What LA’s Fires Mean for the California Housing Movement

Who decides how to rebuild from the ashes? YIMBYs have limited influence—for now

California leaders responding to the L.A. fires.

Over the last decade, the “Yes In My BackYard” YIMBY movement has rapidly spread across California and the country, arguing that making housing more affordable in expensive cities requires building more homes. Despite recent pro-housing policy wins, California’s initial response to destructive fires in Los Angeles reveals the limits of YIMBYism’s influence—and an opportunity for its future.

For those who see no news except this substack, massive fires in Los Angeles destroyed more than 16,000 homes throughout January. Everyone in the housing movement wants a swift and effective rebuilding effort that helps displaced residents return to their communities. Lower-income homeowners and renters need support. But in order for displaced communities to return to their homes, the lost housing must actually be rebuilt.

California’s leaders took dramatic actions in response to the destruction, most of which do very little to meaningfully facilitate rebuilding or advance the YIMBY platform:

• Governor Gavin Newsom ordered a moratorium on “price gouging,” essentially strict temporary rent control. State Attorney General Rob Bonta has aggressively enforced the order, bringing cases against several landlords.

• Days later, Newsom released another order banning ”real estate speculation,” effectively preventing buyers from making unsolicited offers to property owners of destroyed homes.

• Newsom also issued an executive order streamlining new development from review under state environmental laws and the notoriously bureaucratic Coastal Commission—exclusively for properties that are similar in size and appearance to the original homes. No extra apartments or additional units (though a later order expanded the streamlining to allow one new accessory dwelling unit, a small backyard cottage). This “like-for-like” permit streamlining incentivizes property owners to rebuild the exact same type of housing they had before the fires, in the exact same dangerous places, rather than rebuilding more fire-safe and sustainable duplexes or small apartments.

• City of Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass similarly streamlined building permits and waived discretionary review exclusively for “like for like” rebuilds.

• The State Insurance Commissioner (an elected position that regulates insurance) ordered a freeze on insurance policy cancellations.

• The LA County Board of Supervisors, who represent more than eight million constituents, unanimously sent a letter requesting an exemption from all state housing laws intended to make housing easier to build. Essentially, trying to address a huge loss of housing by making housing harder to build. The board later enacted a six-month eviction moratorium and rent freeze countywide.

• In an emergency session, the state legislature passed a $2.5 billion relief package to help fund rent relief and rebuilding efforts.

Some of these policies will help displaced residents, others will have unintended consequences. Either way, it’s noteworthy that YIMBYs, who advocate for policy changes that make multi-family housing easier to build, had almost no influence on the state’s actions immediately after a major housing catastrophe.

Whose ideas did California leaders adopt? Another faction of the state’s housing movement achieved large parts of their policy vision. This faction supports different tools than YIMBYs to make housing affordable, focused on regulating the housing market more strictly rather than the YIMBY vision of building enough new homes to create abundance for all.

In the immediate aftermath of the fires, an organization called LA Voice sent an email to their members with demands for state leadership. Those demands included a “countywide rent freeze and eviction moratorium”; anti-speculation policies; cash assistance to support rent payments and lost wage income; and direct state support with insurance. Statewide groups like ACCE Action and Housing Now rapidly echoed the call.

California’s leaders and local LA governments ultimately adopted the majority of these policy recommendations in part or full, ignoring YIMBY recommendations even though they aren’t mutually exclusive. Abundant Housing LA, a regional YIMBY group, released a statement celebrating emergency tenant protections while also proposing incentives to make rebuilding easier and cheaper: streamlined environmental review, fast permitting, and flexible zoning for multi-family housing to replace what was lost.¹

Instead of a broad-based strategy, state and LA leaders chose to try and forcefully regulate a return to the near past rather than build for the future. Displaced residents hoping to return to their communities quickly will have to wait longer as a result. Legal protections for tenants can only do so much to prevent displacement when tenants’ homes are literally destroyed!

Why did the YIMBY movement get so little of its priorities from state and regional leaders? In part because it wasn’t as prepared to ask for them as the pro-regulation groups. LA Voice, ACCE, Housing Now, and other organizations that support stricter regulation of the housing market shared a coordinated message with their bases to influence state leaders shortly after the Los Angeles fires began.

YIMBY organizations had a clear platform, they just weren’t as unified or organized around promoting it. YIMBY Action, the largest pro-housing community organizing group in the state, released their own emergency policy memo, even though it mostly aligned with Abundant Housing LA’s. California YIMBY, the most prominent statewide lobbying group, sent out a petition urging the Governor to exempt rebuilds from the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA), but they didn’t advance the full platforms of other YIMBY orgs despite supporting similar policies.

The diversity of YIMBY groups, often a strength, led to a fractured response in a time of crisis. YIMBYs didn’t seize the opportunity to collectively advance a shared vision of sustainable, affordable housing abundance to address the desperate needs of displaced residents.

However, housing supporters can start preparing now to better help people in future crises. They have stronger political tools available to them than ever before.

Most powerfully, California’s top leaders demonstrated they can suspend major state laws that pose barriers to development by executive action in emergencies. With the stroke of his pen, Newsom removed certain types of development from the review of CEQA and the Coastal Commission, laws that YIMBYs have long argued cause unnecessary delays for sustainable housing in the most desirable parts of the state.² With similar executive action, LA Mayor Bass streamlined building permits and waived discretionary review.

The YIMBY policy platform provides a broad set of longer term legislative solutions. State and local elected officials could help displaced residents return to their homes sooner by expanding streamlining to cover more new housing types, such as duplexes and apartments. Increased flexibility will help property owners rebuild safer and more affordably than what was there before.³ YIMBY organizations are already working on state legislation that will make rebuilding after disaster easier. But to effectively respond, they need more than good policy—they need a coordinated political playbook.

LA’s fires are just the most extreme recent example of infernos that displace thousands of people from their homes. Organizations that support building housing for all can start preparing now to respond more cohesively to the next disaster. Those who most need a place to live won’t get one unless we make rebuilding possible.

Thank you to Leora Ross of YIMBY Action, who got me thinking about the limits of YIMBY influence in the aftermath of the LA fires and made some helpful suggestions for this piece. And thank you to Thomas Irwin from Eastside Housing for All for helping me dig up old emails.

1. From Abundant Housing LA’s statement: “We applaud the quick actions that have been taken already to protect tenants, enforce price-gouging regulations, and ensure that displaced and vulnerable households are not taken advantage of in this time of recovery … [but] Los Angeles County did not have enough homes before these fires, and we do not have enough homes now. Therefore, the only way that we can hope to address the critical housing needs of displaced households, and all Angelenos, is to build more housing—quickly.” It’s really too bad that none of the pro-regulation organizations took a similarly broad-based approach to rebuilding!

2. The Atlantic has thoroughly covered barriers CEQA causes to housing, and a report from Circulate San Diego last year illustrated how the Coastal Commission interferes with housing. Newsom outright rebuked the Coastal Commission for attempting to impose new rules that could slow rebuilding in the aftermath of the fires.

3. UC Davis law professor Chris Elmendorf suggests several other wonky actions state leaders can take to make financing rebuilding easier.