Sen. Weiner’s Bill is Turning Every Neighborhood in California into a Dangerous Political Experiment

Sen. Scott Weiner’s SB 79, signed into law by Gov. Gavin Newsom in October 2025, will force single-family neighborhoods to accept high-rise apartment buildings. And it’s already happening.

With Wiener’s latest effort to transform residential neighborhoods into big, dense cities, the caveat justifying building apartment housing on single-family streets is if a bus stop is within half a mile of the proposed apartment building.

In my old downtown Sacramento neighborhood, there are bus stops along the main artery streets, all within 1/2 mile of every one of the 6,000 homes. So anyone could tear down a single-family home and build a 65 foot tall apartment building.

That is already happening in a cozy little neighborhood in East Sacramento.

“Coupled with AB 130 and SB 131, it seems a death knoll for conventional family-oriented residential living,” Carl Seymour, a Sacramento resident told the Globe recently.

A massive project is currently proposed for the Sacramento square block of Alhambra to 30^{th, to} C Street to D Street. It is in the City of Sacramento’s records, and has been named by the applicant as the “Alhambra Redevelopment Project.” It will occupy the former Maryann’s Bakery site, which has been abandoned and left decrepit for years, and required major remediation for soil contamination caused by leaking underground tanks, resident Carl Seymour told the Globe.

“These are all apartments, market rate, with nothing for seniors, or affordable housing. And this requires the use of cars,” Seymour said, as it isn’t near a light rail station.

Here is what the Casa Loma Terrace neighborhood in East Sacramento looks like:

Here is an architectural rendering of the proposed 6-story apartment complex, plopped right in the middle of tree-lined streets of single-family homes:

It doesn’t appear that this complex wouldn’t address California’s housing crisis as Sen. Wiener would have everyone believe — the renderings appear to be much more of a luxury development than affordable housing.

The Casa Loma Terrace neighborhood is set in an historic post WWI bungalow homes, primarily one- and two-story residential neighborhood, where average density is probably 50 people per square block, Mr. Seymour said. Covered by the Alhambra Corridor Special Planning District which was created following the destruction of the historic landmark The Alhambra Theater in 1973, the area is zoned for a maximum height of 35 feet, and zoning specifies that any construction should echo architectural styles of the surrounding neighborhood.

The project applicant, the Demas family, is seeking exceptions to be able to build a 68 foot tall, six story, high-rise, high-density apartment building, with ground floor retail space.

“The City Planning Department’s initial study states that the building will house up to 870 residents in one square block, and that the project will generate over 19,000 vehicle trips per week into this otherwise reasonably quiet East Sacramento neighborhood,” Seymour said. “The Planning Department has issued a Mitigated Negative Declaration, and tentatively recommended approval, though their final study is yet to be released. The initial study contained numerous errors and flaws, and generated significant controversy.”

Seymour continued:

“Following a meeting June 5^th which we co-chaired and presented at, the applicant tentatively agreed to scale the project back and reconsider the architectural style, after hearing of neighbors’ concerns with the size, density, appearance, and impact of their proposal. We do not in any way oppose development here, but simply ask that they conform to established zoning.”

“However, AB 130 subsequently passed, and the applicant is now hoping that they can evade the existing zoning under the provisions of 130. We are all awaiting a decision by the City as to the applicability of AB 130 to the P24-007 ‘Alhambra Redevelopment Project.’”

AB 130 exempts from CEQA review qualifying infill housing developments. SB 131 provides additional CEQA exemptions for specific project types meeting certain criteria and establishes streamlined environmental review for housing projects that narrowly miss qualifying for an existing exemption under CEQA.

Save East Sac! sent an email this week about a Planning Commission meeting February 12, 2026, and said, “Community activists are opposing the project because it dramatically exceeds the Alhambra Corridor Special Planning District legal requirement that buildings are not to exceed a height of 35 feet within 300 feet of homes. If approved by the Commission, the project would add nearly one million vehicle trips per year to an already dangerous and congested corridor. Additionally, there are concerns that the project connects to an aging sewer system that a Sacramento Department of Utilities audit and independent experts warn is at risk of catastrophic failure at current usage.”

Mr. Seymour said Sacramento City Councilman Phil Pluckebaum who represents the neighborhood and project, denigrated neighbors’ concerns, saying “everyone said the sky was going to fall when they built McKinley Village, but the sky didn’t fall.”

Seymour said Pluckebaum apparently cannot recognize the difference between normal and low density as McKinley Village is approximately 25 people per acre vs. the project in Casa Loma Terrace which has 870 people in one square block. “Pluckebaum is also quoted as saying ‘I don’t care if it is 100 stories… Sacramento needs housing’  and ‘One promise I can keep is that traffic and parking is not going to get better.  If it does, I haven’t done my job.’”

Mr. Seymour noted that with 870 people projected to live in the apartment building with only 302 parking spaces, they are short 500+ spaces.

At the other end of California, San Diego County Supervisor Jim Desmond alerted constituents to Sen. Wiener’s horrid bill:

“This isn’t planning. This isn’t problem-solving.
This is Sacramento bulldozing the American Dream.

“The justification? A so-called housing crisis. But that crisis is of the state’s own making. Endless regulation, CEQA abuse, and taxes disguised as ‘mitigation fees’ have made it nearly impossible to build affordable housing without political favors or loopholes. Now, instead of fixing their mistakes, the politicians want to take it out on local communities.

This is not smart growth — it’s forced density without local input and control. And it turns the very idea of property rights upside down.

Desmond added, “We need to stop SB 79 before it turns every neighborhood in California into a political experiment.”

Welcome to the latest political experiment, where as Mr. Seymnour lamented, “it’s as if government is out to get us. They want to build big, and we’re just in the way.”