The Housing Bill Is Dead. Long Live the Housing Bill?

Senate Bill 50 is dead. Or is it?

That question hovered over the California state Legislature the past two days while Sen. Scott Wiener’s bill to allow mid-rise apartments and condominiums near transit stops made its way to a final floor vote.

The bill was voted down Wednesday — only to be brought back for another unsuccessful vote Thursday.

In the end, after failing to muster a majority, Toni Atkins, the Senate president pro tem, gave a speech in which she declared that even though the bill is now gone, something like it will pass this year and called on senators to “step up” and hash out a compromise.

The final vote capped one of the most dramatic Senate sessions in recent years. During a two-hour debate Wednesday, lawmakers alternated between statements about the gravity of California’s housing crisis and a reluctance to upend the state’s governance and low-density roots.

One senator would talk about homelessness and three-hour supercommutes. The next would talk about the right of localities to set zoning policy.

Virtually everyone in attendance agreed that something significant had to be done to ease California’s housing troubles, but, in an indication of just how conflicted the Legislature was about how to get there, one of the bill’s co-sponsors said the bill made him uncomfortable; another senator said she was voting for it despite opposition from cities in her district. Yet another, voting no, said that if the bill failed he wanted Wiener to simply reintroduce it so the debate would continue.

“The only thing that folks agree on is that we need housing,” said Sen. Andreas Borgeas, R-Fresno, who voted against it. “How we get there, everyone has a different theory.”

Throughout the session, opponents thanked Wiener, D-San Francisco, for forcing a tough debate. Where that debate goes is unclear. That it will continue is guaranteed.

“This is not the end of the story,” Atkins said.

Gov. Gavin Newsom, who said he supported the bill’s intent but never endorsed it, followed up with his own statement in favor of new legislation to replace it: “California’s housing affordability crisis demands our state pass a historic housing production bill.”

And Wiener tweeted that he had introduced two placeholder housing bills — the details of which are to be determined.

This article originally appeared in The New York Times .