California likes to market itself as a state of palm trees, tech offices, movie stars and opportunity — the sunniest, most glamorous manifestation of the American Dream. Still, some imagine it as a desolate, trash-filled waste punctuated by homeless encampments, gridlocked traffic and most of all: a jaw-droppingly high cost of living.
While largely a right-wing invention, this narrative contains a grain of truth. Despite stagnant economic growth and population decline during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, our state continues to feel more overcrowded as population growth reemerges and more Californians are priced out.
This year, State Sen. Scott Wiener introduced a bill, SB79, in the state legislature that aims to address these issues by requiring California cities to allow the construction of apartments and dense, multi-family housing within short walking distance of major public transit stops, such as subway or commuter rail stations and large bus interchanges. The bill is nearing the end of the legislative process: an amended version passed the state assembly in the early morning of Sept. 12, and the senate will likely vote on confirming the amendments this morning before the end of the legislative session. It will then proceed to Gov. Newsom’s desk — but short-sighted opposition from local governments, including the Mayor and City Council of Los Angeles, still threatens to stop this progress in its tracks.
Passing this bill is a crucial first step for the state to address its chronic housing shortage, curb homelessness and remedy its notoriously poor urban planning; it’s crunch time for SB79, and those of us looking to build our lives in a livable California should zealously campaign for its passage.
California’s housing crisis isn’t going away. Even as longtime residents flee due to the high cost of living, the demand to live here continues to grow, driving price increases to outpace inflation. In the past five years, the state’s population has slightly declined overall while home prices have increased by 40 percent and rent has increased by 37 percent. At the same time, the state’s homeless population has increased by over 15 percent in 2024 to exceed 187,000 people. The cause of this shortage is long-term policy failure. For decades, California has failed to build enough new homes to keep up with its growing population, largely due to local governments’ oppressive regulations on where new units can be built.
In particular, cities’ indignant opposition to building apartments and other forms of multi-family housing has pushed working-class Californians to their limits. In 2024, over 95 percent of land designated for residential use in the state was reserved for single-family home developments. This leads to the construction of sprawling and low-density neighborhoods away from urban centers to keep up with market demand, and require residents to drive ever-longer supercommutes to seek the same jobs and services. This strategy is utterly unsustainable, especially as urban areas such as Greater Los Angeles now span across areas over 100 miles wide.
Single-family zoning and similar restrictions have also reduced the effectiveness of California cities’ attempts to improve public transportation. In 1986, Los Angeles voters approved Proposition U, a little-known ballot measure, which slashed the amount of housing that was legal to build along major streets in the city, dramatically reducing its housing ”capacity” and kneecapping the attractiveness of the city’s then-nascent Metro Rail system.
Passing SB79 would finally restore a modest element of planning to this metropolis by centering new development within a half-mile of rail stations and major bus stops, a place where apartments can be constructed on commercial and residential plots. At the moment, this would affect a relatively small portion of California’s urban areas, as our cities are hardly known for their mass transportation systems.
Unfortunately, small groups of disgruntled homeowners from privileged neighborhoods are organized against the state’s passage of SB79. Many cite concerns about traffic and parking, while others hope to preserve the “character” of their neighborhoods. Such fears are often a smokescreen, thinly veiling concerns about what kinds of people might move into changing neighborhoods.
Every residential neighborhood hastily erected near the core of the city during the postwar boom years of the 1940s and 1950s cannot continue to be protected against further population growth. Cities and infrastructure must evolve in order to respect their roots. The only sustainable way to reduce traffic is to promote public transportation and allow it to spur the growth of the dense surrounding neighborhoods. After all, towns like Claremont started as hubs of housing and commerce surrounding rail stations, a legacy which we must reinvigorate in the modern age.
More sympathetically, many anti-gentrification advocates worry about the potential acceleration of longtime renters’ displacement by new construction in low-income communities. However, they too fall victim to the fallacy that the housing crisis in California can be solved without building much more housing in places where people want to live and work. California is not full, as infrastructural inadequacies may suggest at face value. The homeless population in the state will continue to increase so long as enough housing isn’t built. Over time, impoverished and minority families will be the ones displaced as the apartment supply grows ever more constrained and demand continues to rise.
Passing SB79 is an essential first step to building more sustainable communities and bringing back our housing market from the brink of total dysfunction in the cities we love. While the bill has narrowly passed the state senate once, local governments and special interests are still pressuring sympathetic legislators, and Gov. Newsom, to reverse course on SB79 or obstruct its implementation — and this won’t be the last fight. As people who live and study in the state, please consider contacting Gov. Newsom and other elected officials as soon as possible to urge them to support SB79 and future pro-housing legislation. Every voice counts.
Nicholas Steinman CM ’28 is a lifelong Los Angeles resident and incoming transfer student. In his spare time, he enjoys taking long, contemplative walks and yelling at clouds about public policy.
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