Community colleges: housing: local zoning regulations: exemption.

Assembly Member Zbur, along with Senator Arreguín, advances a statewide approach to campus housing by proposing that certain university housing developments on community college property would be exempt from local zoning for qualifying parcels, while also requiring affordable units for faculty and staff when housing is included. The proposal frames this housing initiative as a state priority and seeks to apply to all cities, including charter cities.

At the core, the measure would add a carve-out allowing a district-owned or -leased parcel to proceed with a university housing development project without conforming to city or county zoning requirements, provided the site is within a half-mile of a main campus or within a half-mile of a satellite campus that existed before mid-2025. If the project includes housing for faculty and staff, a portion of the units would be required to be offered at affordable rents. The term “affordable rent” is defined as amounts consistent with limits set by the California Tax Credit Allocation Committee, and the income eligibility for the affordable units aligns with definitions drawn from the Health and Safety Code for extremely low and lower income faculty and staff.

The bill relies on external definitions to define a “university housing development project” and to anchor eligibility and affordability, linking the Education Code, the Public Resources Code, and the Health and Safety Code. The zoning exemption is stated as “notwithstanding any other law,” creating a broad preemption from local zoning for qualifying parcels. The proximity criteria create a grandfathering mechanism tied to a campus’s location and to satellite campuses that existed prior to July 1, 2025.

Implementation details and fiscal implications are not specified in the text: there is no explicit appropriation or state funding, and enforcement or monitoring mechanisms for the affordable-rent portion are not described. The bill’s findings characterize the housing effort as a statewide concern, and the measure’s structure suggests a policy shift that would alter local planning authority for particular campus-adjacent sites, with indirect effects on housing markets, district recruitment and retention, and neighborhood planning. The context emphasizes a goal of expanding on-campus or near-campus housing access while embedding affordability requirements for faculty and staff, but CEQA, monitoring, and enforcement details are not addressed in the text.