California Today: Scott Wiener 'Took to Heart' Housing Bill Criticism

I recently wrote about how California can feel like home to almost anyone. But even if it feels like home, it’s increasingly tough to afford living in the state.

Scott Wiener, a state senator from San Francisco, says he’s trying to fix that. He’s the legislator behind a divisive housing bill, SB 827, which died last year. The idea? Require cities to allow the construction of eight-story apartment buildings near transit stops, even if local governments object.

This year, he resurrected the proposal, now called SB 50, and with some changes. I asked Wiener about how it addresses some of the concerns with the earlier bill. (The interview has been edited and condensed.)

Jill Cowan: How does the new version address concerns about displacement?

Scott Wiener: I took to heart the criticisms that the geography of SB 827 disproportionately affected lower-income communities. We worked intensely with housing equity advocates in L.A. and the Bay Area to address those criticisms. We’re still fleshing out the details.

But one of the changes is for neighborhoods that are at significant risk for displacement, we’re giving cities the option to delay implementation. The second piece is that many wealthier communities have kept transportation out, but they’re job centers. We added a provision extending the bill into these communities that have strong access to jobs. The final piece is if a tenant has resided in a building for the last seven years, you can’t demolish the building and invoke this law. The bill will also have affordability requirements.

Q. You told CALmatters that there’s no way around taking some control from cities. How politically realistic do you think that is, given pushback from local governments?

A.More and more people understand with California’s current approach to housing, we’re shooting ourselves in our foot. City councils, mayors, county supervisors have come up to me and said: “We can’t say this publicly, but we need help. We need to be able to tell our constituents, ‘We have to approve this project because the state requires it.'”

Q. Some have argued it’s counterproductive to increase density around transit because the state’s transit systems are already overused and underfunded. How would you respond to that?

A. I agree that we need to aggressively invest to expand the capacity and the reliability of our public transportation systems. I think we also have to understand that building housing is not what increases population. Our choice is, do we want to build enough housing so people can afford it, or are we not going to build housing so no one can afford it?

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.