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THE VIEW FROM HERE - No! Why not! Because Los Angeles passed the point of no return years ago. One could allude to the movie Dumb and Dumber or the movie Idiocracy, but let’s look at facts. Many recite the meme, “insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results,” attributing it to Einstein. While the City of Los Angeles will not admit it, since 1948 when the Community Redevelopment Agency (CRA) began, the city’s land use planning has been an exercise in insanity.
The Basis to Judge the Legitimacy of LA Land Use Policies
In 1915, Los Angeles published the 1915 Study of Street Traffic Conditions which explained three immutable factors which would determine LA’s future: topography, mathematics and finance.
See 1915 A Study (It may take time to download) People have always favored the simplistic over the complex and often they get brain freeze when faced with The 1915 Study. Please attempt to glean the basics as it is a correct today as it was one hundred years ago.
Since about 2010, Angelenos have adhered to the dogma that LA’s Homelessness Crisis was caused by a failure to build. In reality, the mass destruction of RSO apartments caused the Homeless Crisis. Please notice the word CRISIS. Homelessness did not become a Crisis until Garcetti’s Manhattanization Mania spurred mass destruction of RSO units to make room for high end luxury complexes. The city still ignores that Garcetti’s densification based to a great extent on the mass destruction of poor people’s homes played a prime role in accelerating homelessness into a Crisis. Nonetheless, politicians insist that The Homeless Crisis can only be remedied by more densification, e.g. by upzoning the city.
None of the leading candidates have referenced the 1915 Study which predicted the present mess of Los Angeles and no candidate proposes any solutions which show acquaintance with the 1915 Study. This is similar to a surgeon’s denying the germ theory of disease and refuses to wash his hand before surgery.
Although mastering the 1915 Study’s interrelationship of topography, mathematics and finance may not be to most people’s fancy, its conclusions can be summarized in a few memes.
(1) Densification of DTLA and of Transit Corridors (today’s TODs) will make a few very wealthy and harm everyone else in the city (see page 31),
(2) Densification increases land value and drives up the cost of homes and rents beyond what the population can afford,
(3) The two most obvious indicators that the city has become too dense and hence too expensive for both the poor and the middle class is homelessness among the poor and an exodus of the young middle class, e.g., Family Millennials,
(4) Monetization of housing is a multi-billion dollar transfer of wealth from Angelenos to Wall Street.
Rapid Mass Transit is Scam
When one understands the actual motivations and dynamics behind rapid mass transit, they will realize that it is not a virtue but rather it is a multi-billion scam. The 1915 Study shows that patrons will not walk more that ½ mile to a subway station. A functional rapid mass transit system would require 3,600 and 4,700 subway stations and the system would cost between $2.3 Trillion and $3.5 Trillion. Because rapid mass transit has to be at least County wide, a subway system would consume almost 73 years of the LA County budget which is $48 billion for the 2026-2027 year.
For busses to serve the same 3,600 to 4,700 stations would cost only an extra $124 Billion to $233 Billion to widen the necessary streets for bus lanes. In fact, busses could serve far more than 4,7000 without increasing costs. Adding above ground fixed rail systems does not significantly alter the analysis..
One can see that improving bus service was a far more reasonable approach than spending more money on a fixed rail system that will cost Trillions of dollars. If the city had heeded the 1915 Study, there would be no DTLA, Century City, Manhattanized Hollywood, but rather low rise office complexes would be interspersed throughout the entire Greater LA area so that there would be no rush hour traffic jams. The Pre WW II saying that “LA was 72 suburbs looking for a city” was true – a truth LA should never had abandoned.
Who Makes Money from SB 79?
Wall Street and developers make the most, but homeowners who hold on also have their equity increase. Building inter-generational wealth is a good thing, but there will come a day when equity starts to shrink. All bubbles end. Because housing is a stratified commodity, bubble burst points should occur at different times for various parts of the city. As long as the prospect of selling a R-1 homes to a developer exists, homeowners’ equity will increase, but when the developers, for example, in nearby TODs leave, the force which drives up prices for nearby SB 79 single family homes vanishes and home values will drop as happens with all bubbles.
SB 79's Anticipatory Impact
The law has the concept of Anticipatory Breach, which means that it is clear that one party will breach the contract, allowing the injured party to sue now without waiting for the actual beach. Prevention is worth an ounce of cure.
Because SB 79 endangers tens of thousands of R-1 neighborhoods, Family Millennials and Gen Z Family Millennials will act in Anticipation that a 5 story or higher poverty project will be constructed next to their home. When a family purchases a home, it plans to stay a long time, to have a safe secure neighborhood, with a decent quality of life and to build inter-generational equity. The threat that developers will build multi-story poverty projects will deter both Millennials and GenZ families from buying into the threatened neighborhoods. Millennials and GenZers have a huge minority component so that minorities will be most harmed by densification like SB 79. While the mayor and some current candidates for the mayorship and city council seats recognize that the City cannot avoid the Doom, none will admit a) the cause of the Homeless Crisis, b) the cause of the middle class exodus, or c) how densification harms minorities who are just getting aboard the Home Equity train.
Wall Street monetization of housing began the hallowing out of LA’s middle class by driving out Family Millennials and measures like SB 79, SB 330, SB 8, which increase housing density, accelerate the exodus among GenZer’s.
Family Millennials (born 1981–1996 age 30 to 45 in 2026),
GenZer’s “Zoomers” (born 1997–2012, age 14–29 in 2026)
Generation Alpha are the children of Millennials, who have fled LA which is why the school district has serious financial problems due to the loss of Alphas.
By 2026, the Family Millennials phased out of home-buying and GenZ will not reach the family benchmark until 2032. Immigrants are skipping Los Angeles and are moving directly to more affordable areas in the nation’s interior. By the time GenZers enter the home buying market, virtually none of them will find a single family home with yard. If parents want to do a favor for their GenZers, they should consider buying empty lots in the exurbs of Tucson Arizona – the new Austin, Texas.
(Richard Lee Abrams is a former Los Angeles-based attorney, an author, and political commentator. A long-time contributor to CityWatchLA, he is known for his incisive critiques of City Hall and judicial corruption, as well as his analysis of political and constitutional issues. Abrams blends legal insight with historical and philosophical depth to challenge conventional narratives. A passionate defender of civic integrity and transparency, he aims to expose misuse of power and advocate for systemic reform in local government. You may email him at [email protected] )
