California
California cities scramble to comply with or fight major state housing law
For California’s local governments hoping to have some say over where and how large apartment buildings get packed near major transit stops, it’s crunch time.
Last fall, state lawmakers made it legal for developers to build mid-rises — some as tall as nine stories — in major metro neighborhoods near train, subway and certain dedicated bus stops.
But the final version of Senate Bill 79, which goes into effect on July 1, offered local governments plenty of wiggle room over the where, when and how of the new law.
With the summer deadline rapidly approaching, cities across the state are starting to wiggle.
Like a statewide game of Choose Your Own Adventure, local elected officials for the San Francisco Bay Area to Los Angeles to San Diego are exploring ways to either lean into the spirit of the law, come up with their own plan tailored to the city’s whims and needs, or slow the local roll out for as long as possible while considering their options. Those that do nothing will be forced to accept the transit-oriented rezoning prescribed by state legislators.
Los Angeles opted for a strategy of maximum delay last month when the city council voted to overhaul a portion of its zoning map in order to buy itself a few more years of planning time.
The move took advantage of a set of escape clauses written into the state law: Transit-adjacent areas that already allow at least half of the housing required under SB 79 can hold off on changing the rules until a year after the next state-mandated planning period.
For Los Angeles and much of Southern California that’s 2030.
Likewise, many lower income neighborhoods, those at risk of wildfire and sea-level rise or sites listed on a historic preservation registry also qualify for that temporary delay.
L.A.’s city council mashed every pause button it could.
Along with temporarily exempting zoning changes in poorer neighborhoods, known fire zones and historic districts, the council preemptively voted to allow modest multiplex buildings as tall as three or four stories in dozens of higher-income neighborhoods currently restricted to single family homes. That will bring those areas up above the cut-off needed for the four-year reprieve, according to the city’s planning staff.
By swallowing a little more allowable density in the short term, the city was able to ward off a whole lot more — for now. Backers of the measure said that will give the city more time to come up with a better alternative that still complies with the law.
The vote “adds meaningful housing capacity now and gives us time to decide where the rest of density should go within our own communities,” Councilmember Katy Yaroslavsky said before the vote.
When 2030 arrives, the city will either have to come up with its own plan that meets the overall density requirements of the state law — but with some allowable flexibility over where all the potential growth goes — or belatedly accept SB 79 whole cloth.
The L.A. vote came as a disappointment to many pro-development advocates, who have called upon city officials to speedily accept the state-imposed densification immediately, or barring that, to take more aggressive steps in the meantime.
“We’re pretty concerned that this is not actually going to produce housing,” said Scott Epstein, policy and research director with Abundant Housing Los Angeles, a “Yes In My Backyard” oriented advocacy group.
He noted that smaller apartment buildings are less likely to be financially feasible in areas where land costs are exceptionally high. The city’s ordinance achieves its increase in allowable density by permitting modest apartment buildings in relatively affluent neighborhoods.
But even some of the state law’s fiercest defenders see a silver lining in the city’s delay tactic.
“On the one hand, it’s disappointing because we’re delaying the full potential of the law,” said Aaron Eckhouse, local policy programs director for California YIMBY, one of the sponsors of SB 79. But in Los Angeles, he noted, city officials have long been fiercely resistant to proposed zoning changes in neighborhoods dominated by single-family homes.
Now Los Angeles council members are effectively saying, “‘okay, we will do this on our terms rather than on the state’s terms,’” said Eckhouse. “But it is still happening, because the state forced the issue.”
How can cities go their own way?
The Los Angeles approach mirrors one being pursued by officials in San Francisco. There officials are considering a policy of exempting industrial areas and many of the city’s low-resource neighborhoods, while preemptively pushing up the allowable density on certain low-rise locations to get them over the 50% threshold and qualify for a delay until 2032.
But unlike Los Angeles, San Francisco doesn’t plan to spend years coming up with a bespoke local alternative. Instead, the city is proposing to roll out its own version before July 1. That task was made a bit easier given that local officials just wrapped up a citywide densification effort last year as part of Mayor Daniel Lurie’s “Family Zoning Plan.”
The current proposal is set to be heard by a Board of Supervisors subcommittee later this month.
For cities like Los Angeles and San Francisco that decide to come up with their own local plans, they will still need to get the approval of state housing regulators. Officials from California’s Housing Department have yet to publicly weigh in on any individual city’s plans. But their boss has. In a handful of social media posts, Gov. Gavin Newsom has lambasted Los Angeles and San Diego for their proposed efforts to shield certain portions of their city from the requirements of the law. Newsom did not suggest that either city was violating the law itself.
Some cities may simply decide not to bother. Sacramento, for example, will soon consider an ordinance that would make modest tweaks to the way it accepts development applications subject to the state law, but otherwise leaves the state-set zoning rules intact.
Other municipalities, with smaller budgets and fewer professional planners on staff, may not have much choice but to accept the requirements of the state law, said Jason Rhine, a lobbyist with the League of California Cities, which opposed the bill when it was working its way through the Legislature.
Rhine said that some cities are still scrambling to understand the basics of the statute, such as how it applies to future transit infrastructure or how the law defines distance from a transit stop.
“If you’re a planner trying to come up with an alternative plan authorized by (the law), you don’t have the information needed to even get started,” said Rhine. He said he is urging state lawmakers to consider extending the July 1 deadline. No one has taken him up on the idea yet.
‘A matter of urgency’
In Oakland, the decision over whether to delay or accept the state upzoning has played out at the neighborhood level.
Last month, the city’s planning staff proposed an ordinance to take the full suite of possible delays in order to buy time and develop an alternative plan. This, city staff stressed, was not about opposition to the goals of state law, but about a preference among local planners to reconsider the city’s plan comprehensively and at all once, rather than in fits and starts.
“It’s no dispute over outcome,” Oakland Planning Director William Gilchrist told the council. “I think it really comes down to a question of when and how.”
Even so, three city council members objected, arguing, in effect, that they would like the state’s override in their districts now, thank you very much.
Zac Unger, who represents some of the city’s more affluent neighborhoods in North Oakland, argued that parcels that have already achieved the 50% density threshold should not be exempt in his district, especially because the bulk of them are located along busy commercial corridors.
Change is coming, one way or another, he argued at council. “I am arguing for, in a sense, coming to grips with that reality right now rather than spending a year providing people with the false idea that we can somehow exempt ourselves from state law.”
Two other members — Charlene Wang and Ken Houston — who represent some of the low-resource neighborhoods entitled to delay, also wanted to adopt the law in their districts now. “In an urban area like Oakland we should be far exceeding the density minimums in (state law),” said Wang.
In a follow-up interview, Unger noted that the debate in Oakland may be more symbolic than it is in other cities. By happenstance, city planners have been working for years toward an overhaul of the city’s zoning map, which they aim to wrap up next year. In other words, Oakland is likely to have an alternative plan that complies with the state law’s requirements by 2027 anyway.
“If we implement SB 79 on July 1 of this year instead of July 1 of next year, there won’t be buildings blowing up from the street,” he said. “It’s just a matter of urgency — and a statement of values.”
Aside from those cities that are racing to embrace the state law and those seeking delay or their own versions, there is another possible category: Those that resist the law entirely.
After California lawmakers passed a law in 2021 allowing homeowners to split up their properties into as many as four separate units, density-averse cities pushed back. Some took the state to court, others explored adopting municipal charters, one flirted with the idea of becoming a mountain lion refuge. None of the measures ultimately succeeded.
If SB 79 is met with a similar array of resistance, we aren’t likely to see that until after the July 1 deadline, said Eckhouse with California YIMBY.
“The reason to do something now is either to lean into it or to use the provisions of the law for flexibility and deferrals,” he said. “But if they just want to stand in the door and say ‘no,’ we might not find out about that until the zoning standards go into effect.”
California reported one of the largest decreases in homelessness over the past year, according to a new report from the US Department of Housing and Urban Development (Hud).
The Golden state recorded a total unhoused population of 181,934 in 2025 – an almost 3% decrease since the year prior, placing it among the five states with the largest decreases from 2024. However, more significant drops were recorded in Illinois (44%), Hawaii (41%), Florida (11%) and New York (8%).
The new data signals at least some success on the part of Gavin Newsom, the California governor who has intensified his crackdown on homelessness over the past year. In May 2025 he announced a new model ordinance for cities and counties to address “persistent” homeless encampments, as well as $3.3bn in voter-approved funding to increase housing and drug treatment programs.
California, along with New York, had the largest population of unsheltered people recorded in 2025. Homelessness has been a key issue in this year’s gubernatorial race, as well as in the Los Angeles mayoral race.
The data also showed that the national homeless population decreased for the first time since 2016, coming down 3% from 2024. The Trump administration attempted to downplay the small one-year decrease, instead highlighting the fact that homelessness has increased 27% since 2013.
“The data is clear that the status quo of ‘housing first’ has failed to meaningfully reduce homelessness, resulting in crisis levels of people living on the streets,” Scott Turner, the Hud secretary, said in a press release. “HUD is restoring its programs to advance recovery and self-sufficiency and to ensure that taxpayer-funded benefits serve American families.”
As the administration attempted to downplay the drop in homelessness, it also sought to connect the success to its immigration policies, stating that the 2025 decrease was “attributable to decreases in Sanctuary Cities”.
The data comes from the federally mandated homeless point-in-time count, which tallies people sleeping in shelters and outside on a given day. On a single night in January 2025, there were 745,652 homeless persons in the United States.
While anti-homelessness advocates cited the decrease in homelessness as a “relief”, they also pointed out that the Trump administration’s policies may erode the progress that has been made.
“So much of the progress reflected in the 2025 PIT Count is due to targeted housing and service resources that were available in 2024 to rehouse people, including the highly successful Emergency Housing Voucher program, and new funds to address rural and unsheltered homelessness,” Ann Oliva, the CEO of the National Alliance to End Homelessness, said in a statement.
“Unfortunately, the Trump Administration has largely deprioritized these tools and worked to dismantle the very systems that drove these reductions.” Oliva pointed to the administration’s proposed cuts to permanent housing programs, which the organization found would “force at least 170,000 formerly homeless people back on the streets”.
The government has also mandated treatment for recipients of federal housing vouchers, and penalized jurisdictions that employed harm-reduction strategies such as safe consumption sites. In April 2026, Hud introduced a proposed rule that would require federally funded shelters to house prospective tenants based on their birth sex alone.
California
I moved from Germany to the US for my career. The high cost of living in California shocked me, but it’s worth it to live here.
This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with Christiane Schroeter, a 49-year-old professor of innovation and entrepreneurship and leadership strategist in San Luis Obispo, California. The following has been edited for length and clarity.
I moved from Limburg, Germany, to the US in 1999 as an exchange student for my M.S. degree before returning to Germany to complete additional graduate work. I returned to the US in 2001 as a Fulbright Scholar to pursue my Ph.D. at Purdue University.
After I earned my Ph.D. in 2005, I decided to build my career and my life in the US rather than return to Germany. I had met my husband during my graduate school years, and together we chose to put down roots on the West Coast.
I joined the faculty at Cal Poly in September 2007 and gave birth to my daughter in December of that year. I started a new job, pregnant, while moving across the country. Building a career and a family at the same time, far from my home country, shaped everything I came to understand about the real cost of relocating.
Today, I’m a leadership strategist, professor of innovation and entrepreneurship at Cal Poly, San Luis Obispo, author of several books about leadership, and a podcaster.
The new country feels last longer than you expect
I was 23 years old when I first moved to the US. I expected the obvious expenses, such as flights, paperwork, and the starter purchases you don’t think about until you need them.
What surprised me was how long the newness stayed expensive. Even when your income is objectively higher, fixed costs rise so quickly that it takes very little to feel financially stretched.
I spent hours learning basics I had taken for granted in Germany, like opening bank accounts, building credit from zero, and figuring out what to do when you’re asked for a Social Security number before you have one.
I also had to learn how rental contracts, deposits, phone plans, and transportation work in places where you need a car, including registration, insurance, and DMV requirements. Time becomes money fast when you’re studying, working, and trying to build a future at the same time.
In Germany, I knew how life worked. In the US, I had to rebuild that knowledge piece by piece.
Housing in California made me realize how quickly additional money gets absorbed
Many people underestimate how dramatically living in California can affect their budget.
For me, one of the highest unexpected monthly costs was the mortgage. Housing was not slightly more expensive. It became the financial anchor that shaped everything else. My husband and I had to make monthly decisions around that number.
Living in California was a genuine upgrade with bigger houses and bigger yards. California’s abundance of fresh produce, gorgeous weather, and proximity to the ocean fit my lifestyle better than Germany ever did. The cold, rainy days and a culture I never fully connected with were not the life I wanted.
I would honestly say I live in a “Goldilocks place.”
The cost of childcare changed how I thought about security
The hardest trade-off was realizing how expensive support can be when you live far from friends and family. After I delivered my first child, I faced the childcare scramble almost immediately. I remember touring childcare centers and wondering how families afford monthly costs for multiple children. I spoke with mothers who realized that their earnings would nearly match what they were paying for childcare.
At the same time, I was adjusting physically and emotionally to becoming a mother, and when you’re far from family, there’s no built-in safety net for the unpredictable moment, such as a sick day, a last-minute meeting, or an emergency.
I learned that many US families create a fragile patchwork of childcare and babysitting. If you have children, distance from family is not only emotional but also logistical. It can become one of your highest monthly costs, and one of your biggest mental loads.
On a lesser note, one bill shocked me: our cellphone bill. Our family plan with four phones, two watches, and two iPads is about $300. That may sound routine, but over a year, it feels like a luxury purchase hiding in plain sight.
Healthcare and benefits reshaped my definition of stability
Healthcare in the US introduced another layer of financial awareness. Even with insurance, you still have to pay premiums, deductibles, co-pays, navigate provider networks, and prepare for potential surprise costs.
I remember debating whether to schedule a specialist appointment because I wasn’t sure how much it would count toward our deductible. In Germany, that decision would have been straightforward. In the US, it required reviewing the provider network, estimating out-of-pocket costs, and preparing for an unexpected bill.
The upside is real, but so is the pressure
I built the life for which I came here. I built a stable academic career. I built a business. California became home.
In Germany, Sundays were true rest days. Life paused by design. In California, Sundays easily became catch-up days. I realized I had to intentionally create what I now call “Serenity Sunday.” It is my way of honoring the German philosophy of working to live while living in an American culture that often feels like living to work.
I don’t think I’d move back to Germany now. When I visit, I enjoy it more like a tourist looking in than a native who feels at home. For me, the cost of living in California is worth it, because what I’ve gained is hard to put on a spreadsheet: independence, a career I couldn’t have built anywhere else, and a family rooted in a place I chose.
The price is real, but so is the payoff.
OAKLAND, Calif. – With Tuesday’s primary election approaching, the race for California governor is coming into focus — and one candidate’s rise has surprised nearly everyone watching.
That’s according to Joe Garofoli, senior political writer and columnist with the San Francisco Chronicle, who broke down the latest polling and key races to watch with KTVU.
Who’s in the lead?
By the numbers:
The latest Berkeley IGS poll of 5,000 likely voters from May 19-24, shows former Attorney General Xavier Becerra leading the field at 25%, with Republican Steve Hilton at 21% and billionaire activist Tom Steyer at 19%.
Just two months ago, Becerra was polling at 5% and Democratic Party leaders were quietly urging lower-performing candidates to reconsider their campaigns. Former Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, who is now polling at 1%, was among those who suggested Becerra consider dropping out.
“This would be the greatest comeback since Lazarus,” Garofoli said.
He attributed Becerra’s turnaround primarily to the exit of Congressman Eric Swalwell from the race, saying Swalwell’s voters and Becerra share many of the same moderate positions.
Becerra, Garofoli said, has leaned into a steady, reassuring image on the campaign trail.
“He’s sort of portraying himself as Tío Becerra — Uncle Becerra, the kindly uncle,” Garofoli said. “This is not a guy who’s going to go to Sacramento and turn over the tables.”
The other side:
Steyer, meanwhile, has climbed from 15% earlier this month to 19% in the latest poll, powered by $213 million of his own money and a string of endorsements from major progressive organizations in California.
His support for single-payer health care and his pledge to not take corporate PAC money have resonated with the left, even as some progressives have historically been skeptical of billionaire candidates.
“Steyer’s a different type of billionaire than the tech billionaires who they traditionally oppose,” Garofoli said, noting that Steyer’s platform focuses on protecting and creating working-class jobs rather than advancing technologies that could eliminate them.
Ballots are slow coming in
Dig deeper:
Despite the competitive field, Democrats have been slow to return their mail-in ballots, with return rates sitting around 12%.
Garofoli said the hesitation reflects a broader dissatisfaction with the candidate pool.
“I can’t tell you how many people told me, ‘I don’t know who to vote for, none of these people appeal to me,’” he said. “Nobody in this field really has that outsized big personality, or at least has demonstrated it at this point.”
Local perspective:
In San Francisco, former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi added a new variable to the congressional race to fill her seat, endorsing Supervisor Connie Chan over front-runner State Senator Scott Wiener. Garofoli said the endorsement was expected, though its timing surprised him.
Pelosi’s recent endorsement record in San Francisco has been uneven — she backed Dean Preston, who lost, and Joel Engardio, who was recalled — but Garofoli said this one may carry more weight.
“It is for her seat. She has tapped Chan on the shoulder and said, this is the person I want,” he said.
Chan is currently in a tight race with Saikat Chakrabarti, a former tech engineer and one-time aide to Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, according to Chronicle polling.
The Pelosi endorsement, Garofoli said, could be enough to push Chan into the top two alongside Wiener.
The Source: Interview with Joe Garofoli, senior political writer and columnist with the San Francisco Chronicle, Berkeley IGS poll
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