Housing crisis fix stalled as bill dies
Backers of Wiener’s SB50 seek to try again this year
SACRAMENTO — The demise of a San Francisco state senator’s sweeping bill to allow denser residential construction around public transit and in wealthy suburbs thrusts the state’s efforts to fix its housing shortage into an uncertain future.
Democratic Sen. Scott Wiener’s SB50 died Thursday when it fell three votes short of passage in the Senate for the second day in a row. It’s the third time in as many years that Wiener’s main housing legislation has failed to advance to the Assembly, and although he said he would come back with a new measure later this year, the path to approval is anything but clear.
SB50’s death was also a significant setback for Gov. Gavin Newsom, who campaigned on building millions of new homes in California, and Senate President Pro Tem Toni Atkins, DSan Diego, who maneuvered the bill through legislative roadblocks to keep it alive. Both had expressed their desire to pass the bill in some form this year to address the housing crisis and
worked behind the scenes to secure votes.
But while SB50 will not be the vehicle, the issues it raised are certain to return to the Capitol — and soon. Atkins said after the vote that she is committed to ensuring a housing bill passes this year.
“This is not the end of this story,” she said. “Everyone needs to get ready to come to the table. Everyone needs to get ready for some compromise.”
Newsom released a statement applauding Atkins for “vowing to continue this fight.”
SB50 met a chaotic end Thursday, as Wiener scrambled to gather lastminute support on the Senate floor. The bill had failed Wednesday, and although Wiener was granted an opportunity to try again, nothing changed. The vote was 18 in favor to 15 opposed, three shy of the majority needed in the 40member chamber.
Supporters said SB50 was a first step to boosting construction in the state and urged their colleagues to send it to the Assembly so negotiations could continue. But they couldn’t overcome objections, voiced largely by suburban Democrats, that the bill would strip cities of control over their own development. Some Democrats also said SB50 didn’t guarantee enough affordable housing and could lead to gentrification.
Members waited around for nearly an hour on the floor Thursday, growing increasingly impatient, as Wiener, Atkins and their allies pulled undecided legislators into side conversations.
“I’m just wondering what we’re doing. What’s going on here?” Sen. Bill Dodd, DNapa, asked at one point.
Dodd, who ultimately voted no, was one of several wavering lawmakers who was called into the governor’s office on Wednesday as Newsom’s staff tried to rally backing for the bill. Newsom himself huddled with Atkins on Thursday morning to strategize how to advance SB50.
Wiener said Newsom and Atkins had been strong allies on the bill.
“I absolutely believe the governor and the leadership when they say we will move a strong housing production bill this year, and I intend to be very much a part of that process,” he said.
Dodd said he had planned to vote for the bill, until he realized this week just how divided the majority Democrats were. He said he wanted an approach that more of his colleagues could support.
“We have time to do that,” Dodd said. There are still seven months left in the legislation session, and crucially, there is time for another try after the March 3 primary — a date on the minds of many senators running for reelection.
SB50 would have eased the development of small and mediumsize apartment and condominium projects by raising height limits around public transit and by removing density restrictions and reducing parking requirements in highincome communities with lots of jobs and good schools. It would have all but eliminated singlefamily residential zoning in the state by allowing for the conversion of vacant lots and homes into fourplexes.
Groups representing labor unions, businesses and the construction industry lined up behind the bill. But lawmakers were under intense pressure to oppose it from local officials in their districts who feared losing control over development.
Wiener’s amendments to give cities an alternative process to plan for the same amount of new housing as the bill required did little to eliminate those objections, and many Democrats from suburban and coastal districts, which would have seen the biggest changes, voted “no,” including Sens. Steve Glazer of Orinda and Jerry Hill of San Mateo.
Negotiations between Wiener and a coalition of affordablehousing developers and advocates for lowincome communities also reached an impasse last week, prompting dozens of organizations to oppose the bill out of fear of gentrification. That was another common criticism on the Senate floor, with several lawmakers saying their constituents worried they would be pushed out of their homes.
Wiener said he would try again with a new measure this year. He said the defeat of SB50 was “another reminder that California has failed on housing.”
“No more nibbling around the edges. It’s time to get to the heart of this problem,” he said.
It’s unclear what the next iteration could look like to unite the various strands of opposition.
The Senate vote broke down more along geographic than partisan lines, with most Democrats and a few Republicans from Northern California and the Central Valley in support, and the large contingent of lawmakers from Los Angeles County overwhelmingly opposed.
Some mentioned their displeasure with a provision of the bill that exempted small cities in counties with fewer than 600,000 people from some of its requirements, which benefited communities like Marin County while leaving out almost all of urban Southern California.
Wiener said the housing crisis is fundamentally the same statewide, but coming up with a solution may be complicated by how much worse it has gotten in the Bay Area than anywhere else.
“The Bay Area has gone off of a housing cliff before L.A.,” he said. “On housing, the Bay Area is the tip of the spear in a bad way. One of our goals is we want to avoid having other parts of the state be like the Bay Area in terms of the housing crisis.”
By Thursday afternoon, he was posting on Twitter that he had introduced two new placeholder housing bills.