Emergency Action Alert: Tell Sacramento to VOTE NO on California YIMBY's bad faith preservation killer AB 2580
Gentle reader,
If you’re a member of a historic preservation non-profit or follow any of them on social media, you’ve likely received messages over the weekend urging you to contact your state legislators to oppose AB 2580, sponsored by California YIMBY and advanced by Assemblymember Buffy Wicks (AD 14 - Oakland).
The California Senate will hear the bill on Tuesday, June 18 in Sacramento, and there’s still time for you to send in a message telling them to vote NO.
And it’s easy to do that, by clicking this link from the CA Preservation Foundation, offering a pre-written email that you can customize with your own words, or just click, sign and send.
Because we’re really angry about this bad faith legislation, which directly echoes the dirty tricks in which California YIMBY’s local associates Abundant Housing LA engaged around the landmark efforts for the giant Chili Bowl in West LA (RIP), we’ve customized our email to call these liars out, and you can read it below.
California is in crisis, and we all need to rise to this moment and help bring the State around. Citizens can’t afford to be deceived by big real estate and tech interests masquerading as progressives, or by the bad policy makers who carry their water.
So click and send and share the link, and read on for our message in support of sane public policies about historic preservation and housing and the dedicated citizen activists who fight for both, and in opposition to the lies of California YIMBY and Abundant Housing LA.
Their deceptive claims about preservationists and preservation hurt real people—volunteer activists who care deeply about history, architecture and community, and the vulnerable tenants who are losing their housing when policies allow old buildings to be purchased by speculators to be demolished. It needs to stop. Help stop it today.
Dear Senators and Gov. Newsom,
We write to you to ask you to oppose AB 2580 (Wicks) Historic Designation Annual Reporting.
California is suffering from a housing USE crisis, with US Census and other public records and independent reporting documenting sufficient units held vacant or as illegal homeshare properties to house all of our unhoused community members and to reset the artificially inflated rents.
We do not need bad faith legislation that attacks historic preservation with the false claim that it is "abused" by "NIMBYs" to halt new housing development--development that would not be so "urgently" needed if existing housing were returned to the market. What real estate industry lobbyists and the politicians they fund call "NIMBYs" are just engaged, informed citizens who care about their communities and their neighbors (housed and unhoused) and are aghast to see nonsensical policies pitched as solutions to systemic problems.
This bill is sponsored by California YIMBY, the statewide entity working in lockstep with Abundant Housing LA. In 2021, we caught AHLA engaging in deceptive practices, including lying in emails and social media posts to their supporters and to elected officials, using the same bad faith language as is found in AB 2580.
"Please reject Historic-Cultural Monument nominations abuse," Abundant Housing LA wrote in their messaging opposing a Historic-Cultural Monument vote for the giant Chili Bowl shaped restaurant in West Los Angeles, a potential National Register landmark. "TOC projects, like the one proposed at 12244-12248 West Pico Boulevard, are helping Los Angeles improve housing affordability, environmental quality, and mass transit usage. We urge you to support this project by preventing abuse of the Historic-Cultural Monument designation. Please reject this application for Historic-Cultural Monument status, and allow this housing project to move forward."
BUT NO HOUSING PROJECT HAD EVER BEEN PROPOSED FOR THIS ADDRESS!
As documented in the links below, and due in part to California YIMBY associates Abundant Housing LA's deception, The Chili Bowl was demolished and the site is now overflow parking for an auto shop.
https://esotouric.substack.com/chilibowldown
https://web.archive.org/web/20210203011137/https://secure.everyaction.com/TIXmFFG3hU2EIKO6ux10kg2
Like the false campaign against Chili Bowl landmarking, AB 2580 unfairly and dishonestly casts historic preservation as a barrier to housing. Bill proponents state that the ability to designate a building as "historically significant" or create a new historic district often encourages abuse by individuals and small local groups who seek to prevent more inclusive and affordable housing development,” yet have offered no evidence to support their position.
In truth, historic preservation protects the housing of long-term, low income tenants and maintains community ties across generations. The new National Register Districts in the Los Angeles area are comprised of multi-family historic properties that are under the rent stabilization ordinance. Community volunteers have come together to designate these neighborhoods of renters at the National level because the City of Los Angeles refuses to create new HPOZs.
In direct opposition to the myth of the "NIMBY" seeking to protect their own property values by opposing development near their expensive single family home, most historic preservation advocacy in Los Angeles is done for the benefit hundreds of tenants in historically diverse, multi-generational, mixed-income neighborhoods.
The bill mandates local governments to include all historic designations in their Housing Element Annual Progress Report and assess their impact on local housing needs. This wrongly frames historic preservation as a housing constraint.
Historic designations can enhance housing development with financial incentives like federal and state historic tax credits, the Mills Act, and the California Historic Building Code. Nearly 40% of projects applying for federal historic tax credits are for housing, a number likely to rise with the new California Historic Tax Credit. Yet less than 5% of all building stock in California has been designated as historic.
AB 2580 offers no evidence that historic designations are being abused to prevent housing. It overlooks the cost-effectiveness of historic rehabilitation in providing and retaining affordable housing. It offers no incentive to preserve housing, create housing, or protect historic resources, wasting local government resources without tangible benefit.
We need constructive solutions to solve the housing USE crisis, not more paperwork, not bad faith attacks on Californians who care about history, culture and the environment. We need more giant Chili Bowls and less dirty tricks campaigns. We urge you to vote no on AB 2580.
Yours for Los Angeles,
Kim & Richard
Esotouric
Our work—leading tours and historic preservation and cultural landmark advocacy—is about building a bridge between Los Angeles' past and its future, and not allowing the corrupt, greedy, inept and misguided players who hold present power to destroy the city's soul and body. If you’d like to support our efforts to be the voice of places worth preserving, we have a tip jar and a subscriber edition of this newsletter, vintage Los Angeles webinars available to stream, in-person tours and a souvenir shop you can browse in. We’ve also got recommended reading bookshelves on Amazon and the Bookshop indie bookstore site. You can share this post to win subscriber perks. And did you know we offer private versions of our walking and bus tours for groups big or small? Or just share this link with other people who care.
UPCOMING BUS & WALKING TOURS
• Film Noir / Real Noir (Sat. 6/29) • The Real Black Dahlia (Sat. 7/6) • Angelino Heights & Carroll Avenue (Sat. 7/13) • Miracle Mile Marvels and Madness (Sun. 7/21) • Know Your Downtown L.A.: Tunnels To Towers To The Dutch Chocolate Shop (Sat. 7/27 - sorry, sold out) • Evergreen Cemetery, 1877 (Sun. 8/4) • West Adams Sugar Hill and Angelus Rosedale Cemetery (Sat. 8/10) • Broadway: Downtown Los Angeles’ Beautiful, Magical Mess (Sun. 8/25) • Raymond Chandler’s Noir Downtown Los Angeles (Sat. 8/31)
California politics sucks.