California YIMBY Endorses Xavier Becerra for Governor
California YIMBY is excited to announce our endorsement of Xavier Becerra to be the next Governor of California.
This election will be pivotal for California’s future. And the choice could not be any clearer.
Xavier Becerra is the best candidate to take on the tough fights to build the housing California needs.
His opponent, Steve Hilton, is positioning himself as a NIMBY, opposing SB 79 and wrongly claiming there is some kind of “war on single family homes.”
Here’s why we are strongly supporting Xavier Becerra for Governor:
In 2020, then-Attorney General Becerra did something his predecessors had been unwilling to do: he sued a California city for violating state housing law and won.
The City of San Mateo had rejected a modest multifamily development on a site zoned to allow it, citing vague concerns about neighborhood character. Becerra, working with the organization that would become the California Housing Defense Fund (which I co-founded in 2015), took the city to court under the Housing Accountability Act and secured a landmark ruling that established the state’s authority to enforce its own housing laws against recalcitrant local governments.
That ruling has since been cited in many subsequent cases. It changed what cities could get away with.
That kind of willingness to take political heat for enforcing the law is exactly what we’ll need from the next governor. Cities will continue to find creative ways to block housing they’re legally required to permit. The next governor needs an attorney general willing to sue them, an HCD willing to penalize them, and the political stomach to back both up when local officials and their legislative delegations come complaining.
Becerra’s gubernatorial platform reflects similar instincts. His proposal to direct state boards and commissions (including the California Coastal Commission!) to prioritize housing production is significant, given how often those bodies slow or block development on procedural grounds.
His Housing Master Plan section on reducing construction costs shows he understands that supply constraints aren’t only about approvals, they’re about feasibility.
Becerra supports expanding SB 79 and SB 684, and his call for cities and counties to approve or deny building permits within 90 days is the right kind of concrete, enforceable mandate.
For these reasons, we proudly and strongly endorse Xavier Becerra.
By contrast, Steve Hilton is positioning himself to appeal to NIMBYs who have been taking loss after loss in Sacramento. His opposition to SB 79 and rhetoric about a “war on single-family homes” is the kind of conspiratorial framing that produced California’s housing crisis in the first place.
This is a crucial election, and we need to make sure Xavier Becerra is elected Governor.
As always, it’s YIMBYs like you who give this movement its true power. Thank you for your passionate support and engagement as we fight to make California affordable for everyone.