The Homework: October 7, 2026
Welcome to the October 7, 2026 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
Governor Gavin Newsom has signed all of California YIMBY’s sponsored bills that made it through the Legislature this session. Our deepest thanks to the Governor, and to all of our bill authors: Senators Caballero, Cervantes Grayson, and Wiener, and Assemblymembers Haney and Quirk-Silva. We also appreciate the efforts of the legislative staff who worked through the details with us, and all our partners and allies who activated and advocated for these bills.
Together, this new legislation will make it faster and cheaper to build the homes Californians need – from starter homes for ownership, to ADUs, to downtown high-rises near transit. Signed into law:
- SB 1116 (Caballero): Makes improvements to state housing law to lower costs and speed construction of smaller, lower-cost starter homes.
- SB 1014 (Grayson): Requires cities to disclose all infrastructure requirements — sidewalks, sewers, etc. — within 30 days of a housing application, and prohibits adding new requirements after permit application.
- AB 2074 (Haney): Streamlines construction of high-rise residential and mixed-use buildings near regional transit hubs in California’s largest cities. It also would study potential sources for state-backed loans that could lower the cost of construction for these projects.
- SB 1117 (Cervantes): Removes the financial penalty many jurisdictions impose on ADUs over 750 sq ft, lowering the cost to build them.
- AB 956 (Quirk-Silva): Allows homeowners to build up to two detached ADUs on a single-family lot.
- SB 677 (Wiener): Protects approved housing projects from local delay tactics over the creation of subdivisions and approval of federal financing for affordable housing.
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Housing Research & Analysis
Cars vs People: The Hard Trade-Off of Parking Mandates
Most cities in California – and the United States – require every new home or business to build a specific number of parking spaces, whether the market demand is there for them or not. A new UCLA research synthesis tracks what these parking mandates cost. TL;DR: higher rents and fewer homes.
In The Impacts of Minimum Parking Requirements: A Research Synthesis, Ellen Schwartz, Michael Manville, and Adam Millard-Ball review research on parking mandates and their effects on housing costs and development. Published by UCLA’s Institute of Transportation Studies, the report also covers what happens after cities repeal these rules.
Key Takeaways:
- Higher Rent: Renters nationally pay 17% more for housing with bundled parking, about $204 a month, and 71% of carless households pay for space they don’t use.
- Fewer Homes: Oakland’s 1961 parking mandate cut new homes per project by 36%; nationally, required parking can add up to 38% to the cost of smaller, lower-cost apartments.
- Repeal Reduces Oversupply: Nine of twelve cities studied built less parking once minimums were lifted, and Seattle’s repeal saved an estimated $537 million in construction costs over five years
Still Want Free Parking? That’ll Cost $73,000
Housing costs have risen sharply across the U.S. in recent years, prompting cities to examine rules that drive up construction costs. One long-standing and costly rule: parking mandates.
A new UCLA analysis looked at 2025 data across 17 U.S. cities, and finds the cost of these mandates has climbed significantly in recent years.
In No Such Thing as Free Parking: Construction Costs in 17 U.S. Cities, Ellen Schwartz of the UCLA Center for Parking Policy examined how parking mandates affect construction costs for offices, shopping centers, and apartments nationwide. The findings help explain why a growing number of cities are chipping away at these costly mandates.
Key Takeaways:
- Underground costs more: Underground parking now averages $73,000 per space and aboveground parking $52,000, up roughly 50 percent since 2012 after adjusting for inflation.
- Smaller homes hit hardest: Residential parking mandates raise studio and 1-bedroom apartment construction costs by over 30 percent, making lower-cost housing harder to build
- Parking eats budgets: Parking minimums increase office building construction costs by an average of 68 percent when built underground and 47 percent aboveground.
Housing Headlines
- The housing shortage Is a major driver of poverty
- How to kill housing with paperwork (paywall)
- Sidewalk gaps, train counts ignite California SB 79 zoning lawsuits
- The Inland Empire was once a bargain. Now, rising home prices, coastal invasion bring anxiety (paywall)
- Why L.A. developers aren’t building more apartments, despite epic housing shortage (paywall)
- How do you get a housing permit in California? He can hook you up, for a fee
- It’s getting harder to afford rent in the U.S., even for middle-income families
- Austin’s homebuilding boom lifts metro near top of national affordability rankings
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