Amid a post-2024 wave of Democratic interest in the burgeoning pro-development “abundance” movement, this seemed to be an easy year for California’s yes-in-my-backyard housing development activists.
Democratic leaders in the state Legislature declared their intention to tackle affordability this year. Gov. Gavin Newsom and other politicians have since embraced the “abundance” platform, which argues that Democrats must do more to quickly deliver housing, transportation and other infrastructure projects to their constituents.
Lawmakers have introduced ambitious bills that would, for housing developments in existing neighborhoods, blow a hole through the longstanding thicket of environmental reviews and regulations that often slow down projects and add costs. One of those passed its first committee on Monday.
Still, YIMBY-ism hit a stumbling block Tuesday in the form of the Senate housing committee. The committee, led by Sen. Aisha Wahab, nearly killed a closely watched bill to require cities to allow taller, denser apartments and condo construction near public transit stations.
Wahab said she was acting on a chorus of familiar objections from progressives and others who have long delayed housing construction in California: The legislation didn’t guarantee that projects would be built with union labor. It didn’t require that the new units be affordable for low-income residents. It could infringe on local governments’ ability to block or green-light projects. It opened up the possibility of bypassing certain environmental reviews.
In the end, the committee voted 6-2 against Wahab’s objections to narrowly advance Senate Bill 79, by Sen. Scott Wiener, a San Francisco Democrat and prominent advocate for housing production. Some Democrats were absent or didn’t vote. The committee also killed a different Wiener bill that would have further loosened restrictions on property owners who want to split single-family homes into duplexes. It was a stark reversal from prior years in the Legislature, when Wiener chaired the housing committee and pushed through several bills to spur housing production.
The tense hearing on Tuesday exposed pro-development advocates’ mounting frustrations with Wahab. It also revealed remaining hurdles for “abundance”-minded Democrats in a progressive Legislature where lawmakers who say they want to increase housing construction are nevertheless prone to tacking on price controls, labor agreements and other regulations to appease various constituencies.
That lawmakers voted to advance the bill despite Wahab’s opposition indicates some are ready to override progressive concerns on housing developments. But critics predict debates like these will ultimately sink Democratic leaders’ goals of refocusing the party platform on making California affordable.
“They’re going to blow it,” said Senate Minority Leader Brian Jones, a San Diego Republican, of the Democrats’ affordability agenda earlier this month. “They still believe in government control. They’ll release this regulation, but not this other one. They’re not willing to deregulate enough.”
Senate Pro Tem Mike McGuire, who appointed Wahab as committee chair, did not respond to inquiries about how Wahab’s stances and the debate over what limits to place on development affects his affordability agenda. He instead issued a statement saying that finding “innovative solutions” to the housing crisis “is at the top of the Senate’s agenda.”
“While it’s still early in the legislative session and in the committee hearing process, there are dozens of housing bills that legislators are having meaningful and honest conversation and debate on,” he said. “I trust we’ll have significant housing legislation advance this year.”
Wiener would not say whether he has asked McGuire to step in, but said he was confident a growing number of lawmakers agree with his approach to make it easier to build.
YIMBYs fight more cautious approach
Pro-development activists have clashed with Wahab since last month, when, during her first hearing as chair of the housing committee, she questioned the effectiveness of policies that have loosened restrictions on the dense, urban, sometimes parking-less projects that are central to the YIMBY platform of bringing down rents by increasing the supply of market-rate housing.
A progressive who is focused on preserving explicitly affordable units for low-income tenants, Wahab, a Hayward Democrat, was pushing for legislation to help cities that enact rent caps compete with other municipalities for state housing and planning grants. Some studies have found rent control in San Francisco has reduced rental supply, while other economists say capping rents is still needed to help those who are housing insecure.
“The state has prioritized development, development, development,” Wahab said. “The types of development that are going up with zero parking and all these giveaways to developers have also not translated to housing that has dignity that people want to stay in and raise their families in.”
Her bill drew skepticism from some colleagues on the committee, who noted the state funding programs are for development and production, but nevertheless voted to advance it.
The chair continued to frustrate pro-development activists with her opposition to Wiener’s housing-near-transit bill.
It is a narrower revival of a proposal Wiener tried before. In 2018, he introduced legislation to allow taller, denser buildings around major transit stops, overriding local zoning rules and the objections of local governments. It died in committee. In 2020, he took another crack at the issue. That bill was silently axed by the Senate’s appropriations chair.
In unusually frank comments as he presented the bill on Tuesday, Wiener said Wahab had not offered any amendments to the legislation — only blanket opposition — and criticized the analysis prepared by the committee’s staff, who work under Wahab’s leadership.
“Reading the committee analysis is just an avalanche, laundry-list of 10,000 things that are supposedly wrong with the bill,” he said. “Reading the analysis, there’s apparently not a single thing in the bill you like.”
Wahab, in turn, said the lack of explicit affordability requirements for units built near transit made the proposal a “non-starter for me at the very beginning.”
“I do believe in building more,” she said. “We must build housing for all income levels, and I have been consistent in that position.”
Chairs tend to get their way in the Capitol, but on rare occasions a committee votes to override their concerns, a tactic Wiener has used before.
In 2023, he was pushing what was then among the most controversial pro-housing development bills through the Legislature. When Arleta Democrat Luz Rivas, then the chairperson of the Assembly Natural Resources Committee, attempted to kill it, a bipartisan gaggle of Republicans and pro-development Democrats pushed it through anyway.
By Jeanne Kuang. CalMatters’ Ben Christopher contributed to this story. This article was originally published by CalMatters.
