by Vanguard Staff
SACRAMENTO — In a major step forward for California’s housing and climate future, the Senate Appropriations Committee this week advanced Senator Scott Wiener’s Senate Bill 79, the Abundant & Affordable Homes Near Transit Act, to the Senate floor. Framed as a response to California’s intensifying housing crisis, SB 79 aims to legalize multi-family housing near major transit stops and allow local transit agencies to build housing on land they own—measures supporters say are essential to reversing skyrocketing housing costs, reducing emissions, and rescuing financially strapped transit systems.
“California’s housing and affordability crises have reached a fever pitch, and SB 79 is the bold step forward we need to meet the scale of the crisis,” said Senator Wiener (D-San Francisco). “Building many more homes near public transit tackles the root causes of our affordability crisis while bolstering public transportation across the state.”
SB 79 directly targets restrictive local zoning laws that prohibit multi-family housing near bus and train lines, even as the state grapples with the highest cost of living in the country. The bill sets statewide zoning standards allowing buildings up to seven stories tall within immediate proximity to major transit stops—including rail stations and bus rapid transit (BRT) routes—with tiered height reductions as the radius expands up to half a mile.
It also permits transit agencies to develop high-density housing on land they already own, a model used successfully in cities like Hong Kong and Tokyo. These cities generate revenue for their transit systems through real estate development—a strategy that California could adopt to help stabilize agencies facing declining ridership and budget gaps.
The committee adopted minor amendments that don’t affect the bill’s core provisions, leaving intact its central promise: to increase housing supply, lower family housing costs, reduce reliance on cars, and support the state’s climate goals.
Transit-oriented development—a strategy long championed by housing advocates and climate experts—is gaining traction nationwide. States like Colorado, Massachusetts, and Utah have passed TOD mandates requiring higher-density housing near transit hubs. California, with its deep housing shortfall and climate commitments, is now looking to follow suit.
Wiener’s bill would also integrate with the streamlined approval process created by SB 423 (also authored by Wiener), which fast-tracks housing projects that meet environmental, labor, and affordability standards. Local governments would retain some flexibility to define specific TOD zones, subject to oversight by the Department of Housing and Community Development (HCD).
While some critics have dismissed SB 79 as a giveaway to developers of so-called “luxury” apartments, housing advocates argue that opposition misunderstands the problem.
“Blocking market rate projects on these sites will not make $3 billion materialize out of the air to fund affordable housing,” tweeted housing advocate Max Dubler in a widely shared thread. “Rather, it will further worsen the housing shortage, raising rents for the 90% of California’s low-income households who live in market rate housing.”
Dubler pointed to a CalMatters report showing that, in 2023 alone, California affordable housing developers had $3.5 billion in ready-to-build projects—but just $576 million in available state funds. Without enough public money to subsidize below-market housing, the only option to alleviate the broader shortage, he argues, is to make it legal to build some kind of housing—especially near transit.
Dubler illustrated the dilemma using a real-world example: a two-bedroom unit in Oakland’s Skylyne Apartments, steps from MacArthur BART, rents for $4,242/month. That’s expensive—but it’s significantly cheaper than buying a nearby two-bedroom house for $955,000, which carries a monthly ownership cost of roughly $6,750.
“It’s not cheap,” he wrote, “but it’s a whole lot cheaper than $6,754 a month. I think a lot of Oakland households could really use that extra $30,000 a year.”
For supporters, SB 79 is about more than housing—it’s a litmus test for the state’s willingness to prioritize climate-aligned, affordable urban living. Legalizing mid-rise apartments near rail and BRT stops is the next logical step in aligning housing production with public investment in transit infrastructure.
“This is about setting priorities,” said Michael Lane of SPUR, one of the bill’s sponsors. “We can’t say we’re serious about climate, equity, or affordability if we continue to ban apartments near BART stations.”
The bill is co-sponsored by a coalition of pro-housing and sustainability organizations, including Streets for All, California YIMBY, Greenbelt Alliance, SPUR, and the Bay Area Council. Local officials across the state—from Santa Monica to Berkeley to Claremont—have also voiced support.
SB 79 now moves to the full Senate for a vote, where it will test the Legislature’s resolve to confront overlapping housing, transportation, and climate challenges with policy bold enough to match the crisis. Whether lawmakers will rise to that challenge remains to be seen.
Building a lot more multifamily housing near transit is nothing less than the general theme of california’s long-term housing solution.
As previously noted, it appears that this bill could enable developers to build the type of housing described in this article on ANY site that is annexed to the city – regardless of how a proposal is presented to voters under Measure J. (That may also be true regarding the existing “builder’s remedy”, if the city doesn’t have an approved housing element.)
As a result, it seems to me that this bill creates a disincentive for voters to approve ANY proposal under Measure J. And that it’s also a threat to Measure J, if ANY proposal is approved outside of city limits.
In other words, once land is annexed to the city – the city will have no control regarding what is ultimately built. (Perhaps even bypassing any plan, which doesn’t currently exist anyway – to create a grade-separated crossing for bicycles and pedestrians.)
Seems to me that those who support ANY peripheral proposal would have concerns about this bill.
Once again ignoring the real problem: our transit sucks b*lls. California needs to invest tens of billions to upgrade our rail systems and then tie our local bus systems into feeders for regularly-timed, frequent, fast, eventually-electrified rail service.
All this does is give developers excuses to build near transit, but won’t change the systemic problems of our transit systems, which are investing in all the wrong ways in all the wrong places, and most of all, at anemic levels — while we continue to pour billions into our highways, which allows for — and subsidizes — sprawl, like Lagoon Valley, masses of new suburbs of Folsom south of I-50, Elk Grove, and upcoming and in progress suburbs in Davis.
So we build all-around BART, while BART is going off a fiscal cliff with no relief in site, sans massive service cuts and fare increases? You can’t address the problems with transit by forcing people to live near bad transit. We have to completely reform BART — that it is the wrong gauge so everything costs too much to build, that it doesn’t run after midnight, that people are afraid to ride it due to security issues and people using stations and trains for drug use and sleeping, and most of all that it’s employees are the most ridiculously overpaid transit employees in the entire country, and that is bankrupting the system.
Transit use will increase when you make transit more attractive than driving for the masses, and we are nowhere near that. Until then, you aren’t putting the cart before the horse, you are forcing the horse to eat the cart.