Please note SB 677 has undergone two major changes since it was introduced in February 2025. Scroll down to Bill History to learn about its previous versions.

Ending Delays for More Homes

SB 677 will protect already-approved housing projects from common city delay tactics over the creation of subdivisions and approval of federal financing for affordable housing.

Even after a housing project is approved, cities often take advantage of excess  procedures to prevent it from being built. SB 677 will protect already-approved housing projects from common city delay tactics over the creation of subdivisions, and over approval of federal financing for affordable housing.

Many developers use subdivision maps to divide a piece of land into smaller lots for the purposes of selling the final project. While these maps are usually submitted after a project has cleared entitlement, they can still be appealed by anyone, even on grounds unrelated to the subdivision itself. These appeals can delay homes and put projects’ financing at risk.

Another delay applies to affordable housing financed through tax-exempt bonds. Federal law requires cities to hold a hearing and pass a resolution endorsing the  financing – at no cost to the cities themselves. But cities often either fail to hold the hearing, or decline to pass the resolution. That forces developers with existing funding commitments to find an alternative path forward, adding months of delay, inflating costs, and preventing affordable homes from being built.

SB 677 bans third-party appeals of subdivision maps for urban infill housing. It also amends the Housing Accountability Act to treat bond endorsement failure as a formal project disapproval. These fixes mean fewer late-stage delays that increase costs, and ultimately, more homes built.

Updates

Feb 21, 2025 Introduced
Apr 22, 2025 Heard in Senate Housing Committee · Did not receive enough votes to pass
Jan 26, 2026 Gutted and amended · Passed out of Senate · Now in Assembly
Jun 2026 Gutted and amended · Pending in Assembly

Author

  • Scott Wiener (SD 11)

Sponsors

  • California YIMBY
  • Housing Action Coalition
  • California Council for Affordable Housing
  • Mission Housing

Resources

SB 677 Fact Sheet

A closer look at the bill’s details.

Download ↓

Bill History

Original bill (February 2025): Improving SB 9 & SB 423

The original version of SB 677 would have made it easier to build housing of all types, faster and more affordably. This version of SB 677 aimed to improve existing law ensuring the right to build duplexes and fourplexes in residential neighborhoods, and strengthen streamlining for multi-family properties in urban areas.

SB 9 (Atkins 2021) and SB 35/423 (Wiener) are key tools in our fight to build new homes more quickly and affordably, but their initial implementation has exposed loopholes in the existing law that need improvement and strengthening. The original version of SB 677 integrated what we’ve learned from the first years of these existing laws to allow more homebuilding in the areas that need it the most.

With the passage of SB 9 in 2021, California became one of the first states to legalize up to four homes per property, and streamlined lot splits in residential neighborhoods to increase the supply of smaller, lower-cost homes statewide. But some of the provisions in the law have been abused by cities and anti-housing neighbors, preventing its effective use for actually building more housing.

Similarly, in 2023, a coalition of housing advocates and labor unions passed SB 423, an extension of SB 35 – one of the most effective pro-housing laws of the past decade. But provisions in that bill have also proven to be challenging to translate into the policy’s full home building potential. 

The original version of SB 677 updated both SB 9 and SB 423, improving both bills to make it faster, easier, and more affordable to build homes of all types in the neighborhoods where they are needed the most. This version of SB 677 would have allowed these laws to deliver more fully on their potential. However, it did not have a viable path forward in this form, and was gut and amended before it moved out of the Senate.

Resources for the Original Version of SB 677

Revised Bill (January 2026):

SB 677 was gut and amended in January 2026 to contain only small, technical SB 79 fixes. That version of SB 677 would have clarified various definitions for Metropolitan Planning Organizations (MPOs) to readily generate Transit-Oriented Development maps for SB 79 implementation. It passed out of the Senate at the end of January, and was pending referral in the Assembly until June.

SB 677 was again gut and amended in June 2026 to the version seen at the top of this page.