This is California Housing Today Top Five Today, for Wednesday, April 22, 2026. We’re bringing you the biggest stories on pro-growth policy, housing, transit, and economic development in California.
Yeah, and today feels very infill-coded: fewer excuses, more buildings.
All right, let’s jump in.
From Vallejo Sun, Natalie Hanson: Planning Commission approves building more housing on new Costco development
The commission voted unanimously Monday to amend the Fairview at Northgate Master Plan to increase the number of homes built on the new Costco site, from 178 to 245.
Good. If you’re already dropping a giant Costco and a 30-pump gas station on the site, more homes is the minimum, not some civic miracle.
Yeah, that’s the basic logic. If a site is already soaking up big-box traffic and new infrastructure, adding housing can make the land use work a lot better. It’s still an auto-oriented setup, though, so more units alone doesn’t magically make it great urbanism.
Right, it’s not Barcelona. But California has spent decades treating empty land near jobs and shopping like it’s untouchable.
And in Vallejo, the details matter: 245 homes, internal streets and sidewalks, parks, and an open-space buffer near wetlands. It’s incremental, but it’s still more homes than the original plan, and that counts.
Next up, a smaller but symbolically important approval in Contra Costa County.
From Bay Area Telegraph, Bay Area Telegraph Editorial Team: 50,000+ SqFt, 6-Floor Condo Complex Approved for the Heart of Downtown Lafayette – Bay Area Telegraph
A six-story housing project in the heart of downtown Lafayette is officially moving forward after the City Council voted Monday night to approve a new mixed-use development at 3458 Mount Diablo Blvd., right at Second Street.
Six stories in downtown Lafayette really shouldn’t be controversial in 2026, but around here it still somehow passes for a personality test.
This one is 31 for-sale units, including three below-market-rate homes, over ground-floor commercial space on about two-thirds of an acre. For a suburb with a walkable core and strong regional access, this is exactly where more housing should go.
And let’s just say the quiet part out loud: replacing a squat one-story building across from a McDonald’s with homes is an upgrade by any adult standard.
Fair enough, though the usual concerns about height, parking, and fit don’t vanish just because infill beats sprawl. Still, if downtowns near transit and services can’t handle six stories, then the region is basically saying no to growth everywhere.
Third, a transit story that matters well beyond Sacramento.
From PBS KVIE, Steve Martarano: Midtown Sacramento passenger train station approved for Central Valley service
Construction of a long-awaited passenger train station in Midtown Sacramento will begin early next year. The station will connect Sacramento travelers by train to the Central Valley and the Altamont Corridor Express commuter service.
This is exactly the kind of boring, useful project California never celebrates enough. More trains to more places beats another ribbon-cutting for lane expansions nobody remembers.
The Midtown station near 19th and Q is part of the Valley Rail Sacramento Extension Project, with a reported cost of $36.7 million funded by Caltrans. And the value isn’t just mobility inside Sacramento; it’s connecting the capital, the San Joaquin Valley, and ACE service in a way that broadens labor markets and makes car-light living a little more realistic.
Also, put stations where people already are. Revolutionary concept, apparently.
Right, and the Midtown Association is already talking about protected bike lanes and public art around the station area. That’s a good sign, because the best station isn’t just a platform; it’s a place people can safely reach without driving.
Now to Los Angeles, where the policy details are technical but the implications are not.
From The Real Deal: L.A. to implement new fee maps for developers - GPAM
The City of Los Angeles will implement the revised fee charged to developers, known as Affordable Housing Linkage Fee, on Friday. Its new neighborhood maps approved last month replace the broader Community Plan Area boundaries used since the fee was launched in 2017.
Translation: City Hall finally figured out that one giant fee zone can be blunt-force stupid.
Yeah, that’s the issue. The Affordable Housing Linkage Fee brings in money for affordable housing, but if you set fees using overly broad geographies, you miss real submarket conditions and either overcharge weaker markets or undercharge stronger ones. Smaller zones are an attempt to get that closer to reality.
Sure, but every “right-sized” fee in California still lands on a project pro forma that’s already coughing up blood.
That’s the tension. Fees can fund needed affordable housing, but pile enough costs onto market-rate and mixed-income projects and some of them just won’t get built. Better calibration helps, though it doesn’t solve the bigger cost problem.
And the companion coverage makes the city’s rationale a little more explicit.
From The Real Deal, TRD Staff: Los Angeles to Implement New Fee Maps for Developers
The updated maps “right-size” those requirements by aligning fees more closely with submarket conditions, rather than averaging costs across entire community plan areas.
That sounds smart, and it probably is smarter. But smarter friction is still friction.
Exactly. The city is trying to make the linkage fee and the Mixed-Income Incentive Program more sensitive to actual neighborhood economics, which is better than pretending every corner of Los Angeles can handle the same burden. But the real question is whether policymakers are pairing every affordability ask with enough entitlement certainty and enough allowable density to keep projects viable.
If L.A. wants affordable units, it should stop acting shocked that housing needs margins, not vibes.
That’s a fair blunt summary. Inclusionary tools and linkage fees work best when they’re paired with abundant capacity, faster approvals, and rules that reduce risk instead of adding it.
A couple of notable reactions around today’s housing and economy conversation.
One that got attention online came from the San Francisco Business Times, with discussion in the San Francisco subreddit about billions in taxable income leaving the Bay Area after the post-pandemic exodus. The headline number being circulated was a loss of $24 billion in adjusted gross income between 2022 and 2023. That’s interesting not just as migration chatter, but because it connects directly to housing scarcity, cost pressure, and whether high-opportunity regions are making enough room for people to stay.
Another reaction worth noting came from the Bay Area subreddit, where a thread joked that AI could make Bay Area housing affordable by pushing laid-off tech workers out of the market. That’s obviously framed as gallows humor, but it gets at a serious point: relying on economic pain to fix housing costs is not housing policy. Building more homes in places like Vallejo and Lafayette, and improving regional transit like Sacramento is doing, is the healthier version of affordability.
A crash is not a plan. Build the apartments and run the trains like grown-ups.
That’s the California Housing Today Top Five Today. This is a Lantern Podcast.