The median sale price of residential property in California is higher than in any other American state. People are leaving for cheaper places, creating a political problem for Democrats: California could lose at least three congressional seats and electoral votes in the next reapportionment after the 2030 census.
SB 79, authored by the legislator Scott Wiener, rezones state land around busy public-transport stops to allow taller residential buildings and slaps hefty fines on cities that try to deny such buildings a permit. The bill was amended more than a dozen times to appease rural lawmakers, unions and tenants-rights groups, and barely passed the legislature. Governor Gavin Newsom signed it into law on October 10th 2025, alongside more than 40 other housing reforms. SB 79 will be phased in over several years; cities can propose different locations as long as the housing gets built somewhere.
Wiener told The Economist that "Democrats need to be willing to say no to NIMBYs and to city councils that are yelling at them."
Mayor Karen Bass of Los Angeles urged Newsom to veto SB 79 to avoid eroding "local control", claiming Los Angeles is a "pro-housing city" despite having approved only 13% of the units it says it needs to permit by 2029. Nithya Raman, a rare YIMBY member of LA's city council, said that "state intervention has been really the only pathway through which we've been able to make real progress on this issue."
In San Francisco, moderate mayor Daniel Lurie is using the threat of state intervention to convince local NIMBYs that his own plan is tame by comparison.
Pacific Palisades and Altadena, razed by fire in early 2025, lack transport stations big enough to trigger SB 79's provisions.
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