The Homework: September 1, 2026
Welcome to the September 1, 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
The 2025 – 2026 legislative session came to a close on August 31st, and most of our priority bills are headed to the Governor’s desk for signature into law. This session, we advanced important bills on starter homes, ADUs, fee disclosure, and that can help revitalize downtown districts with high-rise housing.
Unfortunately, one of our top priorities did not advance. Our construction defect reform bill, AB 1903, failed to meet the deadline to be passed by the full legislature. The bill would have set disclosure and repair standards for construction defects in new for-sale homes, protecting buyers while keeping legal costs from driving up home prices. It passed the State Senate on the final night of session, but missed a concurrence vote in the Assembly before time ran out.
The following bills are headed to the Governor’s Desk:
- 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.
Did not Advance Through Appropriations:
- AB 1070 (Ward): Directs state agencies to study whether applying the residential building code to small multi-family projects could accelerate construction of “missing middle” housing.
Thanks to all our bill authors and co-sponsors, and to the passionate YIMBYs and pro-housing activists across the state who helped us advance our pro-housing agenda in Sacramento this year. We’ll be back next year to keep moving the ball toward making California affordable for everyone.
Be sure to follow California YIMBY’s Twitter and Bluesky to get more up-to-date news on housing policy, legislation, and research. If you find this newsletter valuable, forward it to a friend.
Housing Research & Analysis
The Housing that Comes with a Bonus: More Housing
California has advanced several housing reforms over the past decade to tackle high costs, but one 1979 law—the Density Bonus Law—has become one of the most-used tools for homebuilders to get their housing approved by cities and counties. The Bonus Law lets builders exceed local zoning limits and build more homes than would otherwise be allowed, in exchange for including some permanently-affordable homes.
The City of San Diego pioneered the law’s core formula, and two statewide amendments, in 2020 and 2023, made the trade profitable enough for builders elsewhere to use it.
In Win-Win Bonus: How Bonus Law Quietly Transformed California’s Housing Approvals, Circulate Planning & Policy CEO Colin Parent, with research and writing help from Jeremy Bloom and Aria Grossman, examined the effectiveness of this law and argues that properly calibrated financial incentives like density bonuses can lead to more housing approvals.
Key Takeaways:
- Pays For Itself. California cities and counties approved 48,120 homes under Bonus Law in 2024 alone. In fact, 47 percent of all apartments approved in 2024 used Bonus Law.
- Affordable Housing Benefits. In 2024, 78 percent of subsidized-affordable apartments approved statewide used Bonus Law because it lets builders add more subsidy-eligible affordable homes.
- Less is More. Requiring a higher affordable set-aside, instead of the 15 percent used in Bonus Law, would likely have produced fewer affordable homes, because the deeper requirement doesn’t make financial sense for builders.
Cracking the Code on High Rents
While zoning and permitting delays get much of the blame for high housing costs, building codes are an oft-overlooked contributor. These codes set minimum construction standards, such as for structural and electrical safety, and fire protection. And most U.S. apartment codes trace back to one document, the International Building Code, which is revised every three years and adopted into state law – but with little formal cost analysis. Very little research has measured how changing code requirements impact housing costs.
A new working paper is the first to put a real number on that cost. In “The Effect of 2012-2021 Building Code Revisions on Break-Even Rents of 3-Story Apartments,” researchers Michael D. Eriksen, Deniz Besiktepe, and Claudio Martani cataloged 130 significant code revisions adopted from 2012 to 202, and found most were cost-neutral. However, 16 revisions raised construction costs for a typical low-rise apartment building.
Key Takeaways:
- Costs Rose: Of 130 significant revisions, 16 code revisions raised average apartment construction costs by 9.9 percent, pushing break-even rents (the minimum that can be charged for a home to justify building it) up 8.4 percent nationally.
- One Rule Dominates: Fire-related rules drove 67 percent of that cost. The costliest, $183,200, funds a fire watch during the construction phase, a temporary measure with no direct safety benefit to future residents.
- Not Felt Equally: The added rent burden is largest, as a share of income, in cities with cheaper land and lower renter incomes: 5.86 percent in Charleston, WV, versus 2.28 percent in Washington, D.C.
Houser Headlines
- California rules discourage condo construction
- The seniors against senior housing (paywall)
- Almost nowhere in California is building enough, according to the state. Here’s why
- The state’s housing laws are working as intended
- 3 California cities sued over alleged violations of state housing rules
- Five homes proposed at in Santa Monica, using SB 79
- With new leverage from SB 79, builder pitches two plans for Palo Alto housing project
- Tens of thousands of dollars, one square foot: Fixing the ADU loophole
- LA ADU construction reaches record high, accounts for 38% of new housing last year: USC
- L.A. has more than 20,000 vacant lots. They could help solve the city’s housing crisis
- Is fire safety the new CEQA? How to prevent a new affordable housing war in California
- A new housing politics is taking shape on the left (paywall)
What’s going on in your region?
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