SB-79 Passed By The Barest Of Votes

On the very last day of the legislative session, Scott Wiener finally scraped together the last votes he needed in the Senate to pass SB-79 by one vote. Now the bill heads to Newsom’s desk for signature. If you’re still catching up on this bad bill, head over to TracyTC.com where I ran a series of articles over the last five months chronicling the bill’s advancement through this legislative session.

This article, written by local Westchester resident Tim Campbell, also provides a strong summary of the bill including the assertion that our current state-driven housing policy is based on the “theocratic belief that only certain officials have the intellectual and moral superiority to make decisions about where and how Californians should live.” And by the way, according to Wiener, we should all be densely packed renters without green space.

I’m not okay with Scott Wiener pretending to be that superior leader and neither should you.

Wiener was only able to cobble together the votes by exempting more cities than the bill includes. He also convinced labor unions to support the bill by giving labor concessions on the densest of projects that probably won’t even be built. Developers will go for medium density on the lot next door to you and me because those projects will be the cheapest and fastest to build and profit from.

How did this happen? There were thousands of bills this session and who can read all of them? I’ve heard anecdotally that many legislators were surprised to hear how bad this bill really is. They only knew the bill its cutesy name – Abundant & Affordable Homes Near Transit. Unfortunately every part of this title is a bald-faced lie.

Even major law firms call this bill “one of the most controversial” bills in California history.

Make no mistake, with our Westchester light rail stop, our community will get hit hard. Oh, and did I mention that habitable floor space in a unit is prohibited from exceeding 1750 sq ft? These are not units for families, even if families can afford market rate rent. These projects are “stack & pack” with no required parking.

Additionally, no unit needs to be “affordable” if there are 10 or fewer units in the project. This means 10 units next door. Oh yay! Not 11. And since the units aren’t affordable, multiple people will have to live in each unit to pay the rent.

One version of the bill also applied to Bus Rapid Transit lines, although I can’t tell for sure if this provision survived. If it did, we will probably see Sepulveda and Lincoln targeted under Tier 2 of the bill. Tier 2 allows 15,000’ on a 5,000’ lot.

Additionally, transit agencies magically now get to adopt any zoning they want for their own properties. I don’t know what is owned here in our community, but this part of the bill sounds like a breeding ground for corruption to me.

SB-79 is a tortured mess that ends up screwing LA and Socal more than anyplace else in the state. The Bay Area (where Wiener is from) is specifically exempted for a longer period for no valid reason that I can discern.

Newsom previously expressed support for this awful bill, but we still have a tiny chance of convincing him otherwise, but we need to act right now.

Please Take 5 Minutes

Newsom can sign the bill at any moment, and might even like the splashy headlines of this bill in his fight with our President.

PLEASE take 30 seconds to CALL OR EMAIL THE GUV NOW, and urge him to veto this bill!

Call 916.445.2841 and email leg.unit@gov.ca.gov.

Here’s an easy sample script:

Hello, my name is _________. I’m calling to urge the Governor to veto SB 79. SB-79 will benefit developers, destroy neighborhoods, and do nothing to address our housing affordability crisis.

Or choose any talking point from this list:

• This bill only effectively applies to Southern California. Why is that? Follow the money.
• This bill includes virtually no affordable units. I don’t support obliterating local land use control for a law that doesn’t even address our affordability crisis.
• Southern California is not built to support random density and we can’t afford infrastructure upgrades on a random basis.
• The unions are going to be very angry when they find out they supported a bill requiring concessions on projects that won’t actually get built.
• SB-79 does not address Southern California’s vulnerabilities for natural disasters. We will not be able to hop buses in case of earthquakes, tsunamis and wildfires.
• Local control works to address housing needs. LA has adopted a Housing Element with a housing incentive ordinance that already has 20K units in the pipeline in less than six months.
• SB-79 is an illegal unfunded mandate pushing all costs on local government.

The pro-SB-79 forces are extremely organized and very digitally-savvy. We need every last one of us on this list to write in and say VETO SB-79 and tell 10 friends in CA to do the same!

It’s Go Time For Every One Of Us!!

Scott Wiener will stop at nothing to get this pet bill passed. Every one of us needs to call and write the governor. And then do it again tomorrow.

Your message has to be very clear – SB-79 is a one-size fits all bill that is wrong for California and Los Angeles.

Then tell 10 friends across the city and state to call the governor, too!

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