For decades, California’s coastal cities have blocked housing that’s affordable to working families. As those folks are forced to flee the coast in search of more affordable options, the Central Valley shoulders the burden of urban NIMBYism. It’s time our state legislators corrected this shirking of responsibility and passed new state legislation to rebalance housing development in our state.
Our state legislature can address this by passing SB 79, a bill introduced by State Senator Scott Wiener. It won’t fix everything overnight, but staying on our current path means more farmland will be lost, more families torn apart, and more workers spending their lives on Highway 99 instead of with their kids. We’ve been good neighbors long enough. We need state policy that protects Central Valley families, rather than making us the solution to everyone else’s problems.
The San Francisco Bay Area, one of the most expensive housing markets in the world, creates millions of jobs – yet routinely blocks housing that workers need. So where do California’s families go when they can’t afford a $1.4 million home? They move to cities like Modesto and commute several hours each way, daily. The nightmare of our traffic congestion and pollution is familiar to everyone in Modesto and in our neighboring cities.
Our metro area ranks fourth in America for “super-commuting,” with 8.7% of workers traveling 90 minutes or more each way. That’s 15,700 people spending more time in their cars and less time with their families.
All this commuting puts pressure on our most valuable resource: farmland. Our $3 billion agricultural economy feeds America and employs over 17% of our workforce. But every Bay Area worker who moves here increases housing demand, putting pressure on our hard-working farmers to convert farmland into subdivisions.
That’s why Central Valley state legislators must support SB 79, to fix the broken system that allows wealthy coastal cities to pass off their responsibility– and forces our Central Valley communities to be overrun with traffic, pollution, and sprawling developments.
Modesto should, of course, also build homes that accommodate the needs of our own communities. Our city is making genuine efforts to build more housing by partnering with the state to build new downtown apartments, developing permanent supportive housing, and opening two Bridge housing projects this year. We recently approved 6,000 new homes. However, the anti-housing attitude of Bay Area cities means that these projects often house workers from other regions, rather than local families.
SB 79 addresses the root problem by requiring cities with robust public transit—such as BART and Caltrain—to permit more apartments and condos near those train stops. While Modesto will continue to build homes that suit our needs, SB 79 won’t apply here – because we don’t have a major transit system.
When Bay Area cities build housing near jobs, current super-commuters can move back. Then thousands of residents competing for our homes today won’t be competing for them tomorrow. Local families won’t have to outbid people earning Bay Area salaries.
The policy also stops wasteful sprawl that destroys farmland. We build suburbs, highways, and infrastructure over agricultural soil to serve commuters who don’t contribute to our local economy. When workers live near their jobs, we stop sacrificing irreplaceable farmland.
SB 79 will also help rebuild community life by ending the super-commuting crisis. These commuters can’t coach Little League or serve on school boards because they’re never home. When people live near their jobs, they are more likely to participate in the communities where they sleep.
Some worry this takes away local control, but look around—the current system is failing everyone. Only 31 of 539 California cities met their housing goals, with Bay Area cities approving just 9,100 homes in 2024 while needing 440,000 by 2031. When one region’s housing failures force over 100,000 people into extreme commutes, that’s no longer a local problem—it’s a statewide crisis that demands statewide solutions.
California works best when regions support each other’s strengths. Silicon Valley builds technology, and we feed the nation. SB 79 offers a path back to that balance. That’s the California our kids deserve to inherit.
