Architectural rendering of proposed apartment complex, Casa Loma Terrace, East Sacramento. (Provided by Save East Sac!)
Sen. Weiner’s Bill is Turning Every Neighborhood in California into a Dangerous Political Experiment
It is a death knell for conventional family-oriented residential living
By Katy Grimes, February 11, 2026 4:00 am
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 30th, 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.
Casa Loma Terrace Building Heights map 6The 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 5th 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.”
HANDOUT 1-27-26
A California native and Navy mom, Katy lives in Sacramento, CA.
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This comes directly from UN AGENDA 21 which is designed to group the masses together, why? Easier to control them.
EXACTLY and while the physical containment provisions being enacted achieve grips on fuel water and food.
There is a huge ongoing housing project at Folsom Ranch. I look at it and say to myself, thank God they finally figured out where to get all the water and power that the state needs. Sarc off.
I wonder if there will be 7 story stack and pack apartments near council member Phil Pluckebaum’s home.
I wonder how many pieces of silver Phil Pluckebaum received for selling out his constituents. Of course, while straight bribery is illegal, the politicians left many legal loopholes to get pieces of silver to the politicians, including campaign contributions, business deals, and hiring family members.
When illegals are removed it will solve California’s housing crisis, and there will be no need for housing projects like this. Of course, Weiner and Newsom will fight the removal.
Wiener and his sidekick Gov Ego are their own wrecking machine when it comes to screwing taxpayers and pushing the Communist agenda. Every City needs at least one of Wieners TENDERLOIN DISTRICTS!
I hate it when journalists refuse to just state facts and instead twist the facts to fit their agenda.
1. No Katy, SB79 does not apply to every bus stop in Sacramento—it specifically excludes low frequency bus stops. The point of the law is to allow for more density near major transit hubs.
2. No Katy, the apartment complex is not getting plopped right into the middle of a neighborhood of bungalows and tree lined streets. They are building right next to the freeway! The neighbors are a giant storage facility, a separate car storage business, a traffic citation attorney, oh and another storage facility. I know that the derelict bakery really contributed to the neighborhood character, but maybe this is a step up?
3. California has a housing shortage. Market rate housing is needed just as badly as subsidized housing. If you are a reporter on this beat you should already know this! And no, this project is not “luxury housing”. Sheesh.
I don’t usually reply to articles like this but Lordy I have not seen such sloppy reporting in a very long time.
2.
What is your stake in this that you need to spread falsehoods about this state-sanctioned neighborhood vandalism and blight and how exactly does that help you when it comes off so self-serving and false?
More likely you are actually a Wiener aide or a Newsom press court jester or maybe even Wiener himself or Newsom himself? Or maybe a developer or consultant with his hand out for a gusher of cash? Or some other beneficiary of this horrible idea that doesn’t immediately come to mind?
If only you guys —- and you all sound the same —- would learn to edit out the telltale signs that are dead giveaways to readers about your real intentions, which are not-so-well hidden under a fake cloak of “honest disagreement” about an article.
Jeremiah, you know where the Democrats can take their SB79? The can shove up their Communist a*****.
Here is a simple way to solve the housing shortage, and most other problems in this state. Get rid of the useless Communist Democraps and then get rid of all of the illegal aliens.
There is no term “low frequency” in the bill, so stop your leftist lying.
Protect Freedom: “Here is a simple way to solve the housing shortage,” that’s for sure! And you’re right — it’s not complicated (even if it’s not necessarily “easy” in this state, as we’ve seen).
Throw in as well some wholesale dumping of the worst of the state regulations, for starters, that stand in the way of all reason and sanity and voila! — a major major major improvement in streamlined building and thus housing affordability appears — as if by magic. The kind of housing that Californians actually WANT, by the way, not what has been and is being shoved down our throats.
California won’t have a housing shortage once ICE deports the Democrat’s illegal alien voter base that number in the millions.
LA Rent APOCALYPSE: THOUSANDS Deported, Prices CRASH 4-Year Low:
(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9hWgoMfZeYQ)
The Alhambra project is in Yuppyville area intersected with A.W.F.U.L. women. It is a solid left demographic, ripe for low income, high drug use tenements!
Yes, many AWFUL’s in East Sac. I hope they all get a taste of whats coming. Sacramento is getting worse every year and it has nothing to do with the alleged “housing crisis”. I grew up in poverty and I know exactly how deceptive and sick the people around me were. Life is much better when you can remove yourself from that.
Same sort of high-density MIS-MANAGEMENT of zoning and infill builds is happening in the San Fernando Valley at the site of the original Woodland Hills Country Club, where the original golf course is being shut down and a monstrosity of multi-family units is being shoved into narrow streets that were laid out in the 1920’s by Victor Girard, the original land developer…
https://woodlandhillsproject.com/
WAKE UP PEOPLE – the Democrats are FULL-ON with the Agenda 2030 WEF high-density housing mandates and 15-minute cities to house their grateful immigrant voters and constituents….they are RUINING YOUR quality of life!!! (Not to mention your property values…)
The Democrap public transportation fairytale needs to end now. Bus ridership is down. Rail ridership is down. From 2012 to 2016, California lost 62.2 million annual transit rides, with Southern California losing 72 million rides, according to UCLA research. This downward trend continued, with Los Angeles Metro reporting a 6% drop in ridership in June 2025 in one year.
I see empty bus after empty bus and empty train after empty train burning up money. No one want to ride on buses and trains. It’s a FAIL. Why would anyone want to ride a bus or train when you can get stabbed by a crazed drug addict criminal while either on the bus or train or waiting for one?
All you Democraps, you ride the bus!
Every neighborhood a dangerous experiment?
-Death knoll for conventional family-oriented residential living?
It’s definitely suboptimal some really crappy older buildings are being turned into 6 story apartments. The proposed apartments are close to a very respectable neighborhood. The truth of this like everything is somewhere in the middle. Those crappy buildings…shooting galleries now. Magnets for homeless & crime. Take a deep breath, there’s balance.
So now bus stops are considered major transit hubs😂? I can’t tell you how many empty bus stops I pass by on a daily basis. You know what else is empty, the busses, where are the riders? Oh but we will solve that by building 7 story stack and packs next to them. Yeah, sure at market prices, such as $ 3,600 for a 1 bedroom apt. Sounds like a solid plan. And better yet build them along side the true transit hubs the freeways, because everyone loves taking in the views of congested freeways and smelling diesel fuel in the morning, better than napalm in the morning!
The brilliance of the UN 2030 Agenda really shines especially with brainiacs like Scott Weiner leading the charge!
Insanity now rules the day!
So not surprisingly, Democrat Sacramento City Councilman Phil Pluckebaum, who represents the neighborhood and the project, denigrated neighbors’ concerns? No doubt most of the East Sacramento residents who will be impacted by this monstrous six story apartment building voted for him and no doubt most of them consistently vote for other Democrats?
East Sacramento used to be a pleasant place to live with charming bungalows on quiet tree lined streets, but that all changed once Democrats got complete control Sacramento’s city government. Now East Sacramento has become a crime infested mess full of homeless and drug addicted vagrants. Who in their right mind would want to live there now?
California won’t have a housing shortage once ICE deports the Democrat’s illegal alien voter base that number in the millions.
LA Rent APOCALYPSE: THOUSANDS Deported, Prices CRASH 4-Year Low:
(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9hWgoMfZeYQ)
Thank you TJ for posting that video.
It’s been a few years, but one of my yardsticks for determining a neighborhood having an illegal population was all availible parking on the street and inside the housing lots were full, some parking on the lawn It’s like you could count the windows and multiply by five. Furthermore, there weren’t enough jobs to support the population, so even with some commuting there must have been a load of welfare dependents. A relative married a mexican woman, she promptly moved a significant number of her extended family from the abuela to adult siblings and their kids in with them. I have no idea how he fed and clothed them all on his salary and none of them working.
Thanks
We have one of those projects being build in our neighborhood. It’s slapped in the middle of a business plaza after demolishing a small business building, trees have been cut, no place for kids to play and seniors to walk. Those are predominantly 1-brd apartments. Wake up, go to work, come home to sleep, repeat. It’s next to a barely visible bus stop, 20-25 minutes walking (for a healthy, young person) to a transportation hub. Since it doesn’t provide enough parking spots, residents are going to park on back streets which are already full; not to mention congestion on the main street and electrical grid problems. It’s already a dense area but now it might triple. Politicians in Sacramento changed the definition of traffic, more traffic is now less traffic because people are discouraged to drive. There is another smaller building finished a few years ago, half empty (there is no much demand for this type of housing), but this one is, at least, next to a highway. And there are plans to build a third complex, the biggest of all. All taxpayer subsidized.
Today’s condo is tomorrow’s ghetto.
There are several ‘projects’ in Sacramento that turned over the years.
Interestingly, how this imposition of lower income residents in East Sacramento/McKinley Park housing many families serving Mercy Hospital and more will soon house modest-income people only 6 to 7 blocks from Planned Parenthood. Hmmmmmmmmmm.
Social engineering by California democrats has failed, and failed, and failed for decades — not for lack of tax money, but for failed policy and theory.