One of the most controversial housing bills of the year has lived to be voted upon another day, but only by surviving the Legislative equivalent of two back-to-back prison breaks.
Last week, Senate Bill 79, a bill by San Francisco Democratic Sen. Scott Wiener to boost apartment and commercial construction around major public transportation hubs, passed the Senate Housing Committee over the strenuous objections of its chair, Sen. Aisha Wahab, a fellow Democrat from Fremont.
That was a notable development in its own right. Chairs tend to get their way on the bills that pass through their committees. When a majority of a committee’s members decide to buck legislative decorum and tradition and steamroll that committee’s chair, it’s often taken as a sign that California’s dominant Democrats are unusually divided over an issue; that the issue at hand is especially contentious; that the legislators either aren’t receiving clear guidance from legislative leadership or are willing to ignore that advice; or some combination of all of the above.
Fast forward to this week and it happened again.
In the Senate Local Government Committee, Sen. María Elena Durazo, a Los Angeles Democrat, urged a no vote on Wiener’s bill.
She didn’t get her way. The bill passed with the backing of all the other Democrats on the committee. Durazo voted “no” with the two Republicans.
A chair getting “rolled” is an unusual spectacle in Sacramento. In the typically arcane and perfunctory proceedings of the Legislature, this bit of human drama pops up once or twice a year. For it to happen twice in a row for the same bill is without any obvious precedent.
“Extra unique” is how Chris Micheli, a longtime California lobbyist and public commentator on the Legislative process, described the situation. “Beyond the particular bill at hand, it could give an indication that there is a philosophical split in the caucus.”
So far Senate President Pro Tem Mike McGuire, a Santa Rosa Democrat, has refused to comment publicly on where he stands on the divide within his caucus, whether the two chairs speak for him and whether he plans to intervene to smooth things over.
For some advocates, the silence from McGuire has been deafening.
“The Assembly seems to recognize the urgency of this moment and Governor Newsom has routinely signed with great enthusiasm even the most difficult housing bills to reach his desk, but the Senate appears more isolated from the rest of California on housing than it has in recent years,” Jim Wunderman, president of the Bay Area Council, which co-sponsored SB 79, wrote to McGuire late last week. “As ‘one of our own,’ a member of the Bay Area Caucus, and President Pro Tem of the Senate we feel compelled to write to you to share our deepening concern that the progress that we need on housing may ultimately stall in the Senate.”
McGuire’s office did not respond to a request for interview before this story was published.
After the caucus, Wiener downplayed the idea that there are irreparable divisions within the party.
“You have two chairs who have just a different perspective and that’s normal and, you know, I appreciate that we’ve been able to go through this process very respectfully,” he said. “We’re all grown ups.”
As for McGuire: “He’ll weigh in when he needs to weigh in,” said Wiener.
McGuire is termed out of the Legislature next year, an expiration date which may limit his influence.
The increasingly public philosophical split within the Democratic caucus was apparent in both committee hearings. Wiener is a prolific housing legislator whose views align with the broader “Yes In My Backyard” movement that sees California’s housing affordability crisis as the product of an overall housing shortage. For that group, which includes Assembly Speaker Robert Rivas and Assembly Appropriations Committee Chair Buffy Wicks, making it easier to build more homes more cheaply, quickly and densely is the policy north star. Wicks said as much at a recent legislative hearing.
“’I’m like a one-trick pony,” she said during a debate over a statewide rent control bill. “We’ve got to make it easier to build more housing in California and that has been really my sole focus since I’ve been here.”
Wahab and Durazo represent a different faction of the Democratic Party. Both have stressed that they aren’t opposed to new housing construction and that they share the view that the state faces a severe housing shortage. But they are more skeptical of the private development that tends to be a byproduct of the YIMBY movement’s proposed legislation, and believe state law that encourages it should come with terms and conditions.
Wiener’s bill would allow housing developers to build apartment, condo and mixed-use towers on or near train, subway and light rail stations, ferry terminals and at the intersection of heavily used bus lines, regardless of what local zoning or building design rules specify. It would also remove barriers to transit agencies that want to do the same on their own land.
“If we leave decisions about what to build up to market-rate developers who do not have the broader public interest in their minds, it’s the wrong way to go,” Durazo said. “While I want to help members move their legislation forward, sometimes bills go against our core values and amendments won’t address that.”
“We are aligned on the vast majority of issues,” Wiener said in response. “In this one, unfortunately, we are deeply not aligned and I do not believe that building more housing near public transportation, housing of every variety, goes against our core values.”
The bill doesn’t require private developers to set aside a share of units for low-income residents. Last week, Wahab called the lack of an explicit affordable housing requirement a “ sweetheart deal” for the housing industry. Some affordable housing and anti-gentrification activists have turned out to oppose the bill, arguing that expanding opportunities for private development would come at the expense of affordable housing opportunity and turbocharge displacement.
The bulk of studies that have looked into the question have found that new market-rate housing reduces neighborhood rents and tends to ease displacement pressures.
Wiener has stressed that apartments and condos are inherently more affordable than single family housing and that the bill would not preclude other state and local affordability requirements that developers might be subject to from applying. In the committee hearing today, Wiener said that he is “exploring the possibility” of including a minimum affordability requirement.
The bill is also opposed by many local governments and neighborhood groups that resent the state’s usurpation of their land use authority and opponents of dense development. Ditto the State Building and Construction Trades Council, an umbrella group representing many unionized construction workers, who regularly oppose housing bills that lack stringent labor standards, and some environmental justice advocates.
Another Wiener bill, Senate Bill 607, which would make it easier for urban multifamily housing projects to avoid environmental review — a priority of many Assembly Democrats — also survived, despite Durazo’s “no” vote.
Both bills are now scheduled to go to the Senate Appropriations Committee.
This latest legislative kerfuffle could be a sign of things to come. This year, Assembly Democrats have put forward a vast package of housing bills aimed at speeding up development. Though some are eye-glazingly technical, others may incite the same Dem-on-Dem infighting that broke out over Wiener’s bill.
“(SB 79) could foreshadow tough sledding for some of the Assembly bills,” said Micheli.
By Ben Christopher. This article was originally published by CalMatters.
