One of the interesting side benefits of SB 827 (Wiener), to allow mid-rise apartments to be built near major transit stops, is that it’s revealing exactly which interest groups have a stake in preserving the status quo of housing dysfunction and shortage.

Given the depth and breadth of the housing shortage, it’s not surprising that there are a lot of entrenched interests who benefit from this status quo. The obvious are the wealthy homeowners in coastal cities and their elected official allies.

But also in that corner are advocates for low-income renters in specific, transit-rich neighborhoods, either out of genuine concern over displacement but sometimes out of ideological hostility to market-rate housing, at least without being able to extract as much money out of it as possible for affordable units. They want to make market-rate development hard and expensive to build, so they can use that byzantine process as leverage to get a few additional affordable units built. But this is ultimately a self-defeating bid to boost affordable housing only for those few lucky enough to win the affordable housing lottery. Meanwhile, overall housing production lags, hurting low-income residents the most.

On the “pro” side are developers (who stand to profit from loosened zoning), the YIMBY groups (largely led by millennials frustrated at high housing costs), and a mix of pro-housing and climate advocates.

But in an interview with Vox.com, California YIMBY executive director Brian Hanlon pointed to another member of the pro-coalition: inland California representatives:

A lot of folks who represent more exurban areas, Inland Empire and parts of the Central Valley, they’re going to love this bill, even though it’s not going to allow more homebuilding in their areas. I spoke with one member in the legislature who just said, “I am sick and tired of these hypocritical, rich coastal liberals talking this good game on the environment, passing tax breaks for their rich constituents to buy Teslas, while not building any housing in their district. They’re displacing their middle-income people to my district, where they’re now driving an hour-and-a-half or two hours each way to get to work.”

You’re going to have some interesting alliances on this bill — folks like Ting, Skinner, and Wiener, who genuinely care about the environment and the housing crisis, along with members who represent outer districts.

Meanwhile, I still hold out hope that some of the low-income renter advocates will come around, once anti-displacement language is included in the bill. As Hanlon alludes to in the interview, the concerns particularly in Los Angeles around inadvertently weakening existing affordable housing policies are likely to be addressed through future amendments.

But in the meantime, SB 827 is finally lifting up the rock that keeps all of the dysfunction in California’s housing policy in place, with its attendant economic, environmental, and quality-of-life harm. The fight won’t be easy, but at least it’s finally getting started.