The 2026 legislative session is well underway, and legislators are crafting new laws and regulations that determine how and where California builds, whether or not our natural landscapes are protected, and whether our communities have the tools they need to thrive.
Greenbelt Alliance is hard at work advocating to defend California’s natural and working lands and ensure our communities are resilient to a changing climate!
This year, we have prioritized support for a strong package of bills that have the potential to put new housing in climate-smart places, protect critical lands and habitat from the threat of development, and help realign growth patterns in the state to be more environmentally sustainable.
Learn more about our legislative priorities here and check out our most recent highlights below:
Accelerating Infill Housing Development:
Assembly Bill 2433 (Alvarez): Housing development: density bonus
Greenbelt Alliance is proud to co-sponsor this bill, which builds on California’s existing Density Bonus Law, a tool that allows developers to build more homes on a parcel than zoning typically permits in exchange for including more affordable homes.
AB2433 makes four key improvements:
- Creates additional incentives for projects with affordable ownership units for low- and moderate-income families;
- Clarifies that 100% affordable housing projects can access the “Double Density Bonus” established by AB 1287;
- Establishes a by-right approval pathway for infill projects meeting AB 130 criteria; and
- Requires local governments to proactively notify developers when their projects qualify for density bonus benefits.
Together, these changes aim to reduce local resistance, cut regulatory uncertainty, and make the program easier to use, particularly for ownership housing and 100% affordable projects.
Assembly Bill 1903 (Wicks and Wilson): Construction defects reforms California’s construction defect liability laws to revive condo and townhouse construction, which has fallen roughly 90% from its mid-2000s peak. Under current law, homeowners’ associations have a 10-year window to sue developers over construction defects, and insurance companies essentially assume all HOA condo projects will eventually be sued, resulting in policies that cost 3 to 4 times more per unit than equivalent rental projects.
The bill addresses this by strengthening the pre-litigation right-to-repair process, giving builders a clear opportunity to inspect and fix defects before costly litigation begins. It preserves homebuyers’ rights to seek legal recourse for serious, unrepaired defects, but redirects disputes toward resolution rather than treating litigation as the default first step.
Assembly Bill 2074 (Haney): Regional transit hub districts: downtown housing developments. This bill targets California’s seven largest cities (those with populations over 400,000) and requires each to designate a “downtown transit hub district” with uniform state zoning standards, including a 150-foot height baseline and at least 25% of each district, allowing buildings up to 450 feet. Residential projects meeting the bill’s labor standards would qualify for streamlined, by-right ministerial approval, removing the discretionary barriers that currently slow downtown housing production.
AB2074 also creates a state-backed revolving loan fund administered by the California Housing Finance Agency to provide low-interest construction financing for qualifying projects, which is repaid upon completion to keep the fund self-sustaining. The bill responds to two overlapping crises: a severe statewide housing shortage and the ongoing underperformance of downtown cores following the pandemic-era shift to remote and hybrid work, with office vacancy rates in some California downtowns exceeding 30%.
Sustainable Land-Use:
Senate Bill 1087 (Cabaldon): Transportation planning: sustainable communities strategies: transportation funding programs. This is one of the most important bills of the session, SB1087 updates California’s sustainable communities strategies, our framework for reducing greenhouse gas emissions through realignment of regional growth practices across the state.
Protecting Natural and Working Lands:
Senate Bill 1250 (Cortese): State highway system: wildlife connectivity
requires our state transportation agency (Caltrans) to formally integrate wildlife connectivity into its transportation planning by establishing it as an official performance objective within the agency’s asset management system, with clear connectivity targets required in its management plan.
SB1250 also improves inter-agency collaboration and creates opportunities for public input as Caltrans develops an inventory of wildlife connectivity needs. The legislation responds to decades of development that have fragmented natural habitats across California, with roads and infrastructure cutting off species from food, water, mates, and migration routes. Habitat fragmentation raises the risk of inbreeding, disease, and population decline, and limits species’ ability to respond to climate shifts, wildfires, and other environmental pressures.
Senate Bill 994 (Cabaldon): Local agencies: nondisclosure agreements
This bill prohibits local government officials and their staff from entering into nondisclosure agreements related to public business that would prevent them from sharing information with their agency’s governing body. The bill extends to local government a protection the Legislature already applied to state legislators through AB1370 in 2025, creating consistent standards for democratic accountability across all levels of government.
Greenbelt Alliance’s core work depends on open, transparent land-use planning processes, and the organization has repeatedly seen private interests operating in the shadows of public decisions lead to outcomes that harm communities, natural lands, and the environment. NDAs between local officials and private development interests are precisely the kind of arrangement that can enable large-scale sprawl proposals to advance without full public deliberation, which is the type of harmful development Greenbelt was founded to resist. Because the most consequential decisions about land, growth, and sustainability happen at the local level every day, SB 994’s protections are especially important to our mission. The bill reinforces the principle that sound land-use decisions must emerge from democratic processes where all officials are fully empowered to act in the public interest.
Every year, Greenbelt Alliance selectsto further our mission to educate, advocate, and collaborate, ensuring the Bay Area’s lands and communities are resilient to a changing climate.
