Council Takes on the YIMBYs

By JOHN HARLOW | Editor-in-Chief

A part from tax hikes, Sacramento may feel remote from Pacific Palisades.

That is, until state capital politicians start debating a new law that could strip local authorities of the ability to protect their neighborhoods, turn Sunset into a high-rise cityscape resembling Dubai and exalt a new alliance of fast growth promoters who proudly call themselves YIMBYs, or “Yes In My Back Yard.”

The prospective law is currently a bill, SB 827. And, from Pacific Palisades Community Council to LA city leaders, it has prompted immediate and fearful condemnation.

But that unity does not mean it will be crushed. Democracy is an unpredictable beast.

The intentions are good.

The bill’s promoters seek to radically ease the state’s chronic housing shortage—one reason why 400 new homeless people appear on LA streets every day—by ending zoning restrictions such as height and density on main traffic arteries, which, depending on fragile definitions such as how often buses run, could include Sunset Boulevard.

But SB 827 can also be heard as the dinner bell summoning a new generation of rapacious urban developers from out of the darkness.

At the last PPCC meeting on Thursday, Jan. 25, President Emeritus Chris Spitz led a passionate condemnation of the bill, saying it was “the camel’s nose into the tent.”

She warned that these new YIMBYs regard the traditional family home within a quarter mile of traffic arteries as a waste of space that could be used for apartments built over stores—and exempt new buildings up to 85 feet tall from many traditional planning regulations.

So there go the Alphabet Streets and large swathes of Marquez Knolls.

She said it should be possible to draw up new rules for taller, denser buildings without ending all local input on such issues.

The community council voted to oppose SB 827 unilaterally—not always a common event at PPCC.

And it voted to urge local representatives, such as Councilmember Mike Bonin, who has expressed “concerns” about the bill, to oppose it more fiercely, without—tricky balancing act here—undermining what it’s trying to achieve.

Which is more, better quality housing in a state where 100,000 new units need to be built each year just to keep up with basic demand.

Which will, yes, require the removal of some of the more “NIMBYish” legal blocks on urban development in California’s 482 cities.

Without, as one champion said, turning us all over to the “urban strip-miners.”