I’m the chair of Westside for Everyone, a local volunteer group who advocate for more homes on LA’s Westside. We have long collaborated with Mar Vista Voice — from volunteering at service pop-ups for people experiencing homelessness at St. Bedes years ago to collaborating on Instagram just days ago.

So I was very surprised to see Mar Vista Voice’s recent piece implying we were ground troops of a shadowy billionaire-backed movement, though it noted there was “no public evidence that billionaire money flows directly into WFE’s accounts.”

Rest easy: as an organization with a budget of approximately zero (give or take some locally printed t-shirts and a Mailchimp subscription), we do not even have a bank account for it to flow into.

Our purpose is, and always has been, to enable more – and less expensive – homes to be built so that everyone who wants to can live on the Westside.

That is why our members volunteer their hours with zero compensation: to end the epidemic of people forced to live and die on our streets. To stop people from spending absurd shares of their hard-earned income simply to have a roof over their heads and getting forced out of our communities. Because we want to end the decades of exclusionary policy that has barred accessible, affordable, and sustainable homes from existing over much of the Westside and prevented countless people from living here.

Reforming regional housing policy means working with people across the city and state. As our many social media posts, calls to action, and website proudly state, we are a chapter of Abundant Housing LA and work with California YIMBY to support vital housing reforms like SB79 — in which we were happy to be joined by Mar Vista Voice.

We are always happy to share our thoughts or discuss ways to pursue our shared goals.  As we said in our post explaining our advocacy for ULA reform last year, we believe policy improves when it is debated openly. We are all just people trying to do our best. Please do not jump to the conclusion we must be secret pawns of some billionaires we have never met. You can simply approach us as neighbors.

Mar Vista Voice Response

We appreciate Toby’s response and want to underscore something that should have been clearer in our original article. Westside for Everyone is a volunteer organization, and we have no evidence that billionaire money funds WFE or dictates the views of its members. We have worked alongside WFE for years, share many of its goals, and deeply respect its volunteers.

Our article was examining something different. The leaked documents from California YIMBY founder Zack Rosen describe a long-term political project of building institutional power from the municipal level. That made the movement’s local infrastructure relevant to the story, especially because California YIMBY’s own Action Hub directs people looking to “take local action” to organizations including WFE.

But Toby and other WFE organizers are right to push back on an implication that went further than the evidence. Being part of that broader ecosystem does not mean WFE receives funding from California YIMBY or agrees with all its positions. Local volunteers shouldn’t be treated as mouthpieces for billionaire donors they’ve never met, and we regret that our framing could be read that way.

We still believe the structural questions raised by the memos matter. What role should billionaire philanthropy play in building political institutions? Who should set the agenda of political movements, their grassroots members or the funders and professional institutions that help build them? How should local groups assess their alliances and alignment with the larger organizations they work with? Is the housing crisis primarily about supply and state capacity, or also ownership, speculation, tenant power, and housing as a commodity?

These are well-trodden and sometimes fraught disagreements among people who still share important goals. As Toby points out, MVV and WFE have stood together against exclusionary single-family zoning and supported reforms that allow more people to live on the Westside. We hope to maintain that common ground while having honest disagreements about policy and theories of change.

We truly appreciate Toby’s response and the WFE members who have reached out to talk. We hope this exchange can begin a longer discussion in the Dispatch about ideas that are central to making our cities work for regular people. If you’d like to contribute an article as part of this discussion, let us know!