California Fights Los Angeles to Legalize Housing: SB 79 Recap Part II

Housing advocates must win the heartland of California's anti-housing resistance if they are to succeed

Updating the meme from my first SB 79 recap, made after the law passed the Senate. Check that post out for an overview of what SB 79 does and why it’s so important.

California just legalized more housing near transit, dragging Los Angeles kicking and screaming all the way.

When CA Governor Gavin Newsom signed SB 79 last Friday, headlines focused on the historic policy shift: up to seven-story buildings within a half mile of major transit stops in much of the state. Yet many commentators overlooked the battle brewing between the state and its largest city, which strongly opposed the bill. The longterm success of California’s housing movement now depends on whether LA can be convinced to embrace growth.

LA’s “local control” versus Californians’ housing affordability

Newsom’s bill signing letter celebrates SB 79 for “boosting ridership, cutting traffic and pollution, lowering household costs, and expanding access to jobs, schools, and services.” The bill really does make huge progress in California’s fight for housing affordability, including fewer of the sort of “everything bagel” requirements that have made prior housing bills less impactful.¹

At the same time, Newsom’s letter also praises the bill for strengthening “local control,” the ability of local governments to decide where and how housing gets built—control that most cities have historically used to block new homes.

However, SB 79 explicitly overrides local zoning near transit stops. Cities have some discretion, but they fundamentally must allow more homes whether they like it or not.

So why the fig leaf from Newsom? Largely because the loudest opposition came not from small suburban NIMBY strongholds but from the City of Los Angeles: LA Mayor Karen Bass became the bill’s loudest critic, trying to kill the bill in the legislature before seeking Newsom’s veto.²

In her veto request letter for SB 79, Bass argues California must allow more housing near transit so long as it “does not erode local control, diminish community input on planning and zoning, and disproportionately impact low-resource neighborhoods.”

Her objections collapse under their contradictions, a call for more housing wrapped in conditions designed to prevent it. Streamlining housing production inherently involves cutting down on long approval processes and public hearings that often delay projects.

Furthermore, SB 79 impacts neighborhoods near transit stations in some of LA’s wealthiest areas, including portions of Beverly Hills, West Hollywood, and Westwood in which the city has refused to allow more homes on its own. Most of the rest of the city remains untouched.

Map of SB 79’s rezoning in Los Angeles courtesy of the Los Angeles Times. Most of the city remains unaffected.

Bass also claims “The City of Los Angeles has already made substantial efforts to align with state housing goals and increase housing development citywide.” The numbers tell a different story.

From an op ed by Streets for All Executive Director Mark Vikcevich urging Newsom’s support for SB 79:

“The city [of Los Angeles] hit a 10-year low in housing permits last year, all while rents soar and homelessness persists. New York City, a city about twice as large as L.A. and also experiencing a housing crisis, is on track to build 50,000 units this year. Meanwhile, L.A. had permitted 3,100 as of July …

In addition to gutting her own flagship affordable housing policy, ED 1, Bass has used her influence to secure an exemption from SB 9 in the Palisades, shielding one of the city’s wealthiest enclaves from modest duplex reforms.”

Contrary to its claims to promote housing, LA has exacerbated the housing shortage, causing ever more low-income residents to leave. Millions of Californians have left the state in recent years, a plurality citing high housing costs for pushing them out.³

Where housing reform goes to die

As a longtime Bay Area resident, I love nothing more than talking about why Northern California is better than SoCal, but it’s not as fun when statewide stakes are at play.

As I noted in my first SB 79 recap:

Northern Californian Assembly Democrats and Republicans both are much more likely to support housing reform than those in SoCal (in California’s Assembly, bills need 41 votes to pass, a simple majority of all spots in the legislature, so abstentions are functionally the same as “no” votes).

More than half of SB 79’s votes came from Northern California even though the region includes less than a third of the state’s population.

Source from which I saw this.

Some unsubstantiated hypotheses for why NorCal is better than SoCal on housing: Structurally, a much larger share of Los Angeles development occurred in the mid- to late-20th century, after the automobile revolution. In 1930, LA’s population was twice San Francisco’s; by 2020, LA’s population was almost five times SF’s.

As a result, Los Angeles has a more entrenched suburban population, more dispositionally opposed to development than the denser Bay Area. Of course, LA’s suburban sprawl development pattern underscores why the region needs state and local housing laws to promote more homes so desperately.

Socially, Los Angeles has much less pro-housing organizing capacity than NorCal. The Bay Area in particular hosts a diverse ecosystem of organizations; Los Angeles has power players like Abundant Housing LA, but it has fewer organizations and organizers overall serving substantially more people.

LA’s lower density of housing organizations may be interconnected with its development pattern, as denser cities likely make organizing a critical mass of volunteers easier. Regardless, these structural and social factors underscore how essential expanding LA’s pro-housing organizational capacity will be to win future pro-housing legislation.

Looking ahead for California’s housing movement

Changing Los Angeles’s political status quo will require a coordinated campaign to build power with greater resources, stronger institutions, and more aggressive political organizing.

Pro-housing organizations in LA need more support, especially funding, to recruit volunteers and run campaigns. SoCal groups like Abundant Housing LA, Inner City Law Center, and Streets for All have done vital work, but their reach is proportionally smaller compared to the Bay Area’s organizing ecosystem. Statewide orgs like YIMBY Action, Abundance Network, Housing Action Coalition, and People First CA can help close the gap if they bring serious money and staffing in SoCal.

Additional resources can contribute to a broader movement infrastructure. More significant success in the Bay Area came from a network rather than any single group or campaign. LA needs a similarly dense partnership among advocates, policy experts, and donors who can build coalitions across ideological lines. The foundation is there, it just needs more investment.

Lastly, advocates must build pure political power with direct political advocacy. A few local leaders like LA City Council Member Nithya Raman and high-cost cities like Santa Monica and West Hollywood stuck their neck out to support SB 79. They need reinforcements, 501(c)(4)s and Political Action Committees focused on electing more champions, protecting them once they’re in office, and mobilizing voters to put volunteer boots on the ground so supporting bold housing reforms is a political asset, not a liability.

SB 79 proved what California can do despite Los Angeles. The next great housing bill will only pass if it happens with Los Angeles.

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1. For a full accounting of the provisions in SB 79, check out Nolan Gray’s recap here:

Everything You Need To Know About SB 79

2. Bass wasn’t alone in opposing SB 79: A majority of Los Angeles’s city council voted to oppose the bill as well, as did more than half of the state legislators representing the Los Angeles region. But as mayor, Bass was the most influential voice fighting more homes near transit.

3. California’s population has only remained flat because of high rates of international in-migration. It’s not yet clear how dramatically the Trump administration clampdown on international migration will impact California’s population.