California cities are scrambling to decide what to do about Senate Bill 79, which takes effect July 1 and lets developers build mid-rise apartment buildings, some up to nine stories tall, near major transit stops across the state.
The law passed last fall. It rezones land near train stations, subway stops, and certain bus lines for denser housing, and it applies to major metro areas statewide. But the final version of SB 79 gave local governments significant room to maneuver before that summer deadline lands, and cities from the Bay Area to San Diego are now moving fast to figure out how to use it.
Some cities are moving to comply. Some are fighting back. Some are hunting for every exemption in the fine print.
Los Angeles went full delay. The city council voted last month to rezone parts of its zoning map in a way specifically designed to buy the city more time, potentially until 2030, before SB 79’s full requirements kick in.
The strategy was legal and deliberate. SB 79 includes a set of carve-outs: areas adjacent to transit that already allow at least half the housing density the law requires can postpone rezoning until one year after the next mandatory state planning cycle. For Los Angeles and much of Southern California, that planning deadline falls in 2030. Neighborhoods at high wildfire or sea-level-rise risk qualify for that delay too, as do areas on historic preservation registers and low-income communities.
The Los Angeles city council used all of those exemptions. The council voted to temporarily shield rezoning changes in low-income neighborhoods, high fire-risk zones, and historic districts, and it also voted pre-emptively to allow mid-size multifamily buildings, up to three or four stories, in dozens of higher-income neighborhoods currently restricted to single-family homes. That last move was the key one: by bumping those areas slightly above the density threshold, the city’s planning staff said the neighborhoods would qualify for the four-year extension.
The logic, according to city planning staff, is that accepting a modest increase in density now avoids the much larger changes SB 79 would otherwise impose.
It’s a balancing act. Supporters of the law say California can’t build its way out of the housing crisis without exactly the kind of dense transit-oriented development SB 79 is meant to unlock. Critics, particularly in wealthier neighborhoods, argue that cities should control their own planning.
What happens if a city does nothing at all? State law answers that directly. Jurisdictions that miss the deadline and don’t adopt their own compliant zoning plans will face the state’s default rezoning rules, imposed automatically. That’s a strong incentive to act, even for cities that don’t love the legislation.
CalMatters has been tracking how elected officials across the state, from the Bay Area down through Los Angeles and San Diego, are each charting their own course. The situation looks different depending on the city. Some jurisdictions are embracing the law as an opportunity to accelerate housing plans they already had in progress. Others are treating it as an imposition and lawyering up over specific boundaries and definitions.
SB 79 doesn’t cover every block near a bus stop. The law targets major transit corridors in metropolitan areas, and the definitions of which stops qualify have real consequences for which neighborhoods get rezoned. Cities are reviewing those definitions carefully, and some are contesting them.
The July 1 deadline is firm. Cities that want to shape how SB 79 applies to them, rather than having the state’s default rules applied, need to have their own zoning amendments adopted and submitted before that date. For many city councils, that means cramming months of planning work into the next few weeks, scheduling public hearings, and navigating community opposition that, in some neighborhoods, has been intense.
What Los Angeles showed last month is one template: accept just enough density to trigger the delay provisions, protect the neighborhoods where political resistance is highest, and push the bigger decisions into the next planning cycle. Whether that approach holds up to scrutiny from the state, or whether Sacramento will push back on cities that appear to be gaming the exemptions, is a question several housing policy advocates are now raising publicly.
The $4.6 million in penalties that the state can impose on cities that fall out of compliance with housing law have focused attention before. They’re likely to focus it again as July approaches.