The Homework: August 28, 2025
Welcome to the August 11, 2025 Main edition of The Homework, the official newsletter of California YIMBY — legislative updates, news clips, housing research and analysis, and the latest writings from the California YIMBY team.
News from Sacramento
We’re heading into the final stretch of the legislative session, and bills that have cleared their committees and have no fiscal impact are now eligible for votes on the Senate or Assembly floor.
The remaining bills are referred to the Appropriations “Suspense File,” where bills with budget implications are held for final review by the Senate and Assembly appropriations committees. Suspense hearings for both the Senate and Assembly are scheduled for August 29th. Bills that make it through those hearings, or are amended, will then head to the floor for final votes; both chambers must either pass or vote down bills by the legislative deadline of September 12.
Here are our sponsored bills up for consideration in the Suspense hearing:
- SB 79 (Wiener): Will make it faster and easier to build multi-family housing near transit stops, like train and rapid bus lines, by making it legal for more homes to be built in these areas, and streamlining existing permit review processes.
- AB 253 (Ward): Speeds up the approval process for new homes by allowing home builders to hire a licensed and certified third-party reviewer for review of housing permit applications if the local government cannot or does not complete their permit review within 30 business days.
- AB 413 (Fong): Requires the California Department of Housing & Community Development (HCD) to translate key state housing guidelines and handbooks into the non-English languages commonly spoken in California.
Meanwhile, the rest of our sponsored bills cleared the Appropriations hurdle are are now heading to the floor:
- AB 1061 (Quirk-Silva): Makes it easier to increase the number of homes—including duplexes—in single-family neighborhoods by allowing the California HOME Act (SB 9, 2021) to be used in historic districts.
- AB 1154 (Carrillo): Removes owner-occupancy requirements for “junior” ADUs (ADUs built within an existing home) that do not share sanitation facilities with the existing structure.
- SB 9 (Arreguín): Ensures that local laws governing the construction of accessory dwelling units (ADUs) align with state law, and provides a pathway to eliminate unlawful local barriers to ADUs.
AB 1308 (Hoover): This bill will help bring new homes to market faster by legally requiring a jurisdiction’s building department to perform final inspections for certain projects within ten business days, once the builder notifies the city or county that construction is complete and ready for inspection.
To stay current on what housing bills California YIMBY is sponsoring and supporting, you can now use our Abstract link to track with us.
Be sure to stay tuned for future editions of The Homework (and follow California YIMBY’s Twitter and Bluesky channels), to stay current on housing policy research, news, and legislative updates.
Housing Research & Analysis
How Blocking New Homes Hurts Poor Renters the Most
Building more homes — even expensive luxury apartments — cuts rents most in older, affordable buildings where low-income families live.
Between 2017 and 2024, poor neighborhoods experienced rent spikes 10 percent higher than those in affluent areas. However, cities that built a lot of new housing saw rents drop fastest in older apartment buildings.
Pew Charitable Trust researchers Seva Rodnyansky, Dennis Su, and Alex Horowitz studied this pattern in “New Housing Slows Rent Growth Most for Older, More Affordable Units.”
Key Takeaways:
- Housing shortages hurt lower-income areas the most: Neighborhoods with median incomes under $43,300 faced rent increases 10 percent steeper than areas with median incomes over $69,800.
- New supply helps residents in older, affordable buildings the most: Cities that boost their housing stock by 10 percent or more saw rent drops in older, cheap apartments the most. The rent slowdown was 6.5 percent lower than those in luxury towers.
Regional building has 4 times the impact of local building: A 10 percent housing increase across an entire metro area reduces local rents four times more than a 10 percent increase within just one neighborhood—regional supply cuts rents everywhere.
The Housing Blind Spot That Undermines Climate Strategy
As much as 53 percent of climate pollution from U.S. households can be attributed to the places Americans live and work. Locales that offer residents affordable homes that are close to jobs and shops tend to have much lower overall climate pollution compared to locations that require longer and more frequent car trips from larger, more energy-intensive houses.
Yet, rather than capturing the pollution reductions of complementary land use and housing policy, federal and state climate programs focus almost entirely on subsidizing electric vehicles and renewable energy.
In “Housing + Climate Policy: Building Equitable Pathways to Sustainability and Affordability,” Terner Center researchers Carolina Reid, Zack Subin, and Jon McCall reviewed research on how land use decisions influence climate pollution.
Key Takeaways:
- Climate funding overlooks housing’s 53% climate impact: Housing policies affect 53% of household climate pollution through location and building choices, but are often ignored by climate policy focused on technology solutions (p. 2)
- Where you live can double your climate impact: Bay Area suburban residents drive twice as many daily miles as urban residents because destinations are spread farther apart.
- Townhomes, apartments, and multifamily housing naturally uses less energy: Residents use 41% less energy than single-unit detached homeowners due to shared walls and smaller spaces, regardless of appliance efficiency.
Houser Headlines
- California needs to pass zoning reform — and build new housing — in order to prosper
- SB 79 is how we lower housing costs in Long Beach
- Building apartments near transit can make San Diego more affordable
- POLITICO Pro | Article | Poll finds broad support for CEQA reform
- Breaking down State Senate Bill 79
- Jed Leano: The Real Reason California Housing Costs Are Outrageous
- More than 1,000 new homes are coming to this South Bay transit stop
- Saving the American Dream
- CEQA rollbacks could pave the way for high-density housing in Los Gatos
- L.A. City Council has proven it can’t fix city’s housing problem on its own
- California’s first for-sale ADU built in San José. Will it start a housing revolution?
- How ADUs Could Help Californians Break Into Homeownership
- Proposed state housing law would likely increase SF zoning limits
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