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ggm

... near transit hubs.

It should be a net positive if it doesn't die in the courts for every single proposal.

It's also not enough by itself but Rome wasn't built in a day.

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This law (and other recent CA YIMBY laws) don't create much surface area to sue or slow a project:

* The approvals are designed to be "ministerial", meaning there is no discretion on whether to approve or not. If the project meets the objective criteria spelled out in the law, it must be approved.

* If the city doesn't approve in a limited time window, it's deemed "approved" by default.

* Ministerial approval protects the project from CEQA lawsuits. CEQA requires the government to consider the environment when making decisions. When the approval is ministerial, the government doesn't make any decisions, so there is no CEQA process to sue against.

SB 79 is just the latest in a long sequence of pro-housing bills to get passed in California in the last 5-6 years. I’d rather them do one or two small winnable battles per year than bet it all on a giant do-everything bill which might galvanize more opposition.

Frankly, this strategy seems to be a good one considering what a winning streak CA YIMBYs have been on.

With the CEQA reform from a couple months ago, those court cases should be lessened a bit.

California spent decades digging this hole and it's gonna take decades to dig themselves out, even with bills like these.

But that's still better than refusing to fix the problem.

There may never be another transit hub built

> ... near transit hubs.

I don't understand this narrative that California has been pushing the last few years - basically, "There's a bus stop in the neighborhood, therefore we can add a bunch of new housing without doing any other infrastructure upgrades." I just don't see it. What I do see after new housing is added is insufferable traffic and no parking - and empty buses.

Probably 99% of bus stations aren't relevant for SB79. I think the goal is to make it more like dense cities outside of California (NYC, Paris, Tokyo, etc) where car ownership can be unnecessary or even a liability. Public transit is a lot more scalable than cars. A train that only has 50 people on it may look nearly empty but it's better than having 40 cars on the road.

HN has one particular view, which is to keep increasing density without care for any other factor. But density does change neighborhoods and quality of life in many negative ways, including the example you shared. Someone may get to move into that area at a lower price. But someone else loses what they had. I don’t understand why those who demand lower priced housing are more valid. And too often, the response here is to attack anyone who brings up the negatives of high density living (edit: here come the oh-so-predictable downvotes). I suspect that is partly ideological, and partly due to age skewing younger here. But I wish there was more tolerance for mid-size towns that don’t get density forced on them, but can stay a healthy balanced size because that’s what the locals want to hold onto for their own quality of life.

The people who want small, mid-sized towns are free to live literally anywhere they want outside major metro areas. There's 90+% of the state by land area left to them.

This discussion is and has always been centered around the housing crisis in urban centers, where it's been illegal to build density for decades. This has caused issues where those urban centers can't afford for people to provide critical services ( like teachers, laborers, medical staff, social services workers, etc) because housing simply doesn't exist at a price they can afford. Unless the suggestion is to make do with crumbling community services, housing reform is mandatory.

> The people who want small, mid-sized towns are free to live literally anywhere they want outside major metro areas.

This is what I was referring to, in terms of HN’s attitudes on this topic. Why should a “major metro area” change to accommodate newcomers? It should just stay serving its current residents, who may want it to stay the size it is. The ones desiring to live there at a price they can afford are the entitled ones. They could be the ones to choose to live “anywhere they want outside major metro areas”. Major metro areas also don’t just come in one size. There are larger cities and smaller ones, denser ones and less dense ones. And it is perfectly valid to want a smaller one.

Because "current residents" also include the children and teenagers currently living there? You act like young adults are 100% flown in by storks, as if the city doesn't itself procreate, as if school children doesn't grow up into young adults.

Any good sources showing how much various cities' fertility rate contributes to their population growth?

They don’t contribute, as they are all below replacement rate.

https://www.newgeography.com/content/007550-total-fertility-...

Probably true worldwide except maybe Africa and Middle East.

As I explained in the previous post, it causes issues because it results in people who would otherwise fill jobs providing critical services to the community like teaching either moving to cheaper areas or switching careers entirely. This article mentions several of the cities impacted by SB 79:

https://www.nea.org/nea-today/all-news-articles/teachers-str...

Are you arguing that large urban areas shouldn't have schools and vet offices? Because that's where we've been heading absent meaningful housing reform.

Normally, this situation would result in wages rising, but there's a few issues.

1) The scale of the shortage is so severe that demand far outstrips supply, which means price-based solutions simply result in high wage earners taking all of the available supply.

2) Prices are rising faster than wages.

3) These industries don't have the cost basis to compete with high wage earners. Are you happy with your local vet prices? Are you willing to triple or quadruple the education taxes you currently pay?

4) Even adjusted wages still cause fewer people to enter these industries from other parts of the US, or switch into more lucrative careers. That's socially problematic.

I confess that this attitude infuriates me. How did these become major metro areas in the first place? You changed the quality of life in your neighborhood when you moved there. You don’t get to say “that’s it, stop here, it’s on its final, perfect form” any more than the previous residents were before you arrived.

Major metro areas have overbuilt commercial properties and underbuilt residential properties because commercial properties provide much more (property and sales) tax revenue than residential properties.

This is anti-social, and puts the burden of housing all these workers on the rest of the region, as well as forcing the rest of the region to share transportation costs.

This is pretty obviously unfair. Why should poorer midsized towns and suburbs have to lose money so that large metro areas can maintain a housing density level that lets them cosplay as small towns while overbuilding commercial density?

The state is passing laws to serve its current residents.

The state believes local control has not benefited Californians as a whole.

I happen to live in an expensive home in a dense area and I agree with the state.

> The people who want small, mid-sized towns are free to live literally anywhere they want outside major metro areas. There's 90+% of the state by land area left to them.

Whether good or bad, it's important to realize this is not true in California, with regard to these laws. They apply everywhere, not only in urban centers.

So if there are people who want small towns without dense development, that option has been taken away entirely.

I live in a tiny town (population < 10K) surrounded by forest, far from any urban center. An d even here some of the wooded areas are being clearcut to build dense apartments due to these laws.

Would it be better if the forest was cut down to build single family detached homes?

It would be better if a tiny town was allowed to remain tiny. Not every place has to be forced to be the same.

> Whether good or bad, it's important to realize this is not true in California, with regard to these laws. They apply everywhere, not only in urban centers.

According to the linked article, the only areas affected by this bills are major transit centers and high throughput public transit stops, which tends to exclude small towns far from cities. If you look at the linked map, affected areas are all concentrated in big cities

Are you commenting on the bill being discussed here or on something else entirely?

You are mistaken on the basic facts of where this permits more hosing.

You also do now understand people in urban areas and their desires. For example look at Seattle, which has added a lot of population, but only added 1 car per 30 new people:

https://www.theurbanist.org/2025/09/07/while-seattle-populat...

For a few generations, 99% of housing that was built was car dependent. That's not what the market wants. So when options are provided that allow living without a car, people flock to it.

While I wholly support density and bike everywhere myself, I don’t know if “people are getting poorer in Seattle” is the win “The Urbanist” thinks it is.

I can only guess what you mean here, but if you assume that people who don't own cars are poorer than those with cars, you are wrong and don't understand wealth.

Those who move to cities and can live without cars have far higher incomes than median, and because they are not burning the average of $700/month on a car, they accumulate wealth far faster.

If I have misunderstood your assumption, please correct me, but the "only poor people don't have cars" fallacy is the only way I can make sense of your comment, and the only people I have heard express it are deeply out of touch with the modern world.

Seattle median income growth is the lowest it has ever been in the last three years, since 2022, in low single digits compared to its past high-to-double-digit growth since 2013. In a completely positivist sense, it would be really improbable for that to occur and also for reduced car ownership to be associated with greater wealth. Of course, reduced car ownership is pretty much associated with lower wealth everywhere in the world, like with pretty much owning anything, like homes or expensive degrees or whatever.

There are a FEW things that decline with greater wealth, like number of children, that buck intuition, but it’s not super clear what the cause and effect is. Suffice it to say, if what you were saying is true, which is improbable - I’m not saying impossible, just really improbable - we would be talking about it way more.

Now why you have to go and call me out of touch and all these big harrowing names, I don’t know. I’m just trying to talk about what is likely to be occurring. People make less money and cars are more expensive so fewer people own cars: that shouldn’t be a controversial POV.

Median income growth slowing or decreasing does mean things are working well. We don’t want middle class families being shut out of our housing markets and working class folks needing two hour commutes to come support our cities.

Every affordable housing project that gets built slows the growth of the area AMI.

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