California High-Speed Rail Route Blocked by 1,200-Home Development
“We’ve got jobs that would be lost. Living wages will be affected. But what’s also important is the future growth of the city.”
California’s high-speed rail boondoggle, which is already a $128 billion joke that has been decades in the making with not a single mile of track carrying a single paying passenger, has managed to find a brand-new way to embarrass the state’s “visionary” political leadership.
This time, it’s not federal funding cuts or blown deadlines doing the damage, but a Central Valley city and a major homebuilder simply refusing to get out of the way, greenlighting 1,200 new homes smack in the middle of the rail authority’s approved route.
California’s beleaguered, over-budget high-speed rail line now has one more thing to worry about: A city and housing developer wants to build homes right in the train’s projected path.
Shafter, a city near Bakersfield, and developer Lennar Homes are plowing ahead with 1,200 homes in the same area off Highway 99 where the state’s rail authority plans to build tracks.
The development, called Gossamer Grove, is a “master-planned community” that will be equipped with a picnic area, playground and dog-walking trails, according to Lennar’s website.
The homes planned by Lennar, one of the largest builders in the Central Valley, will have three to four bedrooms, with prices in the high $300,000s.
California’s beleaguered, over-budget high-speed rail line now has one more thing to worry about: A city and housing developer wants to build homes right in the train’s projected path.
Shafter, a city near Bakersfield, and developer Lennar Homes are plowing ahead with 1,200 homes… pic.twitter.com/z1Qzw5apkV— Mike Netter (@nettermike) August 26, 2026
The move unites the home builder’s interests with those of city residents, who wanted nothing to do with the high-speed rail system.
“It’s raw land, we own it, we plan to develop it,” Walter Diamond, Lennar’s director of entitlement, said during a Shafter planning meeting in April.
Lennar did not respond to The Bee’s request for an interview, but the company has indicated it was finished waiting for the rail authority to come to the table. The rail authority told The Bee its current plans in Shafter — decided when the agency settled an environmental lawsuit from the city in 2018 — have not changed.
But the agency also said it has not decided whether it will sue and indicated it’s open to negotiating changes in Shafter. It has historically faced heavy resistance in the city, where officials and many residents would prefer the train take a different route.
The city contends it did not have much choice but to approve Lennar’s legally compliant subdivision map. Even so, Shafter Mayor Chad Givens thinks the Lennar plan approval has strengthened Shafter’s chances of pushing the train in a different direction. He added that Lennar is willing to fight for the map in court, if it has to.
New California High Speed Rail video for you. Based on a new report by the CAHSR Office of the Inspector General and developments in the city of Shafter, the project is at serious risk of not being able to open an Initial Operating Segment. At all. https://t.co/sVa9lE5gH2
— Lucid Stew (@Lucid_Stew) August 24, 2026
In fact, during a packed meeting this past fall, Shafter residents expressed concerns about this project and its negative impacts on the community.
Dozens of Shafter residents filled Veterans Hall Monday night to voice their opposition to a new proposal from the California High Speed Rail Authority that would route the rail line through the city center, potentially displacing businesses and costing the city millions in tax revenue.
The packed meeting required city staff to bring out additional chairs to accommodate the crowd as High Speed Rail Authority members presented their revised plan to the Shafter City Council.
…Kamal Saida, the city’s economic development director, said while official numbers aren’t available, the new proposal could uproot dozens of businesses and potentially eliminate millions of dollars in annual tax revenue.
“We’ve got jobs that would be lost. Living wages will be affected. But what’s also important is the future growth of the city,” Saida said.
It's just too on the nose that the town getting shafted the hardest by this boondoggle — being cut in half by the rail while getting no station — is called… Shafter https://t.co/ockgyu1byR
— Peter Bonilla (@pebonilla) August 26, 2026
Call Shafter’s move poetic justice for a project that has spent over a decade steamrolling farmers and small property owners with eminent domain and political entitlement.
Sacramento’s fantasy train may get ” shafted” by the plucky citizens of a small town that California bureaucrats chose to ignore.
When new housing and high speed rail collide
“Lennar Homes, one of the Central Valley’s largest builders, appears unconcerned that it’s planning to build new housing in the approved path of the California High-Speed Rail Authority.”https://t.co/rqp2UXvnAe
— Sane Housing (@SaneHousing) August 24, 2026
As an added bonus, given the state’s “housing shortage,” it’s going to be very hard to make Lennar homes a villain in this story.
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Comments
Governor Brown’s Toy Train Set, as I used to call it.
Make no mistake. If this were 10 years ago they’d all be falling over themselves to preach about this amazing project going through their town.
The only reason they’re objecting is they know its fake and never going to actually exist.
Waiting for California state gov’t to finish the rail project while people suffer with the uncertainties is cruel. AND unnecessary. Kill the project, it’s merely a political trophy for Newsome and his ilk.
Isn’t the first step of any project like this determining the route and getting the property to build?
CA HSR should’ve secured the ROW if they actually thought they had a functional business plan. They don’t.
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