Recently, L.A. Superior Court Judge Curtis A. Kin ruled that no residents of Beverly Hills can upgrade or re-design their homes, or add amenities like a swimming pool, until Beverly Hills agrees to zone for more multi-family housing. Despite what this may mean for the freedom of individual homeowners, we firmly agree with his decision. Nothing else seems to be persuading the defiant city council to budge.

We’ve been watching the Beverly Hills City Council going into our third year now, and their superiority complex is something to behold. Whereas MAGA havens like Huntington Beach have been fighting the state mandate for more apartment housing because they want to stick it to Governor Newsom, Beverly Hills’s NIMBY paralysis seems to be born out of their feeling that Beverly Hills is so special and privileged that they have no responsibility to the region around them. Well, sorry you poor things, but you do.

Our housing and homelessness crisis is statewide, and it requires each city to do its part to house a restless public. Santa Monica – whose valuation as a city is higher than Beverly Hills (granted, in part because it’s bigger) – has now had a couple of generations of city councils that have regularly exceeded the new housing numbers required by the Southern California Association of Governments (SCAG), and as mandated by the State Department of Housing and Community Development (HCD) in eight-year cycles.

Until recently, Culver City had also begun to elect city council majorities that were far friendlier to building more affordable multi-family housing and approved a number of promising developments.

Beverly Hills? Their city council’s big priority for 2023 was to approve a massive, lavish, non-union, luxury hotel development on the site that used to house the Paley Center for Media. Thankfully, activists collected enough signatures to put the question on the ballot, and voters rejected it.

Beverly Hills Councilmember John Mirisch – a seemingly overly erudite snob if there ever was one – even went so far as to trash a housing advocate in a 2022 Op-Ed for her aggressive commitment to housing more Angelenos. NIMBYs (Not In My Backyard) like Mirisch always try to say their cities are built out and there’s no room, and never fail to attack housing advocates for being in the pocket of “Big Development.”

Yes, developers will make money by creating more apartment buildings. A single-family homeowner or apartment building owner will make more money if they build an Accessible Dwelling Unit (ADU), a small apartment or “granny flat” on their property. But they’ll also be providing housing. Granted, the comparison certainly isn’t as noble, but do we rail against solar companies for making money? We increasingly and deservedly criticize Elon Musk for a lot of things, but nobody is hard on him for putting more electric vehicles on the road, even as cities encourage greater use of public transportation.

As for no room, that’s hogwash. Most local jurisdictions own a swath of land in the cities they govern. That land can be used as locations for more affordable alternatives to single-family homes. Cities can also look up. We certainly don’t advocate for creating high-rise cities and neighborhoods on the Westside. But a couple of additional stories could make a difference for families or individuals who need to live closer to their Westside workplace. Too many are driving further and further into L.A. from other places due to the high prices and competition for a limited number of housing units.

We certainly don’t believe we can simply build our way to affordability, especially on the Westside. More people will always want to live here than can, and there will always be demand for whatever level of supply we produce. But we’re certainly never going to move the needle unless every city and L.A. neighborhood on the Westside understands it has a responsibility to house more people. No one is special. No city is “excused.”

An apartment building built near your home does NOT lower one’s property value. No study shows this to be true. Opposing too much commercial development is one thing. But NIMBY-ism with regard to housing is a condition that can really only be born of racism and classism.

Again, Beverly Hills must pay the price for its entrenched arrogance on housing. We hope they’ll see the light, but instead, they’ll probably fight the judge’s decision as far as they can go. Needless to say, we won’t be on the sidelines cheering them on.

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