The Homework: September 15, 2025
Welcome to the September 15, 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
HISTORIC VICTORY ALERT: The 2025 legislative session is over, and YIMBYs emerged victorious. It was not a small or even medium-sized victory: It was the most successful year in California YIMBY’s history.
With the passage of SB 79 Friday afternoon, following on the heels of successful CEQA reform earlier this summer, we have fundamentally changed the land use regulations in the world’s fourth-largest economy to make it faster, cheaper, and easier to build more homes.
In February, we announced the California YIMBY 2025 Policy Framework, which included:
- Building back better, faster, and more sustainably
- Renewing the dream of homeownership
- More homes near transit
And we delivered.
Building back better, faster, and more sustainably
The catastrophic Los Angeles fires have highlighted the need to take fire resilience and preparation seriously. While recovery is underway, we need to also focus on making it faster and easier to build back better, and not just in neighborhoods devastated by fire.
This year, we passed a landmark CEQA reform that creates a clean exemption for environmentally-friendly infill housing in existing urban areas. AB 609 (Wicks), which became a part of the Governor’s budget proposal in AB 130, was a historic victory for infill housing; California YIMBY was founded in part to achieve this specific objective – we’ve been working towards this goal for eight years.
Our sponsored bill, AB 253 (Ward), was also included in Speaker Rivas’ Fast-Track Fire Recovery Package. This bill allows home builders to hire a licensed and certified third-party reviewer to complete housing permit applications when local governments don’t finish their review within 30 business days. In addition, the bill has an urgency clause, meaning it becomes law immediately after the Governor signs it – which will benefit fire victims right away.
California YIMBY was also an anchor tenant in Assemblymember Wicks’s Fast Track Housing Package, a bipartisan agenda that included over 20 bills – all with the goal of speeding up housing approvals and advancing affordability while protecting California’s strong environmental ethic.
Our sponsored bill, AB 1308 (Hoover), was included in the package. This bill expedites new home production by requiring local building departments to complete final inspections within ten (10) business days after receiving notice from the builder that construction is complete and ready for review.
Renewing the dream of homeownership
This year, we collaborated with Lieutenant Governor Eleni Kounalakis, Assemblymember Juan Carrillo, and US Unidos to continue the work of expanding opportunities for homeownership and multi-generational living.
While California has made significant progress in approving ADUs and JADUs, regulatory inconsistencies continue to limit their full potential.
AB 1154 eliminates these barriers by eliminating owner-occupancy requirements for JADUs without shared sanitation. By removing this restriction, this bill will empower more homeowners to create much-needed housing, helping expand affordability, stability, and equity across California communities.
Our California YIMBY sponsored bill, AB 413 (Fong), was included in the California Asian American & Pacific Islander (AAPI) Legislative Caucus priority package. This bill will
require the California Department of Housing and Community Development (HCD) to translate key resources, such as the ADU handbook, to improve access to housing laws. By ensuring clear and inclusive communication, this measure promotes equity and enables diverse communities to better understand and navigate housing regulations.
We also worked on ADU reform that would address the issue of local jurisdictions blocking or delaying ADUs. SB 9 (Arreguín) strengthens enforcement of state ADU laws by creating a clear accountability mechanism.
Lastly, we continued our work in curbing misuse of historic preservation to block housing by sponsoring AB 1061 (Quirk-Silva). SB 9 (2021) has been significantly underutilized due to loopholes that cities and individuals exploit to block housing. A major obstacle is its exclusion of historic districts.
AB 1061 removes this barrier by allowing the California HOME Act (SB 9, 2021) to apply in historic districts, as long as an existing historic structure is not altered or demolished, addressing the abuse of historic preservation measures as a tool to block more homes.
More homes near transit
California taxpayers have invested tens of billions of public dollars in public transit, but too many cities still ban housing growth near these systems.
These restrictions drive up housing costs – but they also limit transit’s ability to reduce traffic, shorten commutes, and cut climate pollution.
Passing transit-oriented housing reform was also a founding goal of California YIMBY, and with the passage of SB 79 (Wiener), we achieved a historic milestone – the most aggressive pro-housing, pro-transit legislation ever passed in the state, and possibly, in the U.S.
SB 79 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.
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
Rental Deserts: How America’s Wealthy Neighborhoods Dry Up Housing Opportunity
Across US suburbs, local governments use zoning laws to functionally restrict or ban homes available to renters. In most instances, suburban land use regulators make rules that are designed to limit apartment construction and mandate excessive parking spaces — regulations that effectively price out renters.
In “Rental Deserts, Segregation, and Zoning,” Harvard researchers Whitney Airgood-Obrycki, Magda Maaoui, and Sophia Wedeen conducted a spatial analysis of how local land use regulations shape access to rental housing across America’s 100 largest metropolitan areas.
Key Takeaways:
- Tight zoning regulations are associated with reduced rental access: Communities requiring large minimum lot sizes see rental shares drop by up to 7.8 percent. Strict density limits can eliminate potential rental housing by up to 20.8 percent.
- Rental exclusion reinforces segregation: 35.1 percent of neighborhoods qualify as “rental deserts.” These areas remain 75 percent white, compared to 33 percent white in high-rental neighborhoods.
- Geographic segregation intensifies economic inequality: Metropolitan areas with the most uneven rental housing distribution also show moderate levels of association with higher racial segregation and income segregation across neighborhoods.
Big Lots, Big Price: How Minimum Lot Sizes Maximize Housing Costs
Among the many factors that drive America’s housing affordability crisis, minimum lot size requirements deserve special attention. These are local laws that dictate a minimum amount of land a builder must have to build a single unit of housing.
When a city says “every new house needs at least half an acre of land,” they’re essentially banning smaller, more affordable homes; and the problem is widespread: 16,000 towns and cities across the country maintain minimum lot sizes.
In “The Effects of Residential Zoning in U.S. Housing Markets,” University of Colorado at Boulder economist Jaehee Song conducted a comprehensive study of how minimum lot size rules affect housing costs and neighborhood demographics nationwide. Song analyzed property records from 52 million homes across 16,217 municipalities to identify zoning constraints, and measure their real-world impact on American families.
Key Takeaways:
- Lot size drives up housing costs: When cities double their minimum lot size requirements, home prices jump 14% and rents rise 9%, primarily because families are forced to buy larger homes than they actually need.
- Amplifies segregation: Neighborhoods with stricter lot size rules see increases in white homeownership (by 2%) and household incomes (by 11%). This indicates the rules create exclusionary barriers for families of color and working-class households.
- Distorts markets: About 18.5% of new homes cluster right at minimum lot size thresholds instead of showing natural variety, proving these regulations override normal market choices.
Houser Headlines
- YIMBYs on the Cusp of Major Victory in California
- California Legislature overrides local zoning to boost transit-oriented development
- Midrise apartments could be built next to single-family homes if this bill becomes law
- Californians strongly support the Governor’s strategy to create more housing
- California will do anything to save democracy — except build housing
- California needs to pass zoning reform — and build new housing — in order to prosper
- Opinion: Housing policies are sabotaging family budgets and climate goals
- Opinion: Building apartments near transit can make San Diego more affordable
- Location is Destiny: SB 79 is Critical Step to Housing Near Transit
- Not in anybody’s backyard: How NIMBY activism worsens California’s housing crisis
YIMBY Social – Top Posts
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