California, state officials say, needs to be building 180,000 new units of housing a year to keep up with population growth, replace housing that’s lost to fire and old age and make a dent in the backlog. However, the state…
Why Was California’s Radical Housing Bill so Unpopular?
What Wiener and his co-sponsor Nancy Skinner, representing the East Bay, proposed was nothing less than to upend the entire framework for the past century of American racial politics and wealth building. But by forcing politicians and organizations to lay…
Opinion: Real progressives would embrace Scott Wiener’s SB 827 housing bill
For decades, efforts to restrict new housing in Berkeley and the broader Bay Area have driven up housing costs, pushed out low-income residents, and reinforced historical, racially discriminatory housing policies. Our city’s and region’s failure to build adequate housing is…
Editorial: Defeat of California housing bill reveals a crisis of political courage
What distinguished and doomed Senate Bill 827 is that it would have overruled local officials’ use of planning, zoning and other barriers to block new housing, particularly high-density housing in existing neighborhoods, which they reliably do at the behest of…
The Urban Housing Crisis Is a Test for Progressive Politics
Opponents of allowing more dense housing construction associate the solution with gentrification, but this gets the question backwards. Gentrification is the result of artificially constricted housing supply, which pushes the demand for new housing into poorer neighborhoods, where new entrants…
California Lawmakers Kill Housing Bill After Fierce Debate
Just before a committee of California state senators voted on a landmark bill to ramp up housing production by overriding local resistance, legislator after legislator talked about a dire affordable-housing crisis that demanded bold action and a marked increase in…
SB 827 would maximize housing near transit in California
California’s thriving economy continues to be the workhorse of American prosperity. In recent years, our innovative companies and highly-skilled workforce have propelled the Golden State to the sixth largest economy in the world. However, there’s huge trouble on the horizon:…
California housing showdown draws key interest groups
California YIMBY Co-Founder Brian Hanlon, who started lobbying for pro-housing bills last year, promises to continue pushing an ambitious housing agenda for California no matter the outcome of Sen. Scott Wiener’s bill, SB 827. He said what’s needed is a…
A Green House Divided
“I don’t want us painted as not understanding what the problem is,” Sierra Club California Director Kathryn Phillips says. “We know there’s a housing problem. We want infill development.” Although Phillips says she supports infill development around mass transit, it’s hard…
A setback, not a defeat
Little did we know that Senate Bill 827 – Senator Wiener’s legislation to help end the housing shortage – would bring about such an enormous outpouring of support. Your urgent advocacy for this bill made many senators take notice, but…