More housing could be coming to San Diego’s most transit-oriented neighborhoods.
A new state law that aims to increase development near certain transit stops takes effect Wednesday. Cities across the state, including San Diego, are mapping out exactly where it will apply, and which areas may be delayed or exempted.
The immediate change will be mostly in North Park and City Heights, along the Mid-Coast Trolley extension in Bay Park and Clairemont, and in the UC San Diego and UTC area, according to the City Planning Department.
Last year California passed SB 79, or the Abundant and Affordable Homes Near Transit Act. This bill requires cities in a county with more than 15 passenger rail stations to increase the number of homes allowed near certain transit stops under the city’s zoning plan.
This applies to the counties of San Diego, San Francisco, San Mateo, Santa Clara, Alameda, Sacramento, Los Angeles, and Orange (once the OC Streetcar begins service).
The new law requires cities to change their zoning to allow buildings up to nine stories tall directly adjacent to the highest quality transportation stops. These “tier 1” stops include Bay Area Rapid Transit stations, and LA Metro’s B and D line stations, according to a fact sheet from state Sen. Scott Wiener (D-San Francisco), the bill’s author.
San Diego doesn’t have any transit stops that qualify for this highest level of development. All of the city’s trolley stops and the stops along Rapid bus lines which qualify are considered “tier 2” which allows less height and density than “tier 1” stops, according to an analysis from Streetsblog, a news site that covers sustainable transportation and urban development.
Which means, in San Diego, the bill will allow buildings up to 85 feet high within 200 feet of stops; 65 feet high within one quarter of a mile; and 55 feet high between one quarter and one half a mile away. For reference, the height limit for buildings in the city’s “Coastal Zone” is set at 30 feet high.
A memo from the City Planning Department from May estimated the changes to city zoning under SB 79 would allow an additional 367,000 homes. That’s more than three times as many as the 108,036 units the city’s housing plan required.
Both the city’s housing plan and SB 79 do not require the actual construction of that many homes, but they now allow that number if built to maximum capacity.
The city is allowed to exempt certain areas and phase in implementation elsewhere based on factors like fire risk, low resource neighborhoods, and sea level rise. That means implementation for a significant portion of San Diego’s parcels within the SB 79-eligible zones will be delayed until 2027 or as late as 2031. Some will be exempted entirely.
“Only areas outside of low resource areas that do not include designated historic resources, are not subject to sea level rise and not in very high fire severity zones would take effect on July 1,” Grant Ruroede, senior planner with the City Planning Department, told the City Council at the May 7 meeting where the council adopted an ordinance for the bill.
The bill also allows cities to shift certain amounts of density from one SB 79-eligible area to another under a Transit-Oriented-Development (TOD) Alternative Plan. San Diego is calling it the Transit Village Plan and the City Planning Department is expected to release this plan by the Spring of 2027.
Cities that opt to create an alternative plan are required to submit that plan and eligibility maps to the California Department of Housing and Community Development (HCD) for final approval.
“This is part of the negotiations that made the bill possible, that certain areas could be delayed or exempted by localities,” said Maxwell Gergen, a board member of BuildSD, a group that advocates for and tracks sustainable development in San Diego.
Defazio-Farrell said he thinks the city is waiting to see what the impact of the law will be before they apply it to more of the city — but he doesn’t think that’s necessary.
“We have a pretty good sense of what the impact of more housing will be,” said Zack Defazio-Farrell, board member with the YIMBY Democrats of San Diego, a group that advocates for abundant housing. “It will be stabilizing prices.”
Roughly 24% of the city’s SB 79 eligible areas will be “upzoned” or see their zoning capacity increase on July 1, according to the Planning Department’s SB 79 landing page.
Any development application submitted under SB 79 with 11 or more units requires a percentage be dedicated to lower income households, according to Defazio-Farrell.
Eligible on July 1, 2026
The majority of places that will be affected on July 1 are in the Bay Park and UTC / UCSD areas, around the Blue Line stations that were added in the $2 billion Mid Coast Trolley extension in 2021. KPBS reported in 2025 that some of these stations have extremely low ridership. The areas around eligible bus stops in North Park and Normal Heights will also be upzoned on July 1.
Not within walking distance
The bill allows cities to exempt areas that are within a half mile of a qualifying transit as the crow flies or on a direct aerial line which aren’t actually within 1 mile’s walking distance of the station. Ruroede said places that are not within 1 mile’s walking distance due to physical barriers like freeways and canyons would be exempted from the city’s interpretation of the bill.
Community plan updates
Places that are in the process of crafting new community plans, like Mid-City and Otay Mesa-Nestor, will see their SB 79 implementation included in those updates, meaning they will be phased in with those updates.
Low resource areas
The bill allows cities to delay implementation in parcels designated as Low Resource Opportunity Areas by the state of California, until 2031, as long as those parcels already allow up to 50% of the density the bill would allow. San Diego exceeds this threshold and these neighborhoods could be phased in as late as 2032 if not addressed in forthcoming community plan updates or a TOD alternative plan before then.
District 8 Councilmember Vivian Moreno asked city planning staff to speed up the implementation of the law in low resource areas she represents. “2032 is six years from now, which in our world seems like two weeks,” Moreno said. “But in the development world, seems like 200 years.”
Moreno implored the planning staff and the rest of the council to adopt a TOD alternative plan sooner rather than later, to let neighborhoods in her district take advantage of the law.
“The (Planning) Department also anticipates implementing these changes through future planning processes in the remaining Low Resource Areas before the state law takes effect in 2032,” Peter Kelly, public information officer for the City Planning Department, told KPBS in an email.
Fire risk
Implementation can be delayed until 2031 in Very High Fire Hazard Severity Zones, according to the Office of the State Fire Marshal.
According to the City Planning Department, San Diego has a significant amount of Very High Fire Severity Zones that overlap with SB 79-eligible areas. These areas include most of Mission Valley, much of the UTC and UCSD area, almost all of the area around the Orange Line stop in Encanto, and hillsides in the College Area, Bay Park, and Midtown.
But the places that the city decided are Very High Fire Hazard Severity Zones are much more expansive than the CalFire designated zones. The places that CalFire decides are high fire hazard severity zones are a minimum, and cities are allowed to apply more expansive protections based on local topography and other factors.
However, according to Gergen from BuildSD, the law requires the city to use only the state’s map when determining fire risk for phasing in SB 79. “The difference between those two (maps) is vast,” Gergen said. “The city of San Diego's maps cover 35% to 40% of the SB 79 area in the high fire risk zone, whereas per the law, the high fire severity zone, as defined by the Forestry Service, covers somewhere between 5% to 7% of San Diego's SB 79 map.”
At this point, the city is planning to use their own fire map, and entirely exempt areas in these zones that have only one exit from the property or neighborhood. The extent of phasing that is allowed in the places San Diego designates as high fire risk that are not on the state’s map will be determined when the alternative plan is submitted to HCD.
Historic resource
The bill allows cities to delay implementation in “areas with historically-designated resources,” according to the city’s draft map. There aren’t many of these areas in the city and the majority are in downtown, Sherman Heights or Grant Hill where they mostly overlap with low resource areas that are already being phased in along with low resource areas.
Sea level rise
Areas subject to one foot of sea level rise may be phased in through an alternative plan. In San Diego, only a few areas in Mission Valley are subject to one foot of sea level rise. The city is phasing in implementation in these zones in 2027.
Bus stop eligibility
The city of San Diego’s original draft map identified four Rapid bus stops in University City and along Interstate 15 as eligible for SB 79 upzoning. But the draft map released by county development officials at the San Diego Association of Governments (SANDAG) said several more stops along Rapid corridors in North Park qualify.
Councilmember Stephen Whitburn, who represents District 3 in the urban core, explicitly argued for their inclusion at the May 7 council meeting.
“My district is most impacted by facilitating density along El Cajon Boulevard, University Avenue and Park Boulevard,” Whitburn said. “We heard from a lot of people from District 3 this evening. We want this.”
On June 18, SANDAG released its draft map of SB 79 eligible locations in the region, and it included several bus stops in the North Park and Normal Heights area, along the Rapid bus routes, which Whitburn argued should be included.
The city’s maps were updated to reflect this change by June 25, according to Kelly. Those bus stops will be upzoned on July 1 where other qualifiers like fire risk and low resource levels do not delay implementation
Transit Village Plan
Under the bill, the City Planning Department can develop an alternative plan for shifting densities from places that were delayed. Cities are allowed to shift some of the density from one stop to another as long as the same total capacity for new homes is met. This allows cities to engage with community members to find places that are better suited for higher densities while still allowing the same total of new homes citywide.
According to the city’s SB 79 page, this will allow planning staff, “to tailor SB 79's requirements to best reflect San Diego's community needs and constraints.”
The planning commission, San Diego City Council, and the public will have a chance to weigh in on how these areas will be included or exempted from eligibility before a final alternative plan is approved. The Planning Department says it “aims to present the Transit Village Plan to the City Council in early 2027.”
