A Game of Zones

California Senate Bill 79 was signed into law by Governor Gavin Newsom on October 10, 2025. The law overrides local zoning restrictions to permit higher-density residential construction, up to nine stories, within a half mile of qualifying transit stops, and is scheduled to take effect on July 1, 2026. The bill is an example of California’s broader effort to address housing shortages and promote transit-oriented development.

However, implementation has created tension between state and local control. The City of Los Angeles, where I am from and call home outside of Washington, D.C., has invoked a provision allowing municipalities to delay compliance if they enact their own density measures. On March 24, the Los Angeles City Council approved a more limited upzoning plan, permitting 4–16 unit buildings up to four stories in 55 low-density areas. This was significantly less than SB 79’s potential allowances. This dispute pits the state’s interest in maximizing housing supply and density against local governments’ desire to control development scale and neighborhood character. As both a longtime urban planner and a homeowner near a soon-to-open brand-new subway stop, I find myself personally caught between these competing interests.

Though private law obviously does not apply to inter-government disputes, the property doctrine of nuisance does offer a helpful lens. At its core, nuisance law asks whether one use of land imposes unreasonable harms on others and resolves those conflicts by balancing competing interests and social costs. In Sans v. Ramsey Golf & Country Club, a neighboring homeowner challenged the operation of a golf course, arguing that errant golf balls and related disturbances interfered with use and enjoyment of their property. In the case, the court defined nuisance as “an unreasonable interference with the use and enjoyment of land.” The court emphasized that nuisance turns on the reasonableness of the defendant’s conduct in light of the gravity of the harm and the utility of the activity, ultimately weighing the social value of the golf course against the burden imposed on surrounding residents. The court ruled in favor of the homeowner reasoning an owner’s use of land becomes an unreasonable interference with a neighbor’s enjoyment of their property when, after balancing the conflicting interests, the harm to the neighbor outweighs the utility of the owner’s conduct.

The issue, then, is whether California’s upzoning mandate or Los Angeles’s restrictive zoning constitutes an interference sufficient to trigger nuisance principles. Under this framework, a land use is actionable if it results in an unreasonable interference with the use and enjoyment of land after balancing harm against utility. Here, California treats low-density zoning near transit as a regional harm, contributing to housing shortages, rising costs, sprawl, and environmental degradation. From the state’s perspective, Los Angeles’s restrictions impose external costs that affect the broader public’s use and enjoyment of land across the region.

Los Angeles, by contrast, views the state’s mandate as an intrusion. It has taken a more cautious approach, reflecting pressure from NIMBY constituents who argue that rapid density increases will strain infrastructure, alter neighborhood character, and interfere with existing residents’ use and enjoyment of land. In this framing, the burden is immediate and localized, even if the benefits of density are more diffuse.

The question is not which level of government has “rights,” but which regulatory approach better minimizes overall harm and which constitutes an unreasonable interference. California can argue that the collective effects of continuing to build low density housing will only lead to higher housing costs, displacement, and climate impacts, which outweigh the paint points of localized disruptions caused by increased density. Especially near transit. Los Angeles would respond that nuisance law is sensitive to context and has argued blanket rules fail to account for neighborhood-specific conditions, making a one-size-fits-all mandate inefficient or even counterproductive. In nuisance terms, the dispute becomes a classic balancing problem—whether the broader social benefits of density justify the localized burdens it imposes, and which level of government is better positioned to make that determination.

Ultimately, this framing raises a deeper institutional question: who should resolve land use conflicts when their impacts extend beyond local boundaries? In my experience as an urban planner, local governments are often best positioned to regulate development at the neighborhood level, but they also face strong political pressures to resist growth, even when that resistance exacerbates housing shortages. The state, by contrast, can override those pressures and pursue policies that better reflect aggregate welfare.

That tension feels personal. I have long supported the density SB 79 promotes, yet I now understand the instinct to resist change near my own home. Viewing the issue through a nuisance lens clarifies the tradeoff: the question is not whether change imposes costs, it always does, but whether those costs are justified by broader benefits. Here, they are. SB 79’s long-term gains in housing supply and sustainability outweigh the short-term disruptions to neighborhood character.

Maybe, I’m not a NIMBY just yet.

Max Sherman is a J.D. candidate at American University Washington College of Law and a former urban planning professional with over a decade of experience in land use and development.

Image: Terry Robinson, Say No … in Boroughbridge - 2 - geograph.org.uk - 1012421.