The bill included several progressive measures, including mandates for below-market housing, union-level pay for all construction workers and ecological protections. 35 requires cities that are behind on their Regional Housing Needs Allocation - a measure of how much housing needs to be built in an area to keep up with population changes - to fast-track projects that meet their zoning requirements. In 2017, California passed Senate Bill 35, a landmark piece of housing legislation that put the state’s cities on notice: You can either build housing your way or build it our way. Who should be in charge of housing? Should it be local homeowners who organize themselves into neighborhood organizations to protect their interests? How about local elected officials, who presumably were put in office to think about the needs of their constituents, especially when it comes to making sure they actually get to stay in their homes and don’t get displaced by hordes of newcomers? Or should it be the federal government, which, when it has stepped in on housing issues in the past, has done so mostly to protect poor and minority homeowners from housing discrimination?