In a contentious move this week, the Los Angeles City Council voted 8-5 to oppose SB 79, the “Abundant & Affordable Homes Near Transit Act,” siding with Councilmember Traci Park’s resolution. In a sweeping speech following the vote, Park invoked recent disasters, from January’s Pacific Palisades wildfire to a coastal tsunami advisory, and even alluded to World War II Japanese American internment camps as cautionary tales. She painted SB 79 as a one-size-fits-all state mandate that would override local plans, target vulnerable communities of color, and benefit only “corporate developers” while leaving L.A. with the bill. But how do Park’s dramatic claims stack up against the bill’s actual provisions and L.A.’s housing reality? Below, we present each of Park’s core arguments in her own words, then dismantle the fallacies and contradictions with the factual record.
What SB 79 Would Actually Do
Before diving into Park’s assertions, it’s crucial to understand what SB 79 actually does (and doesn’t do). Authored by State Sen. Scott Wiener, SB 79 aims to spur more housing in transit-rich areas as a response to California’s affordability and climate crises. In essence, the bill sets baseline zoning standards allowing multi-family housing within a half-mile of major public transit stops (like rail stations or high-frequency bus lines). Heights could reach up to 7 stories near stations, tapering down further out. The idea is to legalize mid-rise transit-oriented development (TOD) on sites currently limited to single-family or low-density use, thereby boosting housing supply where car use can be reduced.
Importantly, SB 79 is not a free-for-all. It does not apply to every bus stop or random hillside road; only “major” transit stops (rail or bus rapid transit) qualify[5]. Projects must still meet objective building and safety codes, and the bill requires affordability set-asides including a percentage of units reserved for low-income households. Existing tenant protections remain: SB 79 explicitly prohibits using its provisions to demolish housing that’s rent-controlled or that was occupied by tenants recently. It also leverages streamlined approvals only if developments comply with labor standards and environmental rules set by prior laws including SB 423, the updated SB 35 streamlining law). Finally, SB 79 allows local flexibility. Cities can craft their own alternative TOD plans, tailoring where new density goes as long as those plans create at least as much housing capacity near transit. In short, SB 79 opens the door for more apartments near transit with affordability and safety guardrails, and it still lets cities achieve the goals through local plans, subject to state oversight to ensure those plans are effective).
SB 79 at a Glance: (Key provisions and safeguards in the bill.)
| Provision | Details |
|---|---|
| Transit Focus | Upzones allowed only within 0.5 miles of major transit hubs (rail stations or high-frequency bus/BRT stops). Up to 7-story buildings adjacent to stations, with lower height limits farther out. Does not apply to infrequent bus stops or remote areas. |
| Affordability | Developments must include affordable units for lower-income households (e.g. 7% extremely low-income, 10% very low, or 13% low-income units). Projects cannot displace existing tenants or demolish rent-controlled homes. |
| Environmental Safety | Projects must comply with environmental, seismic, and fire safety codes – SB 79 does not waive building codes or CEQA for private projects. (It does create CEQA streamlining for building on transit agency-owned land to help subsidize transit.) |
| Local Alternatives | Cities can adopt a local TOD plan instead, to decide where and how to add the required transit-area housing capacity. Local design standards and higher local affordability requirements still apply under SB 79. |
With that context in mind, let’s examine Councilmember Park’s main arguments against SB 79, one by one, and compare her claims to the evidence.
1. Scapegoating Disasters: Fearmongering with Fire and Tsunami
What Park Claimed: In arguing against SB 79, Traci Park dramatically warned that the bill would court catastrophe. She pointed to the Pacific Palisades wildfire of January 2025, which destroyed some 5,000 homes and forced chaotic evacuations, and even a recent tsunami advisory along L.A.’s coast, implying that denser housing near transit could put more people in harm’s way. “Public safety” was at risk, she argued, because the state bill might force housing into disaster-prone areas. Park noted that Pacific Palisades (in her district) suffered “devastating losses” in the wildfire and cited Governor Newsom’s post-fire emergency order acknowledging the dangers of high-density housing in Very High Fire Hazard Severity Zones. She even invoked the specter of past government failures, such as wartime internment camps, to suggest SB 79 would irresponsibly put Angelenos in peril.
The Facts: This line of attack is a red herring, playing on dramatic disasters that, while tragic, are not relevant to what SB 79 does. The bill is about transit-oriented infill in already urbanized areas, not plopping apartment towers in remote canyons or on the shoreline. Most of L.A.’s major transit stops are in flat, built-out neighborhoods like Koreatown, Hollywood, Downtown, the Valley along the Orange Line, or Westside corridors like Expo Line stations. By contrast, the Palisades hillside that burned in January has no rail stations and little transit service. It is mostly single-family canyon neighborhoods that would not even qualify for SB 79 upzoning. The bill doesn’t override fire-zone building restrictions or suddenly extend subway lines into the brush. Park’s own motion noted her hillside district’s vulnerability to fire and tsunami, but that only underscores how irrelevant those examples are to SB 79. Using the Palisades fire to oppose apartments near, say, the Culver City Expo stop or bus hubs in the Valley is pure fearmongering.
As one housing advocate put it, Park is “misusing catastrophe” to rile up opposition to housing that would mostly be built in the city’s core, not in remote fire zones. It is also striking to see her invoke Japanese internment while ignoring the very real parallels many are drawing to today’s ICE raids. Park has one of the worst records in this regard, having opposed L.A.’s sanctuary city status, expanded surveillance, criminalized street vending, and refused to protect low-income immigrant workers now being targeted.
Moreover, SB 79 does not weaken safety rules. Projects must still meet fire, seismic, and flood codes. Park and the Pacific Palisades Community Council complain the bill lacks an “unconditional exemption” for high fire zones, but it already defers to local plans and existing codes. Nothing in SB 79 forces development in areas firefighters can’t reach or where tsunami evacuation is impossible. Those scenarios are straw men. Park’s fixation on disaster risks also exposes a glaring contradiction: her largest real estate donor, Douglas Emmett, presided over deadly fires at Barrington Plaza after refusing to install sprinklers, then sought to clear out 700 households under false pretenses. Rather than fighting for tenant safety, Park sided with the landlord, helping pave the way for mass evictions. If she truly cared about preventing fire tragedies, she would have held her campaign backers accountable instead of giving them free rein to displace renters.
By scapegoating disasters while ignoring real safety failures by her donors, Park distracts from the core issue of L.A.’s housing shortage and creates a false choice between safety and housing. The reality is we can have both. Building more homes in safe, transit-served parts of the city while upholding strict safety standards is part of a safer long-term strategy. Concentrating growth in well-served urban areas curbs sprawl into fire-prone wilderness and puts more people where emergency services are robust. Park’s disaster rhetoric, however vivid, has virtually nothing to do with SB 79.
2. The “One-Size-Fits-All” Straw Man: Misrepresenting SB 79’s Scope
What Park Claimed: Park and her allies repeatedly argued that SB 79 imposes a “one-size-fits-all” mandate from Sacramento, steamrolling local differences. In Council debate, Monica Rodriguez (whom Park echoed) asserted that SB 79 “would say that one size fits all and takes nothing into account about the work the City of Los Angeles engaged in with respect to [our Housing Element]… SB 79 is not the solution for Los Angeles; it does more harm than good.” Park’s resolution likewise contends that a uniform statewide upzoning ignores sensitive areas and local planning nuances, the implication being the bill would indiscriminately upzone everywhere, from downtown to quiet cul-de-sacs, dropping dense development into places it doesn’t belong.
The Facts: This argument badly mischaracterizes SB 79. Far from a blunt “one-size-fits-all” edict, the bill is targeted and flexible. It applies only in transit-rich locations, using a tiered approach. Higher density is permitted right at major stops, tapering farther out. Environmentally sensitive and low-transit areas are spared. It doesn’t touch every neighborhood or every bus line.
The bill also lets cities propose alternative plans to meet its goals. If L.A. wants to steer extra height into some corridors and less into others, it can, as long as it doesn’t reduce overall housing capacity near transit. This is not rigid, but a baseline with local options built in.
Critics also gloss over exemptions. Historic districts, for example, could be protected under local alternative plans, and SB 79’s focus on major transit inherently bypasses many purely residential historic blocks. The bill also respects stronger local affordability rules. Earlier versions were amended specifically to address such concerns, allowing cities to substitute their own TOD plans and clarifying transit agencies’ authority over projects on their land.
Ironically, Los Angeles’s current zoning is more “one-size-fits-all” than SB 79. Vast swaths are locked into one-house-per-lot, while SB 79 envisions dynamic, transit-focused zoning. By pretending the bill would “drop towers” everywhere, Park ignores that the status quo is the real blunt instrument.
3. “Local Control” as a Shield for Local Inaction and Exclusion
What Park Claimed: A central theme for Park was defending local control over planning. She characterized SB 79 as “Sacramento’s attempt to hijack local planning and hand the keys to developers, silencing the voices of residents.” Over and over, Park and her allies insist that L.A. is already addressing housing on its own terms, pointing to the newly adopted Citywide Housing Incentive Program (CHIP) and Housing Element, and claiming state intervention is unnecessary and anti-democratic. “Why would we not take a stand against Sacramento trying to take local control away from us? No one knows the city of Los Angeles more than the local leaders,” declared Republican Councilmember John Lee, whom Park partnered with on the resolution. The message is that Sacramento should back off and trust us to handle the issue locally.
The Facts: “Local control” has long been a euphemism for exclusion, historically used to resist integration and preserve racial and economic segregation. In Los Angeles, restrictive covenants, redlining, and exclusionary zoning systematically walled off large parts of the city, especially affluent, majority-white neighborhoods, from Black, Latino, and Asian families. Park’s insistence on preserving absolute local control defends that system. Her district includes some of the most protected single-family enclaves, insulated for decades from multifamily housing.
Nearly 75% of L.A.’s residential land remains zoned for single-family homes only. That entrenched “local control” is a major reason the city consistently fails to produce enough housing, allowing rents and homelessness to spiral. State pressure was what finally forced Los Angeles to adopt CHIP as part of its Housing Element rezoning program.
But CHIP itself is modest. It offers voluntary incentives for developers to include affordable housing, allowing projects to exceed existing limits in some zones, but it doesn’t rezone single-family neighborhoods. Incentives only apply in commercial and multifamily zones, leaving vast high-opportunity areas untouched. In practice, CHIP depends on developers opting in where apartments are already legal, not mandating change where they aren’t. Whether it can deliver the 456,000+ new units (including 180,000 affordable) required by 2029 is doubtful.
Affordable housing advocates are also pushing for amendments to SB 79 to strengthen affordability and anti-displacement protections, including longer affordability terms, stronger rent-stabilized housing protections, and fixes to “alternative plan” language to ensure local programs like CHIP don’t become loopholes for exclusion. Their proposals highlight the central truth that local efforts alone have not been enough.
So even when L.A. tries local initiatives, the results have been modest. The city’s much-vaunted “Transit Oriented Communities” (TOC) incentive program and other density bonus programs have generated some affordable units, but nowhere near the need. As of mid-2025, housing construction in L.A. is actually slowing: residential permits dropped 57% from the prior year. Despite adopting plans, the city is not on track to meet its affordable housing goals, especially in pricey communities. As a state housing advocate bluntly put it, “LA is at a 7-year low for projected housing permits. LA is deeply unserious about affordability, and people know it”. That is the context in which state legislators advanced SB 79, because local promises weren’t materializing fast enough on the ground. This dynamic is why SB 79 explicitly focuses on opening up high-resource, transit-rich areas that have been off-limits. In fact, SB 79 even includes penalties for cities that deny projects in “high-resource” areas without valid reason, a direct nod to ending the pattern of wealthier locales dodging housing growth.
So when Park claims L.A.’s “leadership” is solving the crisis, many roll their eyes. Local control has given us one of the nation’s worst affordability crises, a severe shortage, and deeply inequitable access to housing. State intervention is a response to that failure.
- Equity Inversion: Flipping the Script on Segregation and Displacement
What Park Claimed: Park tried to cast SB 79 as a threat to the very communities it aims to help. She suggested the bill would “target communities of color” near transit, leading to gentrification and displacement. She and her allies warned that Boyle Heights, the East Valley, and other historically Latino or Black neighborhoods could lose rent-stabilized apartments, with demolitions of affordable housing driving displacement. Councilmember Ysabel Jurado warned, “I am not willing to gamble losing Boyle Heights,” citing fears about weak tenant protections. Unlike Park, Jurado campaigned on promises to protect low income communities of color and her track record in office is more or less aligned with those commitments. Despite being her polar opposite politically, Park is now invoking Jurado’s equity arguments, claiming that SB 79 would “flip reality,” hurting marginalized communities under the guise of equity.
The Facts: This argument turns reality upside down. SB 79 is designed to break down exclusionary zoning in high-opportunity, transit-rich areas. These are disproportionately white, affluent areas that have resisted multifamily affordable housing. By remaining beholden to these interests and concentrating new housing to denser or less affluent areas, L.A. has effectively entrenched segregation. SB 79 aims to reverse that by opening affluent transit-rich areas, such as Westside Expo Line stops and San Fernando Valley hubs, to apartments. Expanding access there advances racial and economic integration.
SB 79 also includes anti-displacement provisions. Projects cannot demolish occupied or rent-controlled units under its streamlined rules, and the bill mandates affordable units in each project, ensuring new apartments near transit include homes for lower-income residents. Concentrating growth in affluent transit-rich districts also relieves pressure on lower-income neighborhoods currently bearing the brunt of gentrification. In short, wealthy communities must share responsibility, so development is not concentrated in Boyle Heights or South L.A. alone.
The bottom line is that exclusionary zoning is what “flips reality”: it claims to protect communities, but in fact it pushes the burdens of growth onto other neighborhoods. By ending exclusionary practices, SB 79 strikes at segregation’s roots. Park’s attempt to wear the mantle of “equity” while opposing more affordable housing on the Westside is cynical. As one housing advocate noted, the Council’s vote to oppose SB 79 under the guise of equity “sends a dangerous message: that protecting the status quo is more important than housing working families”.
While SB 79 marks significant progress toward equitable housing development, affordable housing advocates argue it still falls short.They are pushing for stronger provisions including longer affordability terms, closing loopholes around rent-stabilized units, and tighter rules on “alternative plans,” to make sure SB 79 lives up to its promise. But the direction is clear. True equity means opening high-resource communities, not preserving their exclusivity under the guise of “protecting” others.
- Developers vs. the Public Interest: The Boogeyman of “Corporate Developers”
What Park Claimed: What Park Claimed: Park frequently cast SB 79 as a giveaway to profit-hungry developers at the expense of the public. In her words, “SB 79 is Sacramento’s attempt to hijack local planning and hand the keys to developers, silencing the voices of residents”. She warned that only “corporate developers” and “real estate investors” stand to benefit, eager to “financially benefit by building apartments in our neighborhoods” once zoning is deregulated. The narrative is that SB 79 would line developers’ pockets with lucrative projects (presumably luxury housing), while regular Angelenos suffer from overdevelopment, strain on infrastructure, and loss of neighborhood character. Park implied that by blocking SB 79, the Council was standing up for the public interest against greedy outside forces.
The Facts: This argument is misleading and omits key context. It’s true that SB 79 makes it legal for private property owners and developers to build multi-family housing near transit, but that is precisely the point, and it’s very much in the public interest to allow more homes to be built. Yes, developers will build housing (they’re the ones who build housing in our system), and they will aim to make a profit doing so. But SB 79 conditions those projects on providing public benefits like affordable units and adherence to labor standards. It’s not a blank check to build luxury high-rises everywhere.
In fact, under SB 79 any project of a certain size would have to include a percentage of below-market units for low-income families. That’s a benefit current zoning often fails to capture. For example, if a luxury single-family mansion is built on a Westside lot today, which zoning allows, it provides zero affordable housing. But an SB 79-enabled apartment could provide several affordable homes on that same lot, plus expand supply to help ease overall rent pressures. Who really benefits from maintaining strict single-family zoning? Not renters or working families, but incumbent property owners who enjoy sky-high property values and little neighborhood change. In other words, the “status quo” that Park defends is actually a boon to certain developers and investors too – those who build ultra-expensive homes in exclusive zones, or speculators who bank on scarcity driving up housing prices.
SB 79 also enjoys backing from transit, environmental, and affordable housing advocates—not exactly “corporate shills.” Groups like Streets For All and Inner City Law Center support it precisely because it serves the public interest.
And it’s worth remembering: corporate developers were among the biggest backers of Traci Park’s own campaign. Her attempt to vilify them now rings hollow.
- The Cost & Infrastructure Canard: “Who Will Pay the Bill?”
What Park Claimed: Another refrain in Park’s opposition was that SB 79 is an unfunded mandate, that Sacramento “won’t pay the bill” for the impacts of all this new housing. She argued that adding density would strain local infrastructure like roads, sewers, water, schools, and transit, leaving L.A. taxpayers holding the bag. City Attorney Hydee Feldstein Soto, in advising opposition, also cited the bill’s “financial burdens on cities” (we will set aside for now whether Feldstein Soto has any business advising on financial burdens on cities). Essentially, Park suggested that state legislators were forcing growth without providing funding for the necessary upgrades, which could mean higher costs or reduced services for current residents. By stopping SB 79, she implied, L.A. was avoiding huge future expenses that Sacramento was shrugging off.
The Facts: In reality, transit-oriented growth is one of the most cost-efficient ways to add housing. Building near existing infrastructure and jobs is far cheaper than pushing growth to the fringes, where new highways, sewers, and schools must be built. Numerous studies have shown that sprawl costs more, with one analysis estimating that low-density suburban development can increase per-capita infrastructure costs by 50% or more compared to compact growth. By contrast, adding residents to areas with existing transit and utilities often yields net savings and efficiencies in emergency services.
Second, Sacramento is not leaving cities high and dry. There are state and federal funds explicitly tied to transit-oriented development. California’s Affordable Housing and Sustainable Communities (AHSC) program, for instance, provides grants for housing projects near transit, including funding for related infrastructure improvements like transit stations, bike lanes, and parks. The state has invested billions in such programs over the years, precisely to ensure that when housing is added near transit, communities get supporting infrastructure. Transit agencies themselves stand to gain: SB 79 would allow agencies like Metro to develop housing on their land, generating revenue that can be reinvested in transit service. Federal funding increasingly prioritizes smart growth, and SB 79 would strengthen L.A.’s eligibility. Transit agencies themselves would benefit from new revenue by developing housing on their land.
Meanwhile, the true cost comes from not building housing. We face longer commutes, worse pollution, and the mounting costs of homelessness. Those are the bills Angelenos are already paying. Local governments also have tools, like development fees, to capture project-related infrastructure costs. The “unfunded mandate” argument is exaggerated.
What’s at Stake: Fear vs. Facts in L.A.’s Housing Future
Taken together, Park’s arguments lean heavily on fear, distortion, and NIMBY reflexes. Wildfires, tsunamis, “one-size-fits-all” rhetoric, claims of protecting equity, and the bogeyman of developers all obscure the facts of SB 79.
Los Angeles faces one of the nation’s worst affordability crises, compounded by traffic and climate pressures. Doing nothing or relying on modest local programs like CHIP will not solve it. SB 79 is not a cure-all, but it is a serious step toward aligning housing with transit and ensuring wealthy communities share responsibility.
By leading the Council’s vote against it, Park signaled her preference for the status quo. And yet, the record is clear: local control has failed. As Marc Vukcevich of Streets For All put it, “So many people and legislators know how oppositional to housing LA has been for so long,” suggesting Sacramento won’t put much stock in L.A.’s obstructionism.