A message from our friends at United Neighbors

10/30/25

Hi Everyone,

Just a quick update on SB 79.

We have been meeting with a lot of people in Planning, the council offices and state legislative offices and there is a lot of confusion and uncertainty on how to proceed with SB 79. This bill has put the whole State into turmoil for no good reason except to please special interests (Streets for All, Abundant Housing) who want more land to build more density in order to make more money. Getting into single family and duplex neighborhoods was always their goal.

The city has a lot of work to do in order to fully understand the implications of SB 79 and ways to address it.   But the final maps showing what bus stops qualify for SB 79 have not yet been made available by the Southern California Association of Governments. This obviously delays the full understanding of the bill’s impacts.

The PLUM Committee of the City Council approved this week a motion to have the Planning Department study the impacts of SB 79 on our infrastructure.

That’s a good beginning. The Planning Department has informed us that they are studying a Local Alternate Plan and a possible plan to defer implementation.  We have shared our concerns and our ideas with all involved and will continue to do so. Planning hopes to present their findings to the City Council by early December. One thing is for sure, R1 and R2 zones (single family and duplex) are targets and right now we see no way to prevent them from being rezoned in impacted areas.  Also high fire, historic, and low resource areas can be deferred from this bill’s impacts until the next RHNA (2030) but not exempt.

We are forming a working group that will meet next week and we’ll set up a framework for moving forward.  There is a lot to unpack and we will study all avenues for moving forward whether that is through local actions, through state  legislation or through legal channels. If you wish to offer your expertise, please contact us.

We have access to a lot of important decision makers. That access comes because of the work we have all done together. It is really important we continue to work as a large block of community members. Continued pressure on our elected officials to do the right thing is the only way to force them to find solutions. We want them to know our neighborhoods should not be collateral damage for this bill.

We need to focus on saving neighborhoods while supporting more housing in our communities.  We don’t have to end single family and duplex zones in order to get the new housing we need.  Our Housing Element proved that. One observation on all that is going on, where is the Mayor? She should have championed the City’s Housing Element and demanded better legislation from her colleagues in Sacramento but she did not. She is frankly missing in action.

For now we want you to know we continue to be part of the discussions regarding SB 79 and your willingness to question your elected officials about SB 79 will make our job easier.  We will send you specific action plans as we move forward.  Timing is critical, so get ready to act quickly when we send out our alerts. Your outreach to your membership makes our coalition powerful.  Let’s keep adding to our group.

Meanwhile, as scary as all this is, we wish you a Happy Halloween!👻👻

Maria, Cindy, Jeff, Marc