The Billionaires Behind the Network That Pays Chelsea Byers

A week ago, most West Hollywood residents had never heard of the Welcoming Neighbors Network. Then a conflict-of-interest question about Councilmember Chelsea Byers’ outside employment brought the organization into public view — and raised a question nobody had thought to ask. Who funds it, and what do they want?

It has no public office, lists no staff on its website, and operates out of a private mailbox drop in Washington, D.C. That address — 1319 F St NW, Suite 301, PMB 120 — appears on Byers’ own Form 700 financial disclosure filed with the City of West Hollywood. PMB stands for Private Mailbox. It is a mail forwarding service, not a physical office.

The Welcoming Neighbors Network (WNN), where Byers’ LinkedIn profile currently lists her title as Campaigns Director — though as recently as Monday it read Policy Campaigns Manager — describes itself as a confederated network of 63 member organizations across 34 states.

For an organization running housing policy campaigns in dozens of states, the absence of any public-facing transparency is notable. For comparison — most advocacy organizations of similar scale and mission publish at minimum a staff page, an executive director bio, a board list, and an annual report or IRS 990. Some don’t list salaries but they list people. WNN has none of that.

For what it’s worth, WNN is not a passive membership organization. It does not simply collect dues and publish a newsletter. By its own description, it exists to help member organizations win housing policy campaigns — sharing strategy, providing messaging training, and coordinating advocacy across state lines. WNN’s California member organizations, California YIMBY and Abundant Housing LA, co-sponsored SB 79. When those organizations win, WNN wins. That is the organization’s stated purpose. Byers is paid to advance it.

The Money Trail

Turns out WNN is not a grassroots organization one often thinks of when they think of a 501(c) whose goal is to help everyday working folk. It’s a branch in a billionaire-funded national infrastructure whose money trail is documented in internal fundraising documents obtained by The American Prospect in June 2026.

The primary documented funder is Arnold Ventures, the philanthropy of John and Laura Arnold, based in Houston, Texas. WNN director Henry Honorof is a documented Arnold Ventures grantee. WNN serves as a program partner helping steer Arnold Ventures’ national housing grant program — the Catalytic Funding Program — which invests in organizations across the country building what Arnold Ventures calls “the advocacy infrastructure needed to create more housing.”

John Arnold’s background is not that of a traditional housing philanthropist. He worked at Enron for seven years. His trading book is credited with making $750 million for Enron in 2001 — the year the company went bankrupt in one of the largest corporate collapses in American history. He was rewarded with the largest bonus in Enron history: $8 million. His former colleagues called him “king of natural gas.” His wife and Arnold Ventures co-founder Laura Arnold is an attorney and former executive at Cobalt International Energy, a Houston oil exploration company.

After Enron’s collapse, he founded Centaurus Advisors, a Houston hedge fund specializing in energy products. When deposed in 2005 regarding alleged manipulation of information used for gas price indexes, Arnold invoked his right against self-incrimination under the Fifth Amendment. In 2012, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission fined Arnold and Centaurus $30 million for allegedly manipulating natural gas prices. Arnold has denied wrongdoing. Forbes pegs his current net worth at $2.9 billion.

Arnold is not alone. According to the leaked fundraising documents, the broader Abundance Movement — the national infrastructure of which WNN and its California affiliates are a part — claims approximately $260 million annually in committed capital from three donors: $120 million from Arnold, though Zach Rosen, CA YIMBY’s founder, told The American Prospect that Arnold’s actual grants are ‘probably closer to $40M’; $40 million from Facebook and Meta co-founder Dustin Moskovitz; and $100 million from Steve Ballmer, the former Microsoft CEO. Additional documented donors to the broader network include Michael Bloomberg, former Republican mayor of New York City, and Chris Larsen, co-founder of cryptocurrency firm Ripple, whose company donated nearly $5 million to Donald Trump’s inauguration and received significant regulatory relief from the Trump-controlled SEC shortly after. Arnold sits on Meta’s board alongside Mark Zuckerberg — who is also a documented California YIMBY funder. Zuckerberg donated $1 million to Trump’s inauguration and has since rolled back Meta’s DEI programs and ended his company’s fact-checking program. For an organization whose members describe themselves as promoting progressive ideals the company they keep could be seen as questionable by some progressives. 

California YIMBY’s Tech Money and Developer Ties

California YIMBY is one of WNN’s two California member organizations. It co-sponsored SB 79 and played a central role in developing the legislation over several years. The organization spent eight years developing the legislative framework that became the controversial bill, directly negotiated its labor amendments, and its CEO described the bill’s signing as “the realization of our foundational goal.” Their Senior Director of Legislation and Research Nolan Gray — says: “developing and passing this bill has been the focus of our lives over the past year — along with Senator Wiener’s staff, some amazing co-sponsors, and the whole California YIMBY team.”

It is also, by its own founder’s account, almost entirely funded by Silicon Valley technology executives. According to the leaked fundraising documents, tech founders Mark Zuckerberg, Dustin Moskovitz, Patrick Collison of Stripe, and Kenneth Duda of Arista Networks account for more than 80 percent of California YIMBY’s funding.

Stripe co-founders Patrick and John Collison sent a $1 million check directly to California YIMBY. Duda and his wife contributed $200,000. California YIMBY CEO Brian Hanlon told real estate publication The Real Deal that he was “certainly willing to accept money from developers.”

The developer connection goes beyond willingness. In 2024 and again in 2025, California YIMBY partnered with the California Apartment Association — the state’s primary corporate landlord lobbying group — to oppose tenant protection measures including rent control. The California Apartment Association publicly thanked California YIMBY for its anti-tenant work in 2025 after the two organizations successfully stopped AB 1157, a bill that would have strengthened California’s rent cap.

The Billionaire Tax

California YIMBY also took a position in June on Proposition 40, a measure heading to California voters in November. The initiative would impose a one-time 5% tax on the net worth of Californians worth over $1 billion. Proceeds would go to healthcare, food assistance, and public education. California YIMBY opposed it, saying the tax would discourage investment and worsen the housing shortage. Any California billionaire whose money funds the network that employs Byers would be subject to that tax. Byers may well support the measure — we couldn’t locate a public statement either way, and she has not responded to WEHOonline’s earlier requests for comment on the conflict of interest questions being raised.

Lobby Letter West Hollywood Received

The connection between Byers’ employer and West Hollywood is not abstract. On June 15 — two weeks before Monday’s council meeting — Abundant Housing LA and CA YIMBY were two of the groups who sent a letter dated June 13 directly to the West Hollywood City Council urging the City to implement SB 79 in full and warned that cities choosing to follow SCAG’s more protective mapping methodology could be ‘subject to legal consequences, including if the city refuses the development application for a proposed qualifying SB 79 project.’ The letter was signed by nine organizations. Among the signatories was Jesse Zwick — Santa Monica City Council member and Southern California Director of the Housing Action Coalition, the same official whose FPPC conflict-of-interest ruling some say serves as the legal parallel to Byers’ situation.

WNN is not registered as a state lobbyist in California. But under the FPPC’s nexus test, that distinction may not matter. The commission ruled in the Zwick matter that direct lobbying is not required — only that the official’s votes advance the goals of the organization that pays them. WNN’s stated goal is to help member organizations like Abundant Housing LA and CA YIMBY win housing policy campaigns. When Byers votes to advance SB 79, she advances that goal whether or not WNN files a single lobbying disclosure.

California YIMBY and Abundant Housing LA are not passive bystanders. Every housing policy win in West Hollywood advances their organizational missions, grows their donor bases, and validates the network they belong to. Under the FPPC’s nexus test, that financial benefit flows directly back to the organization that employs Byers.

The chain is pretty short. Abundant Housing LA lobbied the West Hollywood City Council directly. Two weeks later, Byers sat on the dais prepared to vote on policies — including a housing permit streamlining amendment and a parking regulations rewrite — that her employer’s California affiliates had directly lobbied for.

What Byers Says

At the close of a nearly three-hour West Hollywood City Council meeting Monday night, Byers addressed the question of a possible conflict of interest directly for the first time on the record. WEHOonline did not capture the statement in our initial coverage of the meeting.

“I have advocated for better land use policy for the last 20 years, in many different capacities and many different venues and many different forums,” Byers said. “My work on this council has been consistent with my values. The voters who elected me did so because of my clarity in these values and my commitment to addressing these issues. I have a day job, as everyone on this council does, and it shouldn’t be surprising that my day job is working for a cause that I am and have been passionate about. The idea that I’m somehow unable to make decisions in my own right, as an elected, informed member of this voting body on the basis of my day job — it really just takes to invalidate my voice, and even more importantly, the voice of those who elected me.”

Her voice broke briefly as she described the conflict question as an attempt to invalidate her voice and that of the residents who elected her.

The FPPC ruling last December against Zwick had a disqualifying conflict of interest because of his outside employment with a pro-housing advocacy group. That ruling, which WEHOonline reported on in January, did not require that the Housing Action Coalition lobby Santa Monica directly. It required only that the Coalition’s goals were advanced by Zwick’s votes.

Byers addressed the Zwick parallel earlier in the night when council first brought the issue of a potential conflict of interest up. “The facts of the matter, to me, are very clear,” she said. “They’re very distinct from the other circumstance that was drawn up.” She didn’t say how.

The distinction is worth looking at. Zwick made a legal argument when facing the same question. He arranged for his employer to cease all advocacy in Santa Monica before he started the job. He argued his salary wasn’t tied to specific policy wins. He tried to structurally distance himself from the conflict. The FPPC rejected his position and barred him from housing votes anyway.

Byers is saying something different. She’s not contesting the basic facts — that she is paid by an organization whose California affiliates helped to develop and co-sponsored SB 79, lobbied the West Hollywood City Council directly, and whose billionaire funders would be taxed by a measure their own California affiliate opposes. She’s saying that her conviction is genuine and that should be enough, that voters knew who she was when they elected her, and that questioning her votes on that basis is an attack on democratic choice itself.

None of this requires assuming bad faith on Byers’ part. She may genuinely believe everything she has said about housing policy. Her passion for the issue predates her employment at WNN — she has said so herself, and there is no reason to doubt it. The conflict-of-interest question under California law does not ask whether an elected official’s convictions are sincere. It asks whether their employer stands to benefit financially from their votes. A person can hold deeply genuine beliefs and still have a structural conflict. The FPPC’s nexus test was designed precisely for that situation — not necessarily to catch corrupt officials, but to ensure that even well-intentioned ones are not put in a position where their public duties and their private employment point in the same direction.

One question has gone unasked since Sunday: how a sitting West Hollywood council member with no urban planning background came to hold a policy campaigns job at a national housing advocacy network whose California affiliates lobby the very council she sits on. The FPPC will answer the conflict question. Nobody has yet answered that one.

Editor’s note: This story has been updated to correct a description of Abundant Housing LA and California YIMBY’s role in SB 79. Both organizations co-sponsored the bill. California YIMBY played a central role in shaping the legislation over several years. The bill was authored by CA State Senator Scott Wiener.