Breaking News from Pod Save America - The Abundance Debate Hits California

Episode Date: August 27, 2025

California needs more housing, but a new bill—SB79—has sparked a fierce fight. Supporters say it's key to cutting rents and boosting transit. Opponents warn it undermines local control and risks displacement. Senator Scott Weiner and LA City Councilmember Imelda Padilla join Lovett to debate what's really at stake. CHAPTERS 00:00 - A Broken Housing System1:24 - Explaining SB796:21 - California’s Housing Shortage8:27 - How Leaders Are Failing on Affordable Housing14:09 - Opposition to SB7916:29 - Why This Is an Emergency19:50 - Housing’s Impact on the Economy & Environment22:51 - What’s Stopping Us From Building Enough?24:54 - NIMBY vs. YIMBY Tensions27:22 - The Abundance Debate Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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Celebrate Mom with Whole Foods Market. Hey, everybody. California, we have the fourth largest economy in the world. We also have a massive affordability crisis. Most Democrats agree that the state needs to build a lot more housing. But when you start talking about where and how gets tricky, a new state bill called SB 79 is being hotly debated. It would override local zoning rules to allow for more housing to be built near transit stops and bus stops. Supporters say it's key to building more, bringing down rent and boosting public transit and cutting emissions. They call themselves Yimbies, or yes, in my backyard critics, including L.A. Mayor Karen Bass, warn it could undermine local control, push people out of their homes and strain roads and infrastructure. Here to hash it out, we have the lead author of the bill, Senator Scott Weiner, and we have L.A. City Council member, Imelda Padilla, who recently voted with the majority of L.A. City Council to oppose the bill, a resolution that the mayor signed. First of all, thank you both for being here. I really appreciate it.

We think it's important to have a space, to have debates, congenial, even where we have disagreements in this big progressive tense. I really appreciate it. I clear this with both of you, but I just want to note that I'm going to call you Amelda and Scott rather than your formal titles just because it gets exhausting. Senator Reeder, Scott, what is SB 79 designed to do and why is it needed? Sure. First of all, thank you for having me and hello, council member. So as, you know, big picture in California, we have a massive housing shortage for the last 50 plus years. We've, our state has made it progressively harder until about a decade ago to build any kind of housing. And so we have a massive housing shortage in terms of number of homes per capita, the ratio of homes to people.

the second lowest state in the country in terms of the homes that we need. So we need to build more. And we talk a lot about where we don't want to build in terms of in the highest severity, wildfire areas. Some people don't want to build in the coastal areas. It's a lot of talk about don't build here, don't build there. But the question is where do we want to build? And if you think about that, putting more housing right around our highest quality public transit, stops, trains, subways, rapid bus service makes enormous sense in improving affordability and availability of housing, strengthening our transit systems, lowering traffic congestion and lowering carbon emissions.

So SB 79 authorizes more housing, multi-unit housing in the half-mile area around our highest quality public transit stops, not any old bus stop. It has to be very high-quality transit. Councilmaner Padilla, that sounds good to me. That sounds like that sounds great. We need that. California has a housing crisis. Why did you and so many members of the city council come out against it?

Well, you know, I got to say there's about three different things related to why I was on the side to oppose this bill. One is in Sacramento direct local jurisdictions to take on things that are unfunded mandates. It's never a good thing. But the two that are more personal to me and more seen as I do my work as a council member is that I think SB 79 operates from two assumptions that are actually pretty false. It is false to assume that there is local leaders that are not interested in building the housing and that we're not trying to work on it. And I think the city of Los Angeles is a city that specifically has been showing that with a lot of the work that we've done. been doing with our CHIP program, the citywide housing incentive program ordinance. So to assume that we're not trying and then making an unfunded mandate is, in my opinion,

very irresponsible. And the second thing, the most important thing to me, because I do represent an area where there's a lot of potential and we are building and we are engaging is that there's this assumption that developers, when given a leeway, are going to come into a community and build something that addresses all of our social ills. When you give developers freedom, they build to make the best bank for their luck. And for myself, as someone who has gone above and beyond with engaging with developers, even when I don't even have that much jurisdiction, for example, the executive directive one that our mayor put together.

It stripped away everything from the council members from being able to engage, so to speak, so that it can be done in a much faster way. But, you know, I still went and talked to the developer and made sure that they didn't just build this gigantic thing near transit without remembering that at the end of the day, when you build high density, quality of life issues should leave that conversation.

What do I mean by that? I like to talk to folks about the importance of our multi-unit dwellings being built to incorporate laundry and washer in every unit. I remind them that these are children who are not going to have a front yard or a backyard. So what are you doing to incorporate some green space? You're going to have seniors that don't want to just stay indoors. So what are you doing to create a space for them to also be social and be able to sit and enjoy? some shade in the hot LA sun and, you know, be able to people watch. Developers don't come in with that mentality.

Developers come in with the mentality of how much money is available. How do I build as much as I can? Because in the long term, they're going to make the money. But we also have to remember that they're going to have neighbors, and neighbors should be able to engage. But again, I go back to my first assumption. It's irresponsible to assume that we're not trying. And SB 79 pushes that assumption.

So, Scott, what's your response to those objections? Sure. So first of all, I, before I was in the state Senate, I was a local elected official. I was a member of the San Francisco Board of Supervisors, which in San Francisco is essentially our city council. And before that, I was a neighborhood association president. So I am a big believer that in local participation and engagement, and local decision-making, which far more often than not,

it's better to make decisions at the local level. But there are times when the state has to step in, when you have an issue of statewide concern, we don't let school districts, you know, make whatever decision they want about the number of days a year that they educate kids or whether they teach math or whether they teach history. We have standards.

And until about 10 years ago, California had a system of almost total local control on housing. And it drove the car into the ditch and we generated this massive housing shortage because, and I know this as a local, former local elected official, the pressure that you can get from small groups of people not to allow something to be built, built is tremendous.

And cities have a race to the bottom sometimes. My neighbors aren't building housing. I don't want to. So the state stepped in, not just this bill, but a series of laws to create statewide standards so that cities were doing their fair share and actually building housing. And it's had a real effect. We're seeing city zone for more homes and issuing permits more quickly. And I want to be clear, L.A. has done some good work around housing. So has San Francisco.

But this is not about criticizing. It's about acknowledging that we need more housing. And putting more housing near that best public transportation is one of the smartest things we can do for housing, transit, and climate action. That's what this is about. So, Amelda, I hear you saying that it's wrong for the state to assume that local leaders don't want to build more housing. And I believe, I take that at face value. I believe that members of the council understand the importance of building more housing. And yet, L.A. has a housing element.

that was because of state, a state mandate, right? L.A. is supposed to build 456,000 units of housing, I believe, between 2021 and 2029. We're currently only on track to hit maybe a third of that, right? I think we've issued far fewer permits than necessary to hit that goal. Your colleague Nithia Rahman, who's my council member, made this point in this debate, which is that the city hasn't really done enough to be trusted, to do this on its own, that it actually needs a push from the state, given the scale of the crisis. And I'm wondering what your response is to that and why you think L.A. hasn't kept up

with the housing element. Well, I think Nithia, a councilwoman, Nithia Rahman, should speak for herself and she should speak for her own district. But for my district, we are working to increase the density. I have a district that has a lot of potential, right? We're building the East Valley Van Nu's Light Rail Corridor. We're improving the G-line, and we're also talking about the future of the support of the past. And simultaneously, we do know that Metro has also committed to playing a role and increasing housing along their stops. But that is exactly the point is that Los Angeles. I'm not here to defend the past, right?

Here in Los Angeles, we are being much more intentional this generation to address the housing crisis. Because as the senator mentioned, maybe in the past there was definitely a group of elected leaders who felt that pressure from a very strong, organized, small groups. But I think we're in a new era here in Los Angeles where we don't need the pressure from Sacramento. We're being very intentional about working with our communities for the next round of our community plans to make sure that we do. talk about density and where it goes. And it is in the theme of around transit oriented development. But again, you know, I know the senator mentioned that he's familiar with my job description because he used to have my job. But I don't know if he agrees with the second part of my argument with why I don't like SB 79 is that we can't assume developers are ready to just

show up and give us the best development that the community needs. So to strip my role of being able to say this community is more families than, you know, a bunch of individuals that just need studios. We need things related to families. We need things related to the workforce that lives in the region and really think that way is something that you completely lose because developers are not forced to have a conversation with. the people who they're building units for. And I think that's a problem. So, Senator, what is the response to that?

And what have you been doing to address some of those questions about local influence as the bill has been moving through the legislature? Absolutely. First of all, I will say, and those are important points that the council member raised, and I do want to address them. And I want to say as it's moved through the process, we've made very significant revisions to the bill in response to feedback. We significantly strengthened the anti-displacement demolition controls in the bill.

We increased the affordability requirement in the bill. And we also made much more robust what we call the local flexibility alternative, where cities can craft their own alternative plan that accomplishes the goal of the bill but does it in their own way. For example, we want the density on one side of the station but not the other side, for example. And so we've worked really hard based on tangible feedback from cities up and down the state and we've taken that feedback seriously. I do want to stress that the bill does not override like all local requirements. If a city has a requirement that you have to, for example, I don't know if any cities have this requirement,

but if a city has a requirement that you have to have in-unit laundry for units above a certain square footage or whatever the case may be, this would not override that. The bill, we're very clear that if a city has an affordability requirement higher than the baseline in the bill, then that applies. If a city requires certain impact fees to create green space in a neighborhood or to build out the sidewalks, for example, the bill does not override those fees. So cities will still have significant latitude to adopt requirements to meet whatever it needs they think are appropriate. What this bill does is it says you can't do what we've done for so long, which is to make massive, massive taxpayer investments that I support to build new transit and then surround it by with only single family homes. So almost no one can actually walk to the transit station and ridership is low. We've done it here in the Bay Area in San Francisco and the East Bay Peninsula.

It's happened in L.A. And it's not sustainable. So, Amelda, what is your response that, like, it seems like they are trying to address some of these concerns. Are there other changes you would like to see made that would then garter your support for the bill? Do you ultimately view the bill as being a good goal that you could get behind if there were enough local constraints? No, I don't think so because, like I said, generally, I'm not a fan of Sacramento making unfunded mandates. To tell local jurisdictions what to do without providing the funding to then build

and help only puts us in a place where we have to think outside the box to potentially fund stuff. You know, I think back to the day when I saw all of my colleagues argue over this. And, you know, those who did not support the work that we did with our own planning department, chip were the most vocal. And then it became a total call out of, well, you're not building. That's why I support it. And it's like, well, you didn't do the work related to figuring out how we can do something local that addresses our housing crisis. So this is all very political. But philosophically, there's moments where I have to, I'm in a position where I'm told, hey, this council member is not supporting this land use decision. Will you back the nimbies instead

of the YIMBs, right? Myself, it's not a matter of the Yimbies or the NIMBs. I generally believe that a council member's number one job description in the city of Los Angeles is land use decisions. People get elected for the conversations that they have with folks about what they're going to do to keep their neighborhoods looking and growing the way that they want it to be. So for example, for the state to say,

here's your opportunity to build something that is potentially seven stories high. When nothing around it is seven stories, because the state allows it, it's almost an insult to everyone who voted for the individual who they believe is going to help grow and clean and maintain their communities as they would like them to do. But see, that to me gets at the core of the issue.

And first of all, I just want to say, I appreciate you coming on here because I am out there in favor of SB 79. You're on with the proponent of the bill. So I appreciate you coming and being willing to have this debate. And I really want to be fair to your point of view. But what I hear there is what you're saying is, well, there weren't seven-story buildings here in the past. So there can't be seven-story buildings here in the future. But that freezes California in a moment when there were far fewer people in this state. And my concern in what I'm hearing from you is there are legitimate issues that you're raising about what locals feel about the character of their neighborhood.

I'm not saying that those aren't legitimate concerns, but it seems to lose the forest for the trees, which is we have an emergency. There's only, what, a quarter, 20 percent of the number of affordable units as the number of people who need them. We are losing people to Texas, right? They are making a claim that we are failing in California to build enough. Like, this is an emergency. The problem isn't that there are going to be buildings too high near transit stops. The problem is there is nowhere for people who want to come to California to live. It is pushing our entertainment business out.

It is pushing young people out. This is an emergency. We should all be freaking out about how urgent it is to do anything humanly possible to build housing. And you're worried about whether or not there's a place for a few senior citizens to sit outside a building that developers are trying to build. And I'm saying, great, that's important. but are you focused on what will ultimately make California affordable for the people in your district? Well, I am, and this is why I said speak for yourself, and that's why I also said we can assume that the superhero here is the developer. So for example, under the emergency ordinance, I'm bringing a set of tiny homes into an underutilized MetroLink parking station.

I didn't have to do any outreach, but I started a neighborhood watch, and I also had a whole town hall where they, to addressing that component. And there's also an EDI1 that's being built on Victory in Balboa. And going back to what you said, the neighbors didn't want it at all. They just didn't want the density. They wanted me to kill it. But by law, I really have no jurisdiction anymore because it's an ED1, right? But we still as a team got together with the developer, the high school across the street,

other stakeholders. And instead of building something that was potentially 60, stories, we got it down to three stories. And we also got the developer to also work with us to make sure that it helps the families of the area. We also said, you know, instead of a ton of office space, we do want you to also incorporate a few more parking lots and EV chargers. So yeah, I mean, there's some developers that have built housing where it looks like a big, ugly cement box in the middle of the neighborhood. But what I want is something that people will be proud of, something that people will be excited to say,

this is why I'm coming to Los Angeles, because you really think that all these young people that are seeking the Hollywood jobs, that want to come to Los Angeles, want to live in a cement-looking building, and find it to be dignified? I don't think so. But SB 79 creates a situation

where the developer can actually do that. Build something that no one is excited about. Hey, you, feeling hungry? Run to Denny's four. The new attorney on a lot of Denny's slamming meal deals. and see the new Masters of the Universe movie only in theaters June 5th. Scott, is there a part of this where people just need to accept that if we're going to build the amount of housing we need in the speed that we need it, some of these concerns can't be addressed, that we just got to move fast and not everybody's going to like it.

I mean, no one's ever going to be totally happy. But, you know, I do want to say like the bill, in addition to the other things I mentioned preserves city's ability to have design. standards. So if they don't want a cement building, I haven't seen any cement buildings, but if they don't want a cement building, they can have design standards that take that into account. I live in a neighborhood too. I've lived in my neighborhood for 28 years. I'm passionate about it. And so I'm, you know, when the council members, constituents who are passionate about their neighborhood, I get that. I'm passionate about my neighborhood as well. What I have also learned over time, and I've seen this in San Francisco when it comes to the housing disaster that we have in the state, San Francisco was the tip of the spear. We went over the cliff probably before any other community. And I've seen the carnage that has happened in terms of how many people have been pushed out of our city, where I have had older gay men who are long-term HIV survivors say that if I lose my apartment, I have a choice of either moving back to Tennessee and having bad

HIV care or having good HIV care in San Francisco and being homeless because there's no possibility for them to be able to access housing. I have had seniors come to me and say, I used to not like your housing policies, but my kids just moved to Indiana with my grandkids. I'm not going to see them very much because they had no hope of getting housing here and I now support your housing policies. So the look and feel of neighborhood really important, but it's also important about who's living in that neighborhood. And when people are getting pushed out and young people see no future and when you send your kid to school and they have three teachers in a year because the teachers can't afford to live there and they're moving, that is a problem. And I think

in addition to the look in the field of the neighborhood, which is important, we have to be talking about people. And our housing shortage is strangling the state. It is strangling our economy. businesses can't find workers at times because the workers can't afford to live nearby and they're not going to commute for three hours. We are falling short of our climate goals because we're forcing people to drive so much because we don't build housing near the jobs or the transit. And it is absolutely spiking poverty. When someone's paying 70% of their paycheck for housing, they are going to be living in poverty. And when we have overcrowded housing because people have to live together to afford housing, that creates its own problems.

So in so many ways, building more housing and doing things differently is really critically important. Understanding that that can be really hard for people, for all of us. Amelda, given that you've said now that there aren't changes that could get you to support the bill, and you believe Sacramento shouldn't be dictating how Los Angeles builds, and that you acknowledge that this is a crisis that needs to be addressed, what, to your mind, is the reason Los Angeles is so far behind in building enough housing for the number of people we have, that we have one of the worst homeless problem of unhoused populations of any city on Earth? Why if it's, what is stopping us from building enough? And why do you think you can solve it without the push from Sacramento?

Great question. So look, I'm not here to the, defend the past, but I do blame a lot of it on past leaders and past voters as well, right? The folks who elected individuals to make decisions in the past, this is what their preference was, right? Local control is very real in Los Angeles. It's why we have a very strong neighborhood council system. We developed the neighborhood council system to avoid secession from Hollywood and the San Fernando Valley, right? And they did that because they felt like City Hall was not paying attention,

specifically on issues related to land use. So we are in a time where we are addressing the ills of the past that were very nimbly. But I do trust that right now we have a mayor and a council that is a little bit more brave. But I also, in terms of addressing building housing, various types of. of housing, but here's the thing. This is why I was shocked with the, uh, who voted for what? Uh-huh. Because some of the ones that voted to support this bill, in my opinion, in my opinion,

did it for the theatrics of looking like progressives, but really in the nitty gritty, not doing the work. I'm here. I'm hearing the tension. I'm hearing the tension from the council and I'm loving it. But, but, but I, I'm sorry. But when I, I, I mean, when I'm hosting. townhaws, focus groups, starting neighborhood watches so that my district can actually engage,

even though we don't have to, because we have a lot of CEQA exemptions, given that we're under an emergency order. But I see my council members doing absolutely nothing. All right. Without respect, but you're going to look like the cool guy or the cool girl because you're supporting SB 79 at the state level. I'm sorry. Get to work and stop siding with state.

policies that technically would reduce my job description. My job description is to engage with my community about what sort of things they want to see in their neighborhood. First of all, I'm loving hearing that the cool kids are YIMB now. That's interesting. But it's not really an answer to my question. I hear you that that we are dealing with a failure that is decades old. We should have been building all the way through. We're paying a very heavy price and it's going to take time to address it. And I think we really need to pay attention to the community plan process. But that doesn't explain why we're so far behind in 2024, right? Like, you're in the council now.

Mayor Bass is the mayor. You're claiming this new leadership is going to solve it. We're still only doing a third of the number of permits we need last year to meet the housing goal. So is that not something you're responsible for? Are other people at fault for why we're so far behind in permits? Are you on track in your district for permits? That's a great question. And I don't think that we're going to be able to.

unpackaged that answer in this short interview because then there is other themes, right? There's then we approve something, but then they have to go get the financing, right? And then we approve something, and then there's a lot of other bureaucracy related to, oh, there's a sanitation issue before you can build, right? Or there's a this issue and that issue. So there's definitely things that we still need to do in order to make sure that once we approve, you know, we actually start the construction. but again, this is also very new and part of this generation.

So I think we're getting there. And it is definitely within my vision that if the voters allow me to be here for the total of 12 years, that is going to be a very different neighborhood compared to when I first got here because I'm very intentional, like I said, about making sure that we address it. Last word over to you, Senator Weiner, about this. what is your response to the point that local leaders are moving forward? It's just taking time. And just to close it out, for people that aren't from California, for people who see this

in the context of this broader abundance debate, what do you hope people take away from this debate and this bill? First of all, I think that having a state-local partnership is really important. And I have never been of the view. Like, I don't, when I have these conversations, as I've been in my ninth year in the Senate, and so we've been talking about this from the state perspective for quite some time, I go out of my way not to demonize local elected officials. As a former local elected official, I know how hard it is and how hard local elected officials work.

And I know the council member works extremely hard to do right by her community, and I admire that. And there has to be a partnership, and it's a balance, right? I don't want complete state control, but I do think this, I do think the state needs to set standards. And I'm also a council member, a strong supporter of good investment and infrastructure, and I want to help cities invest in that. But I do want to just say that this is really about, we have had such a broken system for a long time. And I know at the local and state level, a lot of people are working to fix it. It was a system where we methodically decided not to zone for enough housing and to downzone and ban apartment buildings and say you're only allowed to build single family homes. And then we set up a permitting system where instead of doing things in a good government way, which is to set the rules ahead of time.

And then if you check the boxes and meet the rules, you get your permit immediately. We decided that meeting all the rules just qualified you to go into the political mosh pit for every single permit. And so we've seen a housing that's compliant with all the local rules get caught up in a five or 10 year process or get mutilated or killed. And that's government at its worst and it's helped get us into this crisis. And the ramifications are the ones I talked about earlier, three teachers in a year for your kid, people getting pushed out and so on and so forth. It's also in terms of when we look at the broad politics of this country right now, that it is. next census, and there was an amazing piece by Jerusalem Demsus called the Democrats are committing party side,

that because blue states have done such a poor job building housing, whereas red states have been building a lot of housing. And so we're seeing a population shift from California, New York, and Illinois to places like Texas and Florida, North Carolina. In the next census, we are projected to lose the big blue states, about 10 seats in the House of Representatives to the red states. And that means 10 votes in the Electoral College.

And that means had Kamala Harris won the Blue Wall States, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Michigan, that would not have been enough to win the presidency. So we're strangling our economy. We are also moving ourselves into a situation of just being in the structural minority as blue states, with all of the horrors that we're seeing in this administration becoming long term. So we have a lot of work to do. And I look forward to that partnership to get it done. Council member, Imelda Padilla, thank you so much for taking time.

I do really genuinely appreciate you coming on because it was a little bit of two against one because I really believe this is ultimately the right thing. But I do genuinely want to understand what the perspective is of someone who opposes it, in part because I think we need to address those to get enough people on board. to get behind it if it's not going to be stopped. And Senator Scott Weiner, thank you so much for your time as well. And for everybody listening, do us a favor. Please follow this channel, subscribe to this channel. Also, reply below with your take on this debate. We really would like to understand people's perspective on this. And I welcome the insults about my questions. That's a big part of it.

I could lose the debate. Maybe I lost, right? That's a big part of it, too. But Thank you to both of you. It's one of the biggest problems we face in California. And in this debate is how we're going to figure out where we go from here. Really appreciate it. Thank you.