Act Now to Save Our Community!

Click here to oppose Senate Bill 9 & Senate Bill 10

Warning:  Senate Bills 9 and 10, now making their way through the California State Senate, threaten to totally rewrite the rules for developers in our neighborhoods, giving them the carte blanche to convert every single-family home and mom-and-pop duplex in Los Angeles into two separate lots and build four new units on each lot, or worse, build a 10-unit complex where a house once stood. 

This statewide “upzoning” will instantly create new wealth out of thin air by making the land on which you live immensely more valuable to developers.  And when, house by house, developers buy up your block, you won’t be able to do a thing about it because these bills sweep away all local control from planning and zoning, barring every Californian from having any say-so over their neighborhood. 

Developers can file a plan with the city and the next day start construction.  Waiting in the wings, if this measure passes, are Wall Street investors and billionaires, who’ve doubled their wealth in the year of the pandemic.  Today, Wall Street and private trusts own 67% of all rental property in Los Angeles.  If these bills are enacted, they’ll soon own a much bigger chunk of our city.  As home after home falls to developers, how much longer will you want to live in yours?

Warning:  SB 9 and SB 10 pretend to build affordable housing.  There are zero provisions in the bills for affordable housing.  Zero!

Warning:  SB 9 and SB 10 are WIMBY, “Wall Street In My Back Yard.”  Investors get a free pass to build, build, build, pushing housing prices higher and higher.

Warning:  Our newly elected councilmember, Nithya Raman, supports SB 9 and SB10. See for yourself (click here and view at timestamp 12:10).  Tell Raman to oppose SB 9 and SB 10    

• These bills will accelerate the problem, not the solution. Los Angeles has already seen the results of “upzoning,” which has produced only luxury apartments, not desperately needed public housing. In the Miracle Mile, as throughout the city, luxury buildings have vacancy rates between 15% and 40%.  Our neighborhood, which is already over-built, is less affordable today than it was before these luxury towers went up.
• These bills will exacerbate the devastating consequences we’ve already experienced with upzoning – rising rents with paradoxically higher vacancies. Nearly 93,000 Los Angeles apartments sit vacant, enough to house unhoused Angelenos three times over (See: The Vacancy Report).
• These bills will push housing costs up, not down. More and more people will be displaced, forcing low-income, fixed-income, and middle-class renters out of their homes. 
• These bills will encourage speculative developers to build more luxury buildings and leave them vacant because they’re investing in rising land values, not housing.
• These bills allow developers to build along California’s coastal zones without any citizen input.
• These bills will void the California Environmental Protection Act requirement for master planning, putting in place a system of piecemeal development, shredding neighborhoods and the environment in a single blow.
• These bills require no infrastructure improvements. All those power outages, broken water mains, exploding gas lines, overflowing sewers – Los Angeles’ aging and deteriorating infrastructure – will have to bear the burden of new development without a single penny of improvements paid by developers. When the pipes break, you’ll pay while developers cash in.
• These bills allow developers to build nearly lot-line to lot-line, with only four-foot side and rear setbacks, as opposed to the current 5-foot side and 15-foot rear setbacks. Say goodbye to light, air, and privacy.
• These bills intensify global warming and pollution of our beaches and coastlines. Bigger building footprints mean less open space for rainwater to enter the soil, instead heading to the ocean, washing the chemical residue of our streets into the sea. Smaller yards will also destroy our urban canopy and greenery.  That’s a plan to choke the air, kill off wildlife in the city, while intensifying global warming through the creation of more and more urban hot spots.

Support SB 15 – Support Affordable Housing

There is a way to build affordable housing.  Senate Bill 15, which encourages the use of commercial corridors, which sit vacant and unused, for the development of subsidized, affordable housing.  Rather than a hand-out to corporations and Wall Street investors, SB 15 will deliver housing to those most in need.   Rather than destroying our neighborhoods and uprooting our homes, SB 15 would preserve our city. 

What you can do:  CLICK HERE TO ACT NOW

View CD4 Nithya Raman position on SB 9 & 10 (timestamp 12:10)

See what your neighborhood looks like after SB 9 & 10