The Metro Blue Line — when it’s running — is an artery pulsing through Long Beach’s western side.

It thrums its way through downtown, carrying people along the city’s namesake boulevard, to Wrigley, to Cal Heights, across the 710 Freeway, and whizzing into Los Angeles.

As trains amble along the route’s downtown Long Beach loop, the reverberations of their more than 60,000 weekday riders abound: Skyscrapers, old and new, envelop the streets.

But as they crawl northward from there, those buildings slope down into single-story shops and restaurants — a T-Mobile, a Denny’s, a Princess Bridal Shop. Before too long, the tracks slice through otherwise untouched single-family neighborhoods just east of the L.A. River.

As the trains whir by, bungalows and ranch homes sit in suburban serenity. It’s as if the tens of thousands of people who traverse their land every weekday had no impact at all.

California Senate Bill 50, for better or worse, could change all of that.

If passed, it could transform the Blue Line corridor, adding more and denser housing in areas walking distance to each of its stops. But it’s not just those spots near public transportation that would be impacted; most residential areas throughout the city would open up for denser housing.

It would, proponents say, be the first significant step to solving the state’s housing crisis — a catastrophe they believe all Californians should prioritize more than almost anything else: More than individual home values. More than the amount of sun their gardens see. More than their own backyards.

Its challengers, meanwhile, have scattershot reasons for their opposition: It doesn’t respect local authority, they say; it would change the character of neighborhoods; it doesn’t require enough affordable housing; it would hasten gentrification.

Among the bill’s antagonists, citing local control, is the Long Beach City Council, which last week unanimously opposed it.

Despite significant local animosity, the bill has inched its way through the initial stages of Sacramento’s legislative process. But it has a ways to go — heading next to the Senate Appropriations Committee on Monday, May 13.

Still, the passion fueling both the bill’s supporters and detractors illustrates the monumental impact it could have. But what, exactly, would it mean for Long Beach?

The bill is “one of the most significant bills this session,” Councilman Al Austin said during the panel’s Tuesday, May 7, meeting. It “could have a long-term impact on our local land use in our city.”

How SB 50 would affect Long Beach

The bill attempts to address different types of land with individual approaches.

It targets counties with more than 600,000 people for the densest housing — meaning Long Beach, along with the rest of L.A. County’s cities, would face the starkest changes.

SB 50 would loosen restrictions on Long Beach developers in a few ways, based on where their projects rise up. Buildings within a quarter-mile of a stop along a major transit corridor, including the Blue Line, could be up to 55 feet tall — or taller if local zoning allows. Projects within a half-mile of those stops could be up to 45 feet tall.

The bill would also nix parking requirements in those areas.

Major bus corridors, like the stretch of Anaheim Street from Long Beach Boulevard to Pacific Coast Highway, would meanwhile be free from density limits and would only be required to have half a parking spot per unit. These lower restrictions would apply to “jobs-rich” areas as well, but those spots would be identified by the state’s Department of Housing and Community Development, so it’s unclear, at this point, where they would be in Long Beach.

But the bill doesn’t just focus on transit lines.

With some exceptions, like in historic districts, it would also allow four-unit buildings to be constructed in any residential area — meaning SB 50’s biggest impact could be seen on Long Beach’s less built-out east side, if that’s where developers focus their energy.

“The purpose of this legislation is to help address the state’s housing crisis, which we all agree is an issue,” Diana Tang, Long Beach’s government affairs manager, told the council last week.

Tang, who helped analyze the bill’s impact on Long Beach, said the bill’s overall goal is something the city backs.

“The bill does propose to increase housing supply in an effort to increase affordability,” she added, “which is something the city generally supports.”

But, Tang noted, the bill would also take some power over housing away from Long Beach. It would bar the city, she added, from studying things like neighborhood compatibility or design standards.

“So generally,” she concluded, “we would oppose legislation that supersedes our local land use authority in that way.”

A year after completing the Land Use Element, the City Council is wary

The density of east side neighborhoods, once again an open question should the bill pass, was one of the most hotly contested issues in the years-long, drag-out, citywide fight over the Land Use Element, settled just last year.

After working to balance the concerns of people who wish to keep their single-family neighborhoods as they are — while also making adjustments allowing Long Beach to continually add more housing — the City Council is not inclined to throw those efforts out the window at the state’s behest.

The council said as much last week.

It voted 8-0 — with Councilwoman Lena Gonzalez absent — to oppose SB 50 unless amended. In formally announcing its aversion to the bill, Long Beach joined the likes of Los Angeles, Pasadena, Redondo Beach and San Francisco. Long Beach could only support the bill, the council decided, if the city was exempt because it’s already working to build more housing.

Councilman Rex Richardson said he agreed with the bill’s intent and logic. The state, he said, does indeed need to build significantly more housing.

But Long Beach, the councilman added, is already doing that — and in a way that balances local concerns. The bill’s real focus, Richardson said, should be the cities that thwart any type of new development.

“SB 50 is not a solution to any of the problems here in Long Beach,” Richardson said, “in terms of the need to produce housing and the need to produce housing that is affordable.”

On the other hand, Richardson noted, a version of SB 50 that only applies to cities that are not approaching housing as openly could be a good thing because, as he put it, “there’s no way that we should let these cities off the hook that are essentially conducting modern-day redlining.”

The bill’s author, Sen. Scott Wiener (D-San Francisco), said in a Friday interview that plenty of cities have a similar stance to Long Beach — but, for his part, he has no plans to amend the bill to address their concerns.

“The idea that when we have a statewide housing deficit of 3.5 million homes,” Wiener said, “that we would start exempting major California cities from this shared collective responsibility is not something I agree with.”

Housing activists are split

The City Council’s vote ultimately came down to maintaining the panel’s own authority over local development. But other Long Beach voices have their own thoughts, which have nothing to do with who controls the housing supply.

Josh Butler, executive director of the local advocacy group Housing Long Beach, said his organization also opposes SB 50 — but because its members believe the bill doesn’t do enough to ensure the new housing would be affordable.

“We’re opposed because it doesn’t hold the city’s feet to the fire enough,” Butler said. “It doesn’t make them add affordable housing. It doesn’t make them keep communities in place.”

As written, Butler said, SB 50 would just increase the gentrification and displacement that’s already happening in Long Beach.

Groups that support the bill, like California YIMBY — a riff on the term NIMBY, meaning instead, “yes in my backyard” — say they empathize with Butler on that point. But, they add, legislation at the state level has to be a balancing act.

SB 50 will require developers to contribute to affordable housing wherever they build, California YIMBY spokesman Matthew Lewis said. But the bill would be self-defeating if it asked for too much from builders, he added.

Lewis pointed to San Francisco, which saw a drop in development after the city required 25% of units in new projects be designated as affordable.

“It is possible to set the requirement too high, which is unfortunate, because we need a lot of it,” Lewis said. “Our answer is to find the sweet spot, where you get the maximum amount of (affordable) housing from a developer that will still pencil, and that will be different in each city.”

Wiener pushed back even harder on Housing Long Beach’s criticism.

“I know that there are some advocates who will never be satisfied,” he said, “but the reality is that SB 50 has the strongest tenant protections in existence under state law. There is no state law in California that has tenant protections as strong as what SB 50 is proposing.”

One such protection is actually an exemption from the increased-density requirement. If a property near jobs or transit has been recently occupied by a renter, for example, a developer could not buy it and build high-density housing — unless, of course, local zoning laws allow it.

The bill also includes carve-outs for communities that are at high risk for displacement.

What happens next

Whether SB 50 will ultimately become the law of the land is still an open question.

The bill has sailed through two Senate policy committees over the last month. If the Appropriations Committee approves it Monday, it will go to the Senate floor, which would have until the end of May to weigh in.

If the Senate approves the bill, it would then head to the State Assembly for a final vote.

With all the major hurdles the bill still faces, there are plenty of opportunities for it to be amended — or simply die. But, Wiener said, he’s optimistic that California may soon implement the drastic solution he says it needs for such a dire problem.

“People understand that we are in a deep crisis,” Wiener said, “and we have to change how we approach housing in California.”

Wiener also stood firm on the state’s need to quit deferring entirely to cities and counties on housing policy.

“That status quo is broken,” he said. “And people know it.”