2026 State Bills - Details Matter

2026 Legislation - Details Matter

Criticisms of our bill summaries have been raised on social media, often based on surface-level AI-generated interpretations that don't tell the whole story. We read the legislation, track its amendments, and project how it would work in the real world. Click a bill to see the facts behind our analysis.

AB 2676

CRITIQUE: It does not eliminate citizens' ability to put forward local housing or development initiatives. It limits certain initiatives and referenda that would reduce housing capacity or impose housing-development moratoria. That is a real local-control issue, but it is much narrower than the claim being made.

REALITY: Where “narrower” means that citizens should only be allowed to exercise democracy when it agrees with the Legislature.

AB 956

CRITIQUE: It would allow up to two detached ADUs on a qualifying single-family lot. The claim that this will cause investors to buy up starter homes and price out first-time buyers is speculation, not something contained in the bill.

REALITY: San Diego’s experience with the Bonus ADU program gives a strong indication of what the outcome of AB 956 will be – smaller starter homes, predominantly in more affordable communities, will be the most attractive to developers because they permit the largest amount of new development.

The cost of land always increases when more density is allowed, so creating the option to build a second detached ADU on any single-family zoned property, as allowed by AB 956, will have the consequence, whether intended by the bill or not, of increasing the cost of starter homes.

Of course, this isn’t stated in the bill – the Legislature never thinks through the impact of land use deregulation on property values.

AB 1751

CRITIQUE: AB 1751 does not simply allow someone to put 150 units on an ordinary occupied single-family lot. The 150-unit maximum applies within a much more restrictive set of conditions, including rules for vacant/underuElized property, density, unit size, aﬀordability, and subdivision standards.

REALITY: 150 is still 150. The author of the bill cited a large development as the intended target of this bill, and the proper restriction would have been to only apply it to single-family lots greater than 1.5 acres, which would have left the more appropriately scaled Starter Home Revitalization Act to cover smaller neighborhood infill parcels.

SB 569

CRITIQUE: It does not make it illegal for cities to reconfigure bike lanes when safety problems arise. It restricts cities from removing or degrading certain state-funded bikeways for a period of time,
while specifically allowing modifications and considering safety.

REALITY: There shouldn’t be a 20-year prohibition on changing any type of public planning. The bill’s assumption of the infallibility of bike planning is particularly fraught as bike lanes are taken over
by e-bikes, exposing pedestrians to considerable risk as they cross bike lanes to reach parked cars, for example.

Further, if this bill is passed, local governments will be less likely to construct bike infrastructure if there is a risk that they may not be allowed to make changes for 20 years.

SB 958

CRITIQUE: It does change CEQA treatment of certain impacts associated with increased building height, and it could benefit Midway Rising. But it does not “gut environmental protections
statewide,” nor does the bill establish that it is a political favor to the mayor.

REALITY: The bill does apply statewide and is based on the premise that the impact of putting 100 units on one story is no diﬀerent than a pencil tower of 100 stories with one unit each. Most people would consider this to be a significant change to the California Environmental Quality Act.

Of course, the bill doesn’t state that it is a political favor to Mayor Gloria, but he is listed as a sponsor of the bill, and Senator Weber-Pierson defers all questions about the bill to him or the developer. What is especially unclear is why the Mayor and the Midway Rising developer don’t just do the environmental impact analysis, as directed by a judge, and be done with it. Perhaps it’s because the same week that the Legislature was pushing this bill through, the project site was being flooded by King Tides, a situation that will only become more catastrophic as sea levels rise in the coming decades.

SB 1116

CRITIQUE: There is a legitimate concern here. Under certain circumstances, qualifying property considered vacant or uninhabitable could enter an existing streamlined subdivision process allowing up to 10 parcels. That deserves scrutiny. But saying a developer can simply let any single-family home fall apart and then divide it into 10 lots leaves out substantial eligibility restrictions, including protections involving recently occupied rental housing.

REALITY: It’s actually worse than that. The bill changes the definition of vacant/uninhabitable to reference state tenant protection regulations intended to force landlords to keep their units in good repair. This creates a loophole that a property owner could deliberately vandalize their property, such as by breaking windows, to meet the conditions for tearing down the property

and subdividing it into 10 new lots.

As for the rest of SB 1116, cities are just implementing their Starter Home Revitalization Act regulations, and the Legislature should assess the pitfalls and benefits of the current program before impatiently expanding the scale of allowed developments.

SB 1361

CRITIQUE:

It does not take away anyone’s “right to disagree” with state housing mandates. It prevents local governments from manipulating certain transit service or approvals specifically to evade state transit-oriented housing requirements.

REALITY: The bill prohibits local governments from considering SB 79’s forced upzoning in making transit planning decisions or advocating for changes in transit planning. As San Diego has experienced with the overly expansive Sustainable Development Area, SB 79 undermines rather than supports transit-oriented development. SB 79’s indiscriminate upzoning allows high-density development up to a mile or more from qualifying transit stops, contrary to ridership studies showing that transit usage drops off quickly as the distance from transit stops increases beyond one-quarter mile walking distance from a transit stop.

Because SB 79 undermines local planning efforts to create dense neighborhood centers that encourage transit usage, its ultimate impact will be less ridership than transit planning organizations (e.g., SANDAG, MTS) are projecting. Therefore, it is well and proper for cities to choose which transit projects to support or oppose based on whether the dispersed density of SB 79 will render that transit not financially viable.