The Los Angeles City Council voted on Aug. 18 to officially oppose Senate Bills 9 and 10, two state bills that have been falsely marketed as affordable housing solutions, council members said.

Los Angeles City Councilman Paul Koretz, 5th District, who authored the resolutions opposing the bills, believes the legislation are tools to incentivize luxury housing, and worsen the affordable housing crisis in Los Angeles.

“These are bills are an outrage. They have been cleverly marketed as helping build affordable housing and protect the environment but they do the opposite,” Koretz said. “In fact, these bills do nothing to help solve homelessness, nothing to build workforce housing or address any of the real shortages of affordable housing, and would make developers and investors richer in the process. If they pass the California Assembly and are signed by the governor, they will drive up the cost of real estate by de facto up-zoning most properties and decimating environmental review.”

“We’re very happy that the Los Angeles City Council stepped up in a big way to join scores of cities fighting SB 9 and SB 10. We applaud L.A. City Councilmember Paul Koretz and his colleagues for saying no to the trickle-down theory driving SB 9 and SB 10,” said Rick Hall, board president of Livable California. “It says a lot that the small town of San Fernando, a working-class gem surrounded entirely by the city of L.A., recently voted unanimously to oppose SB 9 and SB 10. As different as they are, these two cities reject the narrow vision of a few legislators who don’t seek to create affordable housing, just unplanned and divisive density.”

The City Council’s actions place the Los Angeles formally in opposition to the legislation and mandates the city’s representatives in Sacramento to lobby lawmakers to vote no on the legislation.

“Local officials all over California stand ready to work with Sacramento to fashion common sense mechanisms for increasing the inventory of truly affordable housing,” Koretz said. “SB 9 and 10, like their defeated predecessors, are not those mechanisms.”