A message from our friends at United Neighbors

10/10/25

Hello Everyone,

SB 79 is now state law. Many of our legislators, the Governor and the Mayor will never be impacted by this bill but those of us that are now somewhere within the 150 circles SB 79 identifies will now be in neighborhoods that are zoned multi-family.  When the Governor rages against the President taking away our rights, we are stunned that he can take away ours.

To all of you that took the time and the energy to fight SB 79 because it was such a stupid bill, we thank you for fighting this fight with us.  We knew all along that the people with access to the Governor would always have the advantage.  And people with money like big tech and land investors and their lobbyists (Streets for All, Abundant Housing) always have access.  But together we fought for our communities and for smarter planning and for more equitable solutions.  We gave them all a run for their money.

Unfortunately, SB 79 will be felt by many neighborhoods. Now we must all insist on answers from our council members.  

  • The city is allowed to prepare an Alternate Plan to SB 79.  Will they? 
  • What are the city’s plans? Is there money to do a plan?  
  • Will they work diligently to find ways to protect all our neighborhoods while allowing more density? 

The city has a lot of issues and we must make SB 79 our issue.  The city could have done more to stand up against SB 79.  Our legislators need to know we will either vote for them or vote against them in the next election based on their ideas and solutions moving forward.  We should not let any of them off the hook on this bill.  Now you can bet that future bills will be going into more single-family neighborhoods.

We must take a minute and catch our collective breaths. We have become a powerful group.  We have received lots of phone calls from news outlets around the country that have heard about us.  We must continue to work together for better solutions, not just easier ones.

We thank you all for sticking together.  We, preemptively, have been planning next steps.  We will loop back and inform all of you about them soon.  Stay with us. 

We all must give ourselves a collective pat on the back for what we have managed to do. Tomorrow is another day!

With best regards,

Maria, Cindy, Jeff, Marc