A message from our friends at United Neighbors

1/15/26

Hi Everyone,

We hope the holidays gave everyone the needed rest from the craziness of city and state politics.

As we begin the year, we want to focus our time and yours on what we can actually change. Once a bill becomes state law it becomes nearly impossible to fight unless you introduce new legislation to counter it.

We will try to mitigate SB 79 impacts through new legislation but legislators don’t like going against Scott Wiener or his bills. One possible bill will be to extend the deadline for the city to present an Alternate Plan for SB 79. We will keep you informed on our progress.

The City doesn’t have a lot they can do now that SB 79 becomes state law in July. We are waiting for the Planning Department to explain the options the city has in implementing SB 79. The city will try and defer some areas from the new density until 2030 but basically the city can’t do much more. Time to produce an alternate plan might be the best option.

You are aware of a possible lawsuit by the city attorney with other cities regarding SB 79. We have no new update.

It is hard to fight housing bills. But we believe the best way to stop the harm they might cause is to have them analyzed through a safety lens. Can we continue to add more and more housing without data showing that our streets have the capacity to handle our emergency evacuation needs?

A state law passed in 2018, AB 747, required cities to submit emergency evacuation capacity studies for streets as new density is being introduced. We found only two cities in California have done those studies. LA is not one of them. We feel that no matter what legislation is being introduced and for whatever reason, the safety and wellbeing of residents is the primary responsibility of our government and our elected officials. If more housing can be added safely than we must do so. Our commercial corridors can handle more density but can our neighborhoods that were not built to handle ten-fold increase in density do so? We need to know.

AB 747 is probably being ignored due to cost to cities but what cost justifies risking lives?

We are working with a legislator to see if AB 747 can be amended to make it more enforceable. As more legislation mandates cities to add more density by right, shouldn’t capacity studies guide the approval process and inadequacies addressed before moving ahead with developments?

We hope you agree that safety is a reasonable approach. We are going to send letters to the mayor and city council members regarding the need to look at how safe the city is and push for AB 747 compliance. We will send you a template letter next week to start our campaign.

Will any of these elected officials tell us our family’s safety is not their concern?
Will the Mayor, City Council Members or the Governor go against the safety of our communities?

During the next few days and weeks, we will also be asking you to send letters to the state portal on new legislation being debated. We will try to keep all of this at the absolute most important issues. Sometimes multiple issues will arise. We will try and make it as simple as possible for you to weigh in.

Best to all,
Maria, Cindy, Jeff, Marc