Livable California has set up a letter which you can sign and it will be emailed to all the State Senators to tell them you oppose SB-50. Even if you have called or emailed them individually, you can send this letter. It is NOT a petition. It is an EMAIL LETTER. Each time someone signs it, a personal email will be sent to every senator on the list. This is much more effective than a single petition. If you haven’t done so yet, please follow the links below and sign the letters.
Here is what the letter says –
Dear Senator
Please oppose SB 50
California’s crisis of housing affordability is real, but this extreme bill is the wrong response. San Francisco and Los Angeles oppose SB 50 because it will accelerate gentrification and displacement. The 86 cities in the League of California Cities’ L.A. County Division oppose it because it severely harms older, diverse, working-class suburbs. In the Bay Area, scores of equity groups are fighting SB 50, such as Moms 4 Housing and San Francisco Tenants Union.
SB 50 overrides local control, directly handing to for-profit developers unprecedented power over our communities. It is a vast experiment with potentially grave unintended consequences. It substantially increases profits for developers while forcing communities to absorb massive new infrastructure costs.
In 2019, California enacted several bills to aggressively promote market-rate housing supply. Our crisis is AFFORDABLE housing, not luxury housing. SB 50 will exacerbate the affordability and homeless crises.
I ask you to look for answers in bills that provide money to directly build affordable low-income units, such as Sen. Beall’s SB 795. We should focus on rational approaches rather than drastic and intrusive SB 50.
SB 50 overreaches by banning single-family zoning virtually statewide, and fails in its attempt to protect rental housing from widespread destruction.
SB 50 could provoke a political backlash that none of us want. Thank you for considering this perspective and opposing SB 50.
