Should Altadena get a pass from California’s new housing laws?

from Ben ChristopherCalMatters

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Altadena could get a reprieve from two of California’s housing laws after a bill to grant a temporary relief to the fire-torn community made its way through Assembly hearings Wednesday.

The two laws have been postponed – Senate Bill 9 from 2021 and Senate Bill 1123 from 2024 — legalizing the construction of up to 10 small houses on plots otherwise reserved for single-family houses and making it easier to divide land into smaller plots that can be sold individually.

Senate Bill 1090 by Sen. Sasha Rene PerezA Democrat whose district includes Altadena would exempt the unincorporated city’s single ZIP code from both laws by 2030.

This is intended to give survivors of the Eaton Fire “the time they need to rebuild their community without the overwhelming influence of predatory developers looking to profit from the devastation and suffering,” Perez said at a news conference Wednesday morning.

Altadena “shouldn’t be a playground for people who want a return on investment,” the city assemblyman added John Harabedianfellow Democrat. The bill is “for the protection of Altadena and the preservation of Altadena Altadena.”

With the recovery efforts in Altadena progressing slowlymired in slow insurance payouts, pending litigation and escalating construction costs, only a few dozen permits have been filed that use these state laws, either by professional builders or individual homeowners.

Some housing advocates and even some Altadena residents worry that the new bill, which supporters describe as limiting out-of-town investors, could inadvertently make it harder for some fire survivors to rebuild and stay.

The stated purpose of the legislation is “to stop greedy developers from taking advantage of Altadenans, which of course we all agree with,” said Carolyn Powles, a town resident and founder of a small home-building company. speaking before the housing committee of the National Assembly. “I believe what it’s actually doing is preventing the Altadenans from settling themselves – and also the Altadenans from helping each other settle.”

Preventing speculators from profiting from the redevelopment of Los Angeles without also hurting homeowners is a difficult balance to strike. Lawmakers are also considering a bill that would give the California Coastal Commission more authority over redevelopment projects pursued by anyone who bought property after a future disaster. This is intended to check investor-led reconstruction. Might as well do it more difficult for survivors to sell their properties if they choose or are forced by necessity not to restore.

SB 1090 received unanimous support from both the Assembly housing and local government committees, even if some Backyard Yes members expressed some discomfort.

The debate surrounding the legislation pits California’s long-standing efforts to spur housing development against the interests of many Altaden residents who want to restore the community to what it once was. It also raises questions about who and what gets priority when a community recovers from a natural disaster in California.

“I don’t think it’s NIMBYism, and I don’t think it’s unreasonable to say, ‘We’re still in an emergency.’ Let’s rebuild,” said Nick Arnzen, chairman of the Altadena City Council and a supporter of Perez’s bill.

Arguments like these are a constant part of housing debates in California. Local residents often object to new, denser development or the policies that encourage it, on the grounds that while more homes may be needed across the country, conditions specific to a particular city or neighborhood—whether elevated forest fire risk, historical significance, the physical scale or demographic makeup — claim that it should not be built here. But Arnzen and other supporters of SB 1090 say the bill’s temporary nature and Altadena’s highly unusual circumstances make this a legally special case.

The two housing laws in question were intended to gradually add density to urban areas as existing homes are periodically sold and rare vacant lots are developed, he said. They were “never intended to apply to cities that were two-thirds destroyed.”

Before the fire, 95% of all homes in parts of Altadena affected by the fire were single-family homes, according to a UCLA analysis.

Imposing state laws on the burn area would “completely change the character of the neighborhood,” Arnzen said.

Many divided as a lifeline

Although Perez’s bill was written to help Altadenans rebuild on their terms, Andrew Post worries it could prevent his parents from rebuilding at all.

Post’s parents, retired physicists Jonathan and Christine, lost their house on North Marengo Avenue. They were determined to rebuild from scratch, despite their son’s initial objections. But an still uncertain insurance payoutthe couple’s modest fixed income and uncertain construction costs made for a limited reconstruction budget.

An unexpected construction delay or a denied insurance claim, and “they could be broke and have an unfinished house,” Post said. Even if construction goes according to plan, the couple will have nothing to live on.

In early June, the family filed paperwork with the county to see if they could subdivide the lot as allowed by law.

The typical Altadena homeowner hoping to rebuild is less than $550,000 after accounting for past and expected insurance payments, according to study from the non-profit organization Department of Angels. Subdividing a lot and selling a portion to a developer, as SB 9 allows, could help many homeowners fill that gap, said Azin Hanmalek, director of housing advocacy group Abundant Housing LA.

These density-increasing state laws should be seen as “potential tools and avenues to help some homeowners come back and rebuild, not threats,” he said.

Post, who grew up in Altadena, said he sympathizes with concerns about density, historic preservation, parking and traffic — to a point.

Altadena prides itself as a historic haven of relative affordability, diversity and tolerance in Los Angeles County. The best way to preserve this legacy is to activate more multiplexes and small starter homes, Post said.

“I think the character of the neighborhood is better preserved by keeping it accessible than by keeping the white picket fence architecture,” he said.

“I’m very focused on whether my parents will ever live in Altadena again,” he added. “It’s hard for me to prioritize my preference for the neighborhood character over the ability to be a part of that character.”

SB 9 in Altadena

Of the 5,645 parcels with damaged or destroyed homes in Altadena, 52 have active permits that invoke SB 9, according to a dashboard commissioned by the City Council. Of these, 14 are under construction and two have been completed.

That relatively low number may in part reflect the typical lot geometry in Altadena, said Devang Shah, principal of Genesis Builders, which builds single-family homes for fire survivors.

“They’re narrow and deep,” he said, making it difficult to package into additional units or dice them up for sale.

However, the handful of submitted plans — and renderings depicting a type of multifamily housing largely foreign to Altadena before the fire — provided abundant fodder for some local residents, eager to protest against denser development and the perceived threat posed by investors and developers profiting from the community’s tragedy.

John Chan, a Los Angeles architect who is pushing to redevelop Altadena to be more pedestrian-oriented and who supports using state laws to increase density, said a handful of poorly designed SB 9 projects — “sardine cans for rent extraction,” he said — have disillusioned many locals about the possible benefits of density.

“It creates a backlash to SB 9 that I think will really hurt Altadena,” he said.

“Altadena is not for sale”

At both Altadena and the Palisades, this backlash began to brew almost as soon as the flames were extinguished.

In the summer of 2025, long before he hinted at any aspirations for higher officeformer reality TV star Spencer Pratt started posting on social media attacking SB 9 and “opportunistic developers” hoping to take advantage of the law to rebuild the Palisades. In response to that pressure, Gov. Gavin Newsom and Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass issued dueling executive orders to rescind the law in areas that fall into state-designated “very high” wildfire danger zones in Los Angeles County.

Newsom’s order covers only a small part of Altadena. Even after the state expanded its fire severity mapsmuch of the Eaton Fire’s burning area does not fall into the “very high” category.. Consequently, the order did little to quell anxiety among residents, who saw denser redevelopment not as an opportunity for struggling homeowners but as a boon for out-of-town developers and speculators.

Perez hoped to address those concerns when he introduced an earlier version of SB 1090 this spring, which would have banned large housing investors from making unsolicited offers to buy lots in the burn zone. This hyperlocal focus also tapped into growing national interest in preventing investors from buying single-family homes, a notable bipartisan cause championed by both Newsom and President Donald Trump.

The bill passed the California Senate along partisan lines.

In mid-June, Perez rewrote the bill to focus on the state’s density laws. Her office said the bill’s new focus reflects the more pressing concerns of many Altaden residents.

“What I will not allow is my community to be treated any differently than the Palisades or Malibu,” Perez said Wednesday.

Arnzen, for example, said he’s less concerned about existing homeowners selling to land speculators.

“I don’t blame people for selling to the highest bidder,” he said. “If I were to sell my property, would I have the funds to make sure it goes into the right hands? I don’t know.”

Instead, he wants to see temporary restrictions on what those new buyers can do with the property once they acquire it.

Arnzen said he moved to Altadena two decades ago because he wanted his young children to grow up “in a small town, not a cookie cutter subdivision, not a city.”

After losing their home to the fire, he and his husband are now in the process of moving into an additional unit on their property to live in while they rebuild. When construction is complete, the two plan to move into the new house and rent out the smaller one “to stave off the state’s housing crisis,” he said. “Because I think we all have to do our part.”

Jeremiah Kimmelman contributed the data visualization for this story.

This article was originally published on CalMatters and is republished under Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-No Derivatives license.