A group of concerned Rockridge residents recently met with District 1 Councilmember Zac Unger to ask him about the tall buildings that developers were planning to build on College Avenue. He said the new housing laws did not allow the city to deny permits to build. The law was the law, and he couldn’t break it, look for loopholes in the law, or support a lawsuit challenging parts of the new housing statutes.
So, I set out to find out more about the law and discovered that there had been a way to protect College Avenue businesses from large multifamily buildings. That is no longer the case.
Will Sterling of Holland & Knight wrote an informative report on SB 79, which went into effect on July 1, and allows buildings to reach 95 feet, and higher with bonuses. In it he says,
“SB 79 allows cities to adopt implementing ordinances that conform local zoning to SB 79 and that may exclude certain parcels from SB 79’s requirements, either permanently or on a temporary basis. Second, and separately, SB 79 allows cities to adopt a “TOD (Transit-Oriented Development) alternative plan” to adjust the law’s default height and density standards.”
Some California cities used this provision of SB 79 to work around the new statute.
“Los Angeles is… relying on the temporary exclusion provisions (particularly the 50 percent capacity provision) to effectively delay SB 79 implementation for the entire city, as is Palo Alto.”
Oakland’s Planning Department recommended that the City Council adopt implementing ordinances that conform local zoning to SB 79, but exclude certain parcels from SB 79’s requirements.
Planning Staff said, “Exclusions may be adopted prior to the SB 79 effective date as an interim step to allow the City time during the GPU [General Plan Update] to analyze which areas within the TOD Zones have potential for more density and which areas do not as well as receive community input.”
Transit-adjacent areas that have achieved a 50% density level may be excluded from development until January 1, 2032, in Oakland. Planning Staff recommended a proposed ordinance that would exclude the Rockridge BART station from the requirements of SB 79 because it includes parcels already zoned for density that achieves at least 50% of SB79 requirements. The Planning Commission rejected its staff’s proposal and voted to impose SB 79’s building standards on Rockridge.
At the City Council meeting on March 3, 2026, where the Planning Commission’s proposal was considered, Unger rejected the Staff proposal, and instead, proposed an amendment to remove Rockridge from the list of BART stations that were excluded from the enforcement of SB 79.
The City Council approved the Ordinance, which removed Rockridge from the list of other BART stations that were exempted from the requirements of SB 79. Because the ordinance did not exclude Rockridge BART from SB 79 (see Section 17.86.070), developers could take advantage of SB 79’s supplementary development standards, i.e., “the height limit, maximum density and residential floor area standards.”
In an article written for the Rockridge Community Planning Council, Unger tried to explain his vote for Oakland’s alternative plan. He said his district did not qualify for the exception that other cities used because “our neighborhoods are designated “high-resource” . . . [and] the upzoning takes effect automatically in most of the area, with no option to delay it the way lower-resource areas can.”
The distinction between high- and low-resource areas, however, does not determine who qualifies for the delay option. Both qualify for the exemption, but low-resource areas only have to show they have areas that are 40% of the requisite density, whereas high-resource areas have to have areas with 50% density, which Rockridge does. Rockridge therefore had the option to delay SB 79’s effective date.
Unger’s ordinance was passed on March 16, 2026. Not too long after that, on June 20, 2026, the Department of Housing and Community Development sent a letter rejecting Oakland’s request for approval of the new ordinance. One of the reasons was that “the City did not assess the densities as specified in Section 65912.157, subdivision (a) for several zones” and “[t]herefore, HCD is unable to determine whether the sites would meet 40 percent of the aggregate density for the TOD zone.”
So, Mr. Unger, where do we go from here?
