New laws intended to grow California’s housing supply have been enacted at an unprecedented pace since 2020, with many taking away the power cities had to block new homes within their boundaries.
Gov. Gavin Newsom signed over 60 new housing bills in 2025 alone, ramping up pressure to ease a dearth in supply that has locked many people out of the state’s housing market. In late 2025, potential homeowners needed an average $221,000 annual income to buy a median-priced home. Rents have risen as well: In Long Beach, a 1,200 square-foot apartment now goes for over $3,100 — a 25% rise since 2019.
Newsom has been blunt in calling out specific cities that resist more housing — like Huntington Beach’s “pathetic NIMBY behavior,” he said in December — and has threatened lawsuits and other penalties on cities big and small.
Whether this is mere political bluster or necessary change depends on your view, but cities across the state are navigating a complex array of new rules that aim to simplify approval processes and levy penalties on those who won’t allow new homes.
The Business Journal recently sat down with Christopher Koontz, Long Beach’s director of Community Development, to understand where our city stands in its housing supply, and which new laws have had the biggest impact.
Long Beach has picked up the pace
Koontz admits the city wasn’t building a lot of housing a decade ago. In 2014, it permitted 300 housing construction projects; in 2024, that number rose to 1,704. Officials expect to see a continued rise in construction, as well as entitlements — a preliminary step in a long approval process — when 2025 numbers are released early this year.
The city was required to make room for over 26,000 new units between 2021 and 2029, which would amount to a roughly 14% rise in its total housing inventory of 181,500 units.
The city adopted a framework for meeting that aggressive target and has gradually rezoned the city, parcel by parcel, to implement the plan. This tedious process, however, is not the same as actual construction — the latter of which is mostly out of the city’s control.
Higher interest rates and tariffs on building materials, among other factors, have slowed construction over the past few years due to lack of financing. But Koontz said he’s seeing signs that builders may be gaining access to more money.
Six months ago, projects weren’t moving, he said. This year, “We do have projects that have been able to get loans.”
The city does have control in some areas, like customer service and faster turnaround times for entitlements, permits, engineering and more. Improvements in internal processes have already created “repeat customers” who want to work in Long Beach, he said.
Holland Partner Group, for example, built the Volta complex at Seventh Street and Pacific Avenue downtown, then pitched plans for an even larger project nearby at Third and Pacific. The firm then won approval in 2023 for a development on the opposite end of the city’s coast, the 281-unit complex at Studebaker Road and Pacific Coast Highway that is now visibly underway.
“Developers who have a positive experience here tend to come back,” Koontz said.
Laws that have impacted Long Beach
Which new laws have led to new homes in Long Beach?
The “1, 2 and 3” answer, Koontz said, is the cumulative effect of ADU reform.
Roughly 40% of the city’s housing supply consists of detached, single-family homes, which occupy an outsized share of physical space in a coastal city that is already built out. The state, as well as the city, has made it far easier and less expensive for homeowners to build secondary homes on these lots.
The city often touts its success with ADUs after reducing fees, removing zoning restrictions and standardizing approvals, among other changes — all requirements of new state legislation.
Of the city’s 1,704 approved construction permits in 2024, nearly half were for ADUs.
The benefits of ADU construction, Koontz said, go beyond the numbers: This particular type of housing is being added more evenly throughout the entire city rather than being concentrated in one place, like downtown.
“We have our nine council districts, and there are ADUs being built in every district,” he said.
In a similar vein, new legislation that standardized building requirements — eliminating subjective decisions that increase risk for developers — has spurred interest among builders locally, Koontz said.
A new law that caused significant uproar, SB 9, allowed homeowners to split their lots to accommodate duplexes. It banned subjective denials of these projects around factors like “protecting the character of a neighborhood” — which Koontz said can mean “10 different things in 10 different cities.”
That infuriated many homeowners who are indeed protective of their streets and neighborhoods, though the city hasn’t seen steep demand in permits for projects. (The legislation is, however, raising alarm in Los Angeles as communities rebuild in the wake of last year’s fires.)
Likewise, SB 330, signed in 2019, established a standard checklist of requirements that cannot be changed during the approval process.
From his view, Koontz said these reforms have been largely positive, creating certainty for developers on questions ranging from building height to the type of stucco used on exteriors.
Impacts remain to be seen
The flurry of new laws has caused some frustration, however. “We spend a lot of time and effort every year just trying to understand everything that changed in just one year’s time,” Koontz said.
It often takes years or decades to see the impact from new laws, he said — and often years to clarify or correct mistakes in laws that were previously passed.
A prime example is SB 79, passed late last year, which angered many homeowners throughout Long Beach and the state. The law allows significant density around public transportation that initially included bus stops, which would have had a massive impact on the entire city.
The law was pared down significantly, and will likely include only the city’s eight Metro stops in downtown, the westside and North Long Beach. The state, however, must first clean up critical language defining tiers that dictate density levels, among other fixes.
Koontz said he does hope the state Legislature will take a breather on changes to housing law.
“Running this operation — no one elected me — but I kind of feel like it’s time for a break [in new legislation] and to sort of catch up and implement the changes that have already been made,” he said.