California’s housing crisis no longer just harms affordability but it’s now a question of livability, climate survival, and whether our cities can continue to function as places where working people can live near their jobs, schools, and families.
California’s housing crisis no longer just harms affordability but it’s now a question of livability, climate survival, and whether our cities can continue to function as places where working people can live near their jobs, schools, and families.
For decades, we’ve failed to build enough homes—especially in places where people most want and need to live. But a new proposal, Senate Bill 79, according to Senator Wiener (the author), California YIMBY, and Campbell Mayor Sergio Lopez, offers a chance to reverse course with clarity, urgency, and care.
SB 79, authored by Senator Scott Wiener, directly tackles the state’s interlinked crises of housing shortage, climate emissions, and traffic congestion by unlocking new housing near major transit corridors. The premise is simple: if we’re going to invest billions in public transit, we must also ensure people can live near it.
For supporters, SB 79 is about aligning our values with our infrastructure. It recognizes that the way we currently build—or, more often, refuse to build—has created a system where working people must either crowd into unaffordable neighborhoods or move hours away from their jobs, creating crushing commutes and dangerous emissions. It’s no accident that the very places where housing is most needed—urban job centers, transit nodes, walkable neighborhoods—are often the most expensive and the most exclusionary.
Nowhere is this more apparent than in Silicon Valley.
As Campbell Mayor Sergio Lopez explained in his Silicon Valley Business Journal op-ed, “Many of the world’s largest, most successful tech companies were born here and continue to employ tens of thousands of residents in good-paying jobs. But this prosperity… has not been matched by a growing supply of housing, and so our communities now face some of the highest costs of living in the nation.”
The result? The very people who power Silicon Valley—engineers, teachers, hospital workers, service employees—are being pushed farther and farther from the region’s economic heart.
“Entrepreneurs and workers… are moving further from the job centers we’re famous for in search of housing they can afford. Many are leaving the state altogether,” Lopez wrote. This has cascading effects: more traffic, longer commutes, and increased greenhouse gas emissions that undermine California’s climate goals.
As Lopez put it, “As our workers move into distant exurbs with long car commutes, or even to other states that don’t share California’s goals on reducing climate pollution, our housing crisis becomes a major cause of the climate crisis.”
This is where SB 79 comes in. The bill would enable both publicly and privately owned land near high-quality transit stops to be used for new housing—especially infill development that promotes walkability, affordability, and access. It also incentivizes mixed-use projects that bring in local jobs and amenities, which research shows can further boost transit ridership.
Lopez knows this approach works because he’s seen it firsthand. As chair of the Santa Clara Valley Transportation Authority (VTA), he noted that the agency is actively creating housing on its own land to generate long-term financial stability and meet local housing needs.
“VTA has a goal of scaling up to 7,500 new homes, with at least 3,000 of these being affordable,” he wrote. These developments aren’t being imposed top-down—they’re the result of close collaboration between the transit agency, cities, and neighborhoods.
SB 79 would accelerate these efforts by reducing red tape, aligning state resources, and helping cities meet their housing goals in ways that actually make sense. As Lopez emphasized, “SB 79, by increasing housing opportunities near transit, would help us meet these goals faster and at lower cost, while increasing revenue.”
California YIMBY, a leading housing advocacy organization, praised the bill in similar terms. “While we’re doing our part to increase our housing production, we can’t tackle this alone,” the group wrote. “SB 79 offers an opportunity to increase housing availability throughout the Bay Area, and other California cities with good transit access, and reduce costs where it most makes sense.”
One of the strengths of SB 79 is its flexibility. Rather than imposing a one-size-fits-all zoning standard, it introduces a tiered approach that tailors housing intensity to the level of transit infrastructure. In high-frequency areas like Diridon Station in San Jose, more dense development would be allowed. In lower-frequency transit zones, the impact would be far more modest.
“The intent is to link housing with high-quality transit opportunities, not to sprawl out where there is insufficient infrastructure to support population growth,” Lopez wrote. Importantly, SB 79 also allows cities to propose alternative plans for meeting housing needs—ensuring that local governments maintain some control while still being held accountable for delivering results.
The bill also preserves local design standards, affordability requirements, and labor protections. It doesn’t override local zoning completely, but rather fits within the framework of existing state housing incentives, including those aimed at streamlining affordable housing and protecting workers’ rights.
That’s essential, because public transit isn’t just a matter of convenience—it’s a climate imperative. Greater transit use means fewer cars on the road, lower emissions, and less sprawl. Housing near transit ensures that the investments we make in buses, trains, and light rail pay off with real ridership. “There’s more to public transit than just convenience and cost savings—it is a crucial tool for fighting our climate crisis,” Lopez emphasized.
Critics of transit-oriented development often raise concerns about neighborhood character, gentrification, or infrastructure strain.
But failing to act is not neutral—it’s a decision that deepens housing scarcity, exacerbates inequality, and pushes people into car-dependent lifestyles that harm our planet.
As Lopez noted, “We’ve made it too hard to build, too complicated to get around, and too expensive to live here—it’s time to change that. SB 79 can help.”
There comes a point (which we’ve already seen) where the companies that created this situation (who weren’t even “invited” by long-term residents in the first place) start to leave and bring their workers with them.
That’s how the free market ultimately works. (It works that way globally, as well. That’s why all of our industries are in China – cheaper labor). I doubt that Trump’s tariffs will fix that.
As far as density creating affordability, is that true in Manhattan? (Or any of the other major dense cities in developed countries around the world?)
“if we’re going to invest billions in public transit, we must also ensure people can live near it.”
IF
“The bill would enable both publicly and privately owned land near high-quality transit stops to be used for new housing—”
Well, that solves that problem. We don’t have any high-quality transit.
“In high-frequency areas like Diridon Station in San Jose, more dense development would be allowed.”
Have you SEEN the area around (I will not use that name) San Jose station? It’s nothing but high-density, multi-level housing. It is already quite allowed. Sounds like your hero, Weiner, is re-inventing the wheel. Or the door.
And really, three articles about the same guy, two with A.I. portraits of him.
I have family that live a few miles from Diridon Station. I take the train there often. Alan is right, it’s been my observation that the area is already highly developed not to mention the Shark Tank being nearby.
That’s weird, I guess it’s two articles. Is it just me, or does that border patrol agent in the other aricles look exactly like Scott Wiener ?