When State Senator Scott Wiener’s SB 79 cleared both houses of the Legislature last week, it capped months of intense opposition from critics who have been warning throughout the bill’s journey that it would bring sweeping changes to LA. Opponents warn of six story apartment buildings rising in single family neighborhoods, overloaded infrastructure, and the erosion of local control. On the Westside, the Mar Vista Community Council joined other neighborhood councils through the Westside Regional Alliance of Councils in a letter opposing the bill, calling it a threat to public safety and an attempt to circumvent local decision making processes.

But a closer look at the City’s own planning maps reveals that in Mar Vista, those fears are misplaced. Using the official SB 79 story map tool created by Los Angeles City Planning, the only portion of Mar Vista that falls within a half-mile of a qualifying transit stop is on the far eastern edge of the neighborhood, east of the 405 freeway. That strip of land is technically within the Mar Vista Community Council’s boundaries, but many residents consider it part of Palms. The rest of Mar Vista lies entirely outside the bill’s reach.

That hasn’t stopped neighborhood leaders from sounding the alarm. The WRAC letter, which represents more than half a million Angelenos across the Westside, argued that SB 79 would “erode local control over land use and zoning decisions,” “compromise public safety by failing to include an unconditional exemption for the Very High Fire Hazard Severity Zone,” and impose “unintended burdens on communities.” Yet none of those scenarios apply in Mar Vista, where SB 79 has virtually no jurisdiction.

The mismatch between rhetoric and reality is not unique. In the Pacific Palisades, local leaders also warned of massive upzoning, only for reporters and housing advocates to show that the bill doesn’t affect the area at all. According to California YIMBY, SB 79 impacts fewer than one percent of transit stops statewide, and only in very specific locations: near heavy rail, subway stations, and high-frequency bus lines. Many of Los Angeles’s busier corridors, and virtually all of Mar Vista, simply don’t qualify.

The fact that Mar Vista does not have any transit stops that qualify under SB 79 is not something to celebrate. In other parts of LA, residents can walk to a rail station or board a rapid bus line, but our residents remain isolated from the kind of infrastructure that makes sustainable, higher-density housing possible. Being excluded from SB 79 is less about preserving neighborhood character than it is about how little investment in transit the area has received (or rather how much it has blocked).