Senate Bill 79 will legalize more housing near transit across California

Every day, millions of Angelenos participate in a grueling ritual: Medical workers in the San Gabriel Valley rise at 4 a.m. for gridlocked commutes to Santa Monica hospitals. Restaurant employees in East LA leave before their children wake to make breakfast for studio executives in Valley Village.

These hard-working Angelenos drive past Metro stations – funded by the taxpayers of Los Angeles County – in neighborhoods where local residents have made it all but illegal to build more homes. It’s time to end this practice of banning new homes in areas where we are making massive public transit investments. Proposed state legislation SB 79 from Sen. Scott Wiener would do just that.

Visit almost any Metro station to see the contradiction: Single-family homes and parking lots surround this vital infrastructure in all directions – essentially converting these public transit systems, designed to serve millions, into private amenities only accessible to the few thousand who live nearby. Research from UC Berkeley confirms that nearly 80 percent of residential land in Greater Los Angeles bans apartments. This locks away 50,000 acres of prime, transit-accessible land from desperately needed housing.

This artificial scarcity drives up costs for everyone. When zoning laws restrict housing near transit and jobs, competition for limited homes intensifies. California’s Legislative Analyst’s Office reports that monthly payments for recently purchased homes have climbed 84 percent since January 2020, far outpacing the 22 percent wage growth for the same period. The income needed for a mid-tier mortgage is about $231,000—double California’s median household income. The math simply doesn’t work for working Angelenos.

The prohibitions on housing near transit stations harm our communities daily. The typical LA resident spends 48 percent of their income on housing and transportation. For the nurse’s aide or teacher making $50,000 a year, long, costly commutes mean no savings and financial precarity – just one broken-down car away from losing a job, and often, a home.

Transit systems also struggle from low ridership because of how few people live within walking distance of stations. LA Metro recovers only 7 percent of its costs from fares, with taxpayers subsidizing the remaining 93 percent, totaling billions annually. This hurts service quality for transit-dependent riders and wastes public funds when systems aren’t used to capacity.

Meanwhile, cars generate  41 percent of climate pollution in California – meaning our housing restrictions near transit contribute to the wildfires that choke our skies with smoke and destroy our neighborhoods.

There’s a better way forward. Cities with similar reforms show what’s possible. After Minneapolis reformed its zoning in 2018, housing production increased 12 percent while rent growth fell to 1 percent, compared to 14 percent across the rest of Minnesota. In Bay Area cities, residents near BART are five times more likely to commute by rail.

Families living near transit could save $14,000 annually – money for healthcare, education, and local businesses. Transit agencies would gain riders and revenue, preventing service cuts to essential bus lines. And our air would become cleaner with fewer cars idling on the 405 and 110.

SB 79 would make it legal to build housing near transit statewide. The bill tailors building heights to transit frequency: taller apartments near subway stops, mid-rise buildings near light rail and Metrolink stations. LA Metro itself could transform empty parking lots into vibrant housing communities. The bill includes strong tenant protections, ensuring anyone temporarily displaced has the right to return.

This approach simultaneously addresses housing affordability, transit reliability, and climate protection. Abundant Housing LA, of which I am executive director, is proud to join a coalition of pro-housing, pro-environment organizations supporting SB 79, and we hope more Angelenos will recognize the benefits of this solution to our housing, transit, and climate challenges.

Azeen Khanmalek is the Executive Director of Abundant Housing LA (AHLA), a nonprofit organization dedicated to addressing Southern California’s housing crisis by advocating for more housing at all levels of affordability across LA County.