As the state attempts to regulate its way out of a bone-crushing housing shortage, one group has emerged as the voice of residents and city officials who don’t want Sacramento taking away their power to control development in their neighborhoods — Livable California.
Not yet two-years-old, the small San Francisco-based nonprofit has already twice helped block Sacramento’s efforts to force cities to approve larger residential buildings. Now, as round three of the epic state vs. local control battle unfolds, Livable California is expanding its reach and unveiling new strategies it hopes will help kill Senate Bill 50 once and for all this legislative session.
The group is trying to shed the suburban, “NIMBY” image it has in some circles by diversifying its board, emphasizing concerns about the zoning reform bill’s impact on affordable housing, and aligning with anti-gentrification groups — even protesting alongside Oakland activists Moms 4 Housing earlier this month.
It is also ramping up its presence in Southern California, and working to become a truly statewide organization with local chapters.
“It seems like this group has really taken the housing world by storm,” said David Garcia, policy director for UC Berkeley’s Terner Center for Housing Innovation, which has no position on SB 50. “A year ago they didn’t exist, or were very small, and it feels like now they’re much more prevalent in the housing discussion.”
On the other side, supporters of zoning reform call Livable California a “not in my backyard” or “NIMBY” group dedicated to stopping housing production at all costs. But the nonprofit’s leaders say Livable California is striking a chord with an increasing number of people unhappy with Sacramento’s efforts to take planning decisions out of local officials’ hands.
“That’s us they’re taking out — it’s the voice of the people that gets results,” said Rick Hall, who took over as Livable California’s president last year. He replaces founder Susan Kirsch, one of Livable’s most well-known names, who resigned in June, largely because of a difference of opinion over the organization’s increasingly statewide focus.
Hall, a retired oil and gas industry executive in his 70s, got his start in community organizing several years ago by fighting a development on Bryant Street in San Francisco’s Mission district — an effort that ultimately led the builder to set aside more land for affordable housing. “All these things that Sacramento is trying to take away from us are the very things that allow us to do good community work,” he said.
While small, local groups from the Mission to Cupertino for years have been fighting — and often blocking — developments they view as bad for their neighborhoods, this is the first time in recent memory that those groups have banded together on a statewide level.
“It is a powerful voice, given that much of the reason why we have not built sufficient housing or planned in the ways that we wish we had is because of forces like these,” said Kristy Wang, community planning policy director for SPUR, which supports SB 50.
SB 50, which would allow fourplexes in most neighborhoods currently zoned for single-family homes and mid-rise apartments near transit stations, has until Jan. 31 to pass the Senate. It stalled in the Senate Appropriations Committee last year, and a prior iteration — SB 827 — died in 2018.
The seed of what would become Livable California was planted on Feb. 3, 2018, in the community room of the San Francisco Police Department’s Taraval Station, where Sen. Scott Wiener, D-San Francisco, was hosting a discussion about SB 827. After the event, Kirsch, a retired educator from Mill Valley, suggested everyone in attendance who opposed the bill meet for lunch at the Tennessee Grill.
From that first meeting of about 20 Bay Area residents, Livable California slowly expanded. A recent meeting, held by video conference, drew 100 people from around the state. The group raised about $44,000 last year, according to treasurer Carey White, and Secretary of State records show it spent $8,000 on lobbying. Livable California’s emails go to almost 9,000 people and several of its members — including Councilwoman Liang Chao in Cupertino — have been elected to local office.
“There is some kind of an organic attraction to what we’re doing,” said Hall, who lives in a duplex he owns in San Francisco’s Potrero Hill neighborhood.
Going forward, Hall hopes SB 50 dies an early death so he can shift Livable California’s focus to alternative housing solutions. He said the group might come out in support of SB 795, which would fund affordable housing.
SB 50 proponents aren’t sure how much they should fear Livable California. The group is just one of a number of opponents, including the well-funded AIDS Healthcare Foundation and the League of California cities, fighting the bill.
“We’re in uncharted territory,” said Laura Foote, executive director of YIMBY Action — a pro-development group that styles itself as the “Yes in my backyard” answer to NIMBYism. “We’ve never had the housing crisis be this horrific. We’ve never had actual hope of proposing solutions that are at scale with the size of the problem. And then we’ve never had people organizing across California to oppose those solutions in a cohesive way before.”
Earlier this month, Livable California members protesting at an SB 50 rally in Oakland found themselves side-by-side with protesters from Moms 4 Housing — a group of women who took over an empty, investor-owned house in November and were evicted and arrested earlier this month. Less than a week later, the property owner agreed to negotiate to sell the house to a local community land trust — a deal that would allow the women to move back in.
Livable California is seeking out those pro-affordable housing allies, particularly in Los Angeles, where it has been working with community activists including Damien Goodmon of South LA and tenants’ rights organizer Larry Gross, Hall said.
And the group has added 24-year-old Isaiah Madison of South Los Angeles to a board that was previously made up of two men in their 70s and one in his 50s. Madison, the first person of color to join the board, worries SB 50 will exacerbate the gentrification his middle-class, black neighborhood already is experiencing.
“I just don’t think the housing that will be built, and SB 50 will incentivize, will be affordable to the people in our community who need housing,” he said.
Opponents see Livable California’s courting of anti-gentrification activists as disingenuous, accusing the group of re-packaging its NIMBY platform as false concern for low-income renters.
“The question is: What do you mean by ‘livable?'” asked Wiener, the author of SB 50. “And they mean we get to keep our neighborhoods as is and be comfortable in our homes and have a nice life for ourselves. But it’s not livable for people who can’t afford housing.”
Last spring, a few Livable members and their allies began dreaming about more than just stopping SB 50: They wanted to craft a constitutional amendment or ballot initiative that would protect cities’ local control. As a result, A Better Way Forward to House California was formed, based in Southern California. Livable California gave the fledgling group $7,500 and Livable board members contributed another $6,315. A Better Way received a total of $169,168 through Dec. 12 of last year, according to secretary of state records.
In Kirsch’s view, key Livable California members were diverting too much energy to A Better Way Forward. She resigned from the organization she founded, but Kirsch, who still is campaigning against SB 50 on her own, said she was OK with handing over the reins.
“You give birth to something, you nurture and grow it the best you can,” she said, “and then as with children, you have to let it go.”
