California Housing: SB 35 Impacts

It’s a well-known fact that San Francisco and California more widely are dealing with a severe housing crisis.

A key component of the state’s solution is building more homes, including for lower-income families. A relatively old Senate Bill, SB 35 (2017), has been at the heart of these efforts and was more recently extended through SB 423 (2023).

In a nutshell, SB 35 allows developers to make use of a streamlined approval process for developments in localities that have not yet met their housing targets, if the development is on vacant or previously developed land (infill) and provides at least 10 percent of units for lower-income families.

This map displays which local jurisdictions in California do and do not benefit from SB 35’s streamlined housing approval processes. This includes areas with determinations for 50% affordable housing, displayed in purple on the map.

Housing developers can make use of this map to help inform their investment decisions and help create new homes for Californians 🏠

A polygon layer is used to show each city, colored by the determination level. Users can filter for city and determination level instantly. Interactive tooltips provide additional info. Data is from the CA Open Data Portal, and is hosted on Google Sheets.