By Bonnie Kutch
Senate Bill 610, a bill that would make it even easier for developers to build housing in high-risk fire zones, nearly made its way to the state legislature recently to be voted into law.
It should be no surprise that State Senator Scott Wiener, YIMBY (Yes In My Backyard) chum and faithful servant to California’s wealthy, introduced SB 610 by taking an unrelated bill and completely rewriting it, thus reserving the bill’s place in the legislative queue. While SB 610 was suspended in the Assembly Appropriations Committee and didn’t proceed in the 2023-2024 legislative session, there is a good chance the bill will be resurrected this year.
While YIMBYs publicly advocate for sustainability, affordability and equity, their organizations are funded by special interest groups that recognize the incredible amount of money there is to be made in creating high-density housing. Mega-developers and their consultancies, labor unions, tech companies, and Wall Street can realize spectacular returns on their investments. Paying billions of dollars to front groups — developer lobbyists, university student activists, business and housing advocates, pliable politicians – is mere peanuts if it gives them access to the land they want.
Wiener has aligned himself with YIMBYs throughout the state. He’s highly adept at cracking open neighborhoods, and selling them off to the highest bidder one at a time. Chances are that hideous new multi-story apartment building going up near you or right next door was served up by Wiener.
The list of senate bills Wiener has devised to boost housing production is extensive. He authored SB 10, which was firmly rejected by San Diegans in 2023 largely through a series of community protests and a citywide yard sign campaign. He co-authored SB 9, which today enables local governments to rezone for higher densities near transit-rich areas. Wiener is also leading the assault on the California Coastal Act, which limits new development along the state’s sensitive coastline.
He co-authored AB 671, the law that the City of San Diego responded to by devising the controversial ADU Bonus Program, which has spawned such contested development projects as the massive 17-unit project being built on a 0.45-acre, single-family lot in Clairemont; and the proposed 43-unit development on a single-acre lot in Encanto.
And now, in his boldest move yet, Wiener wants to clear the way for new development in neighborhoods within Very High Fire Hazard Severity Zones (VHFHSZ) primarily by taking away cities’ authority to designate VHFHSZ in their own regions. Instead, he’s proposed to place responsibility in the hands of CAL FIRE, which doesn’t have the knowledge of individual cities statewide nor the bandwidth to take on such a wide-sweeping and critical role.
Such new legislature would lead to further major disasters throughout the state, particularly San Diego, which narrowly dodged a scenario similar to that of Los Angeles recently. Weiner sees this is as a golden opportunity though. When hundreds of thousands of people end up living in high-risk fire zones and their houses go up in smoke, developers will race in to their rescue to rebuild. Burn baby, burn.
More than 90 environmental groups opposed SB 610, including the Sierra Club and National Wildlife Federation. Still, Wiener and his YIMBY devotees will say they support “environmental sustainability.” This is the cockamamie paradigm in which Wiener and his YIMBY enablers dwell. Residents’ property, safety and very lives don’t seem to matter. They would just as soon watch San Diego’s neighborhoods burn to the ground than to admit that their McKinsey & Company fabricated housing shortage is bogus.
But Wiener is just doing as he’s told. According to public records maintained by the California Secretary of State, his donor list reads like a who’s who in real estate, technology, finance, organized labor, and big law — in other words, the very fabric of the YIMBY movement.
Thankfully there have been steps taken to YIMBY-proof San Diego neighborhoods from falling victim to a major wildfire disaster. Recently, the Community Planners Committee (CPC) voted in favor of writing a formal recommendation to the City of San Diego calling for an emergency moratorium on all infill construction projects in VHFHSZ that more than double dwelling unit density until comprehensive risk assessments and mitigation measure are completed. Visit https://www.sdurbanwildfire.org/ for more information.
It’s essential that San Diegans urge Mayor Gloria and district council members to support this proposal. Weiner will continue to push SB 610 this year, and we must let him know that areas of San Diego located in wildfire-prone zones are not for sale.
Bonnie Kutch is a resident of University City and founding member of UC Neighbors for Responsible Growth, a.k.a. UC PEEPS.
I’ve never been a believer in term limits but I’m more than willing to make an exception for Sen. Weiner. Way past time for him to go.
Well researched and written article. Scott Weiner and YIMBY Dems are bad for California. They promote deregulating of the building industry at everyone’s expense, except the developers that endorse them. Time to stand up against irresponsible and dangerous development.
Thank you, Laura. While Wiener stands out as the primary residential neighborhood killer, the same can be said of Senator Toni Atkins. Together, they have been gaming the system and working in concert with corporate-funded lobbyists and “housing policy consultants,” to literally end single-family zoning in California as we know it. And who pays for all the cities’ infrastructure going forward? The property tax-paying homeowners who worked so hard all their lives to afford the homes they live in. Yet, YIMBYs will tell you they are fighting for social justice? Hardly!
It’s worse than you think. This is all by design. Attorney General Shirley Weber has fast-tracked the petition for circulation in order for California to secede from the Union.
https://www.sos.ca.gov/administration/news-releases-and-advisories/2025-news-releases-and-advisories/Proposed-Initiative-Enters-Circulation-Requires-Future-Vote-on-Whether-California-Should-Become-Independent-Country
Atkins, Gloria, Rendon, Newsom, & Weiner, have conspired to reshape California into an full blown Oligarchy. Get used to “Greasy” King Newsom, Queen “2-Face” Atkins, “Duke of Corporate Gentrification” Rendon and “Authoritarian Wannabe” Duchess Gloria. So get used to it everybody. This is what happens when we fail to hold “the Party” accountable and ridiculously convince ourselves that Corporate Real Estate corruption is contained and it is just a few bad apples. One bad apple spoils all, they’re all rotten. It is frivolous and naive to think that these “bad” Dems are anomalies, outliers, when they are the core, the rotten core. They are the face of “the Party”.
SUPPORT RANK CHOICE VOTING
You realize that Weber did not write that petition, right? It was submitted by a person who wants to gather support (signatures) to get his idea of succeeding on the ballot. All webers office has done has given permission for the petition to try to collect signatures. Which is the way all things get on the ballot. Even if he did get the signatures needed to place a measure on the ballot, the voters would still need to vote on it AND even then, if it’s approved by 55% of the voters it only opens the door to do a viability explanation.
Your hyperbole is unfounded.
secession / seceding
Total in favor of that, nothing to do with real estate.
This is horrifying, Mateo. I had heard whispers of this underway but had dismissed it. But it does explain a lot. Moving out of state is becoming more inviting all the time, as much as I would hate to leave my city of 46 years.
Corporate opportunist Weber wasted no time, this is dated 3 days following the inauguration. Only 546,651 signatures needed. Weber’s unilateral action is abhorrently irresponsible and violates the California State Constitution.
We did not elect Shirley Weber to lead the charge to secede from the Union, everyone should be outraged by this. Don’t be blinded by subterfuge, this is a two pronged attack that cannot be tolerated.
You are making serious, unfounded allegations against Shirley Weber, calling her a “corporate opportunist” goes beyond the pale. We did elect her Sec. of State (not AG); by doing her job, you claim it’s an unilateral action without proof and is now leading the charge to secede from the union. Your claims are outrageous and without more proof or evidence, we need to condemn YOUR assertions. Why are you doing this Mateo?
My assertions are based on Dr Weber’s actions.
https://www.sos.ca.gov/administration/news-releases-and-advisories/2025-news-releases-and-advisories/Proposed-Initiative-Enters-Circulation-Requires-Future-Vote-on-Whether-California-Should-Become-Independent-Country
Did we really elect Dr. Weber for doing her job as AG? With all due respect she is Secretary of State after all.
Dr. Weber was handpicked by Rendon and Atkins to be appointed to the office of Secretary of State by Gavin Newsom in 2020. Not ironically, under the Emergency Executive Powers thrust upon him when Toni Atkins Senate and the State Legislature cut and ran in the face of the protracted public health emergency that was the pandemic.
True she won election in 2022. However, I do not recall seeing secession from the Union anywhere in her platform and plans to snuff out the United States Constitution for 37 million Californians.
Let’s also be honest here. “The Party” has proven time and again to silence competition by any means necessary to protect “the Party” incumbent. And we have “provably” witnessed this time and time again.
Only SOS Shirley Weber’s stamp of approval and 546,651 signatures needed to put secession on the ballot.
For a moment now please consider the fact that Sean Elo Rivera unlawfully misused his own campaign money to knowingly finance and mail false and misleading mailers that duped San Diegan’s into voting for paying for trash collection amidst the worst inflation in our lifetimes and astronomically highest cost of living in history.
Why am I doing this? Because I go outside. I am speaking truth to power for the miserable reality that we all are forced to endure everyday.
Why am I doing this? Because most folks are falling for the 3-Card-Monty right now, distracted and fixated on the candidate that the electoral college elected President whom is wreaking havoc that we all hope the nation of laws and the constitutional checks and balances will guardrail. It is all we can do.
Why am I doing this? Because we’re not just getting taken by the 3-Card Monty game. We’re getting pick-pocketed, while our houses are being burglarized, and our neighborhoods burnt to the ground with no insurance, (even when we have had an Insurance Commissioner and an agency funded for decades to supposedly protect us against abuse like this, but I digress, and this is a metaphor)
I do this because my Grandfather taught me that sometimes being a really good friend means telling a friend truths that they may not want to here, are difficult to listen to, but that they need to hear. This is that sometime Frank, average Americans, average Californians, average San Diegans haven’t any latitude left to forfeit.
I do this because I learn from history. Saw the subterfuge in Iraq with the last real Democrat Barbara Lee, and because this is the perfect example of Naomi Klein’s “Shock Doctrine.”
I do it because very few, if any San Diegans or Californian’s, that are fully aware, if at all, about what is going on behind closed doors in Sacramento, including but not limited to the magnitude and the breadth of the collusion at hand. (That’s why it’s all kept behind closed doors.)
Secession from the Union should have NEVER been the first step of action taken. Dr. Weber’s reprehensible decision leaves no room for negotiation at all. No latitude, just the “Former United States of America”
Instead of irresponsibly approving the above petition posted on January 23rd that no news organizations in the state bothered to report on frighteningly; the State and subsequently the country would have been better served by engaging with the public.
Creating a participatory dialog about what that secession might look like, would have been a level headed, measured first response. That action would have reinforced a coalition but instead she acted unilaterally. That’s the fact not conjecture. Sec of State Weber’s actions are all the evidence needed. She at the very least should have called a press conference to notify the public that her office was considering approval of the petition and encouraged public participation.
Yes, I misspoke, Dr Shirley Weber is indeed Secretary of State.
One of your main points is totally erroneous. Weber is only doing her job and you take from there she is a proponent of the initiative she is bound by law to clear if it made the requirements. That’s all she did. First sentence of public statement from her office (that you’ve now posted 3 or 4 times) says: “Secretary of State Dr. Shirley N. Weber announced that the proponent of a new initiative was cleared to begin collecting petition signatures on January 23, 2025.” That’s it. And from there you launch into this whole conspiracy thing that she is part of. Research her history in San Diego before you dignify your false allegations about her with your name. I’m sure Shirley Weber doesn’t personally agree with the goal of the initiative, that again, by law, she had to clear. It’s crazy you don’t get that.
One can agree with some of your statements about the Calif Democratic Party but you undermine those with your other bald, bassless claims.
Weber, 75, has long been a force in Democratic politics, from the San Diego Board of Education to the state Assembly to her current role — a first for a Black woman. But lately, she has achieved near-rock-star status as something less official: The “godmother of reparations.”
It was her Assembly Bill 3121 that led California to do what Congress has refused to do — appoint a task force to study the lasting harms of slavery and recommend what compensation is owed for decades of systemically racist laws and policies. State lawmakers are now grappling with many pieces of proposed legislation stemming from the task force’s recommendations. It has been a hard, slow slog.
It’s work that has breathed new life into the national reparations movement, turning what many Americans had long seen as a joke into a serious, often inescapable policy discussion. https://reparationscomm.org/reparations-news/shirley-weber-godmother-of-reparations/
Bonnie, please do not leave. And take some of Mateo’s allegations with a huge pile of salt.
Thank you, Frank. I sure don’t want to! Things have become so tenuous and mirky between Newsom’s agenda and all that Gloria has been pulling. It’s hard to know what California’s future will bring!
Yes, it’s a progressive pile of dog (extremist left) excrement. We see it here daily with Toad and then the Cali state agenda.
Not to quibble, Chris S, but the people and groups that you call dog shit are definitely NOT from the “extremist left”. If anything, the Rag is on the extreme left — many of us are socialists actually, and small “d” democrats. The Dem Party is divided generally between the corporate wing and the more grassroots wing. YIMBYism is not from the far left.
In San Diego among elected Dems it’s very difficult to tell the difference between them and the Republicans who ran San Diego for decades. Newsom has never been within the “extreme left” either, and neither has Atkins, but Barbara Boxer and a whole raft of elected Dems elected years ago from the Bay Area were.
Any Republican in San Diego who stands with Trump is part of the MAGA movement. I’m talking about Issa and that guy who was just elected to a North County state district, Carl DeMaio. I saw a great bumpersticker: “MAGA is a fascist cult.”
I don’t see where in SB 610 it reads as “taking away cities’ authority”… in fact,
“(b) (1) A local agency may, at its discretion, include areas within the jurisdiction of the local agency, not identified as very high fire hazard severity zones by the State Fire Marshal, as very high fire hazard severity zones following a finding supported by substantial evidence in the record that the requirements of Section 51182 are necessary for effective fire protection within the area.”
Natalie: According to all my research, the bill would completely abolish the Fire Hazard Severity Zone maps that guide mitigation strategies and land use planning for development in fire-risk areas. The bill would also centralize all decision making in the hands of just one person: the State Fire Marshal.
SB 610 upends local considerations — and would eliminate the State Fire Hazard Severity Zone maps and familiar terms — most noticeably “ember resistant zones.” A whole new system would instead declare portions of the state “Wildfire Mitigation Areas.” There would be no comparative maps to see where changes were made.
Wiener introduced SB-610 “Fire prevention: wildfire mitigation area: defensible space: State Fire Marshal” as a “gut and amend” bill, meaning the contents were completely changed after it had already passed the Senate in an innocuous form (a proposed annual report by the chair of the State Energy Resources Commission).
You’ll find a lot about this bill and Wiener’s intentions with it if you do a thorough Google search.
CEQA is already ignored with all these apartment stuffing projects. This SB 610 will just drive a stake into any fire concerns, even though they are obvious.
I wonder if SW even knows that one block up from where Montezuma burned, that there is a huge pile of density in the form of mindorms, just a steep downhill from SDSU. If the fire had spread or winds would be blowing, all along Baja/Campanile/ Prosperity would be a moonscape… and many would die clawing to get their cars up a grade from 15-20% up to the next plateau.
Great job Bonnie! We all benefit by your research and yur leadership!
Thank you, Denny! I know you’ve been in the fight against STRs in your community for quite some time and appreciate all you’ve done and are doing. Who would have guessed that homeowners and their neighborhoods would be under attack as they are now?
Dave: I agree with you. If SW knew about the Montezuma Fire, I doubt he would care. The overly lenient ADU Program has allowed units to be built along the ridge of canyons throughout San Diego. In fact, I have one about two blocks from my house that’s tucked right into one and it was somehow approved by the City. SW authored SB 10, which would have allowed builders to bypass CEQA. Thankfully it was taken off the table in San Diego (Gloria was the only mayor in the state who wanted to adopt it) but it seems City Hall is itching to bring it back in one form or another. We keep watch.