They’re Not Going Down Without a Fight: West Hollywood Residents Take On SB 79

The West Hollywood West Residents Association is hosting a town hall Wednesday night for homeowners and renters who want to know what happens to their block when SB 79 takes effect July 1.

The answer, residents say, is that five-to-eight story developments could rise virtually everywhere in West Hollywood — obliterating the single-family neighborhoods and low-rise streets that people bought into with a lifetime of savings. They are not NIMBYs. They are homeowners and long-term renters who invested in a neighborhood with a century of zoning behind it, and they are not going down without a fight.

The meeting is April 22 at 6:30 p.m. at the ARC/Pool Building, fifth floor, 8750 El Tovar Place. No City staff. No elected officials. Jonathan Finestone, president of the association, organized it.

A mailer went out to households across West Hollywood West and surrounding neighborhoods this week. It is not subtle. “100 years of zoning overridden,” it says. “R-1 zoning eliminated.” Residents are told they are living in an “upzoning zone” now. The exposure gets called “modern-day redlining.” Sacramento, the mailer says, is forcing the rezoning of most of West Hollywood — and the City’s hands are not tied. The City can protect residents. It has “refused to go there.”

“Stop the destruction of your beautiful neighborhoods. Stop the steal of your private property rights.”

Finestone also sent WEHOonline his version of the map. Six rezoning radii, blanketing West Hollywood and a lot of what’s around it. He flagged it as not covering Beverly Hills. or other parts of Los Angeles.

SB 79 — the Abundant and Affordable Homes Near Transit Act — was signed by Governor Newsom last October. It overrides local zoning near qualifying transit stations. High-density development, approved by right. No public hearing. No Council vote. Seventy-two days from Sunday.

West Hollywood’s three future Metro K Line station areas got locked in by the Metro Board on March 26: Santa Monica and San Vicente, Santa Monica and Fairfax, Santa Monica and La Brea. The city covers 1.9 square miles. A half-mile upzoning radius around three stations is a lot of West Hollywood. The Southern California Association of Governments is still drawing the map of which specific parcels fall inside those zones. That goes before SCAG’s Regional Council in June. One month before the law takes effect.

Residents who bought into R-1 neighborhoods say Sacramento just rewrote the rules on them. West Hollywood never voted on SB 79. No local hearing was required. Block-by-block decisions got made in Sacramento.

West Hollywood has not filed a Transit-Oriented Development Alternative Plan with the state. TODAPs let cities shape where density lands and set design standards — but the overall capacity the law requires stays in place. You can guide it. You cannot stop it. Beverly Hills filed its plan in January. West Hollywood has not.

The fight is everywhere right now. Newsom has warned 15 cities and counties: comply with SB 79 in 30 days or face state lawsuits. Los Angeles hit every pause button in the law — exempted fire zones, low-income neighborhoods, historic districts, then preemptively upzoned higher-income single-family areas just enough to qualify for a delay until 2030. San Francisco is trying something similar. LA’s City Attorney has been organizing other cities around a potential legal challenge. Nothing filed yet.

Legal challenges to housing laws like this one have a lousy track record in California. After a 2021 law let homeowners split their lots into as many as four units, cities sued. Some explored municipal charters. One floated becoming a mountain lion refuge. None of it worked. Experts say resistance to SB 79 probably won’t show up until after July 1 anyway — there’s no reason to fight a law that hasn’t taken effect yet.

West Hollywood has not pursued any of those options publicly.

Monday the City Council takes up inclusionary housing rules — the affordability requirements that will govern whatever actually gets built here once SB 79 kicks in. West Hollywood’s 20 percent standard beats SB 79’s 7 to 13 percent baseline. The City confirmed to WEHOonline the local rule still applies.

Then-Mayor Chelsea Byers stood in front of a room full of angry residents at the December ZIP town hall — same building, same issues — and said what the City’s position was. “We are not going to let the City get sued into oblivion because we make some arrogant decision that we have a better attitude than the state,” she said. “We can play ball and make sure that we are working our best to be diligent and get these issues dealt with ourselves before the state comes in, or the state is going to do it for us.”

Planning Director Nick Maricich that same night: “There are state laws that have already changed what can be built in the R1s today. And there are other state laws that may come to impact these existing R1 areas. Some of these things are not our decision.”

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