Karen Bass Says Yielding to Neighborhoods Cuts NIMBY Conflict — Critics Warn It Will Starve L.A. of Housing

Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass told podcast host Matt Welch that she prefers to avoid imposing denser housing on neighborhoods that object, arguing that building without community consent can entrench what she called “hardcore NIMBYs.” The exchange, recorded on Welch’s show, highlights a recurring tension in Bass’s housing approach: balancing political feasibility and local consent against the urgent need for more homes in a high-cost city.

Podcast exchange and what it reveals

About 35 minutes into the interview, Welch pressed Bass on her opposition to allowing duplexes in parts of the Palisades that were damaged by recent fires. Bass responded plainly:

“Because the people in the Palisades didn't want that. When it comes to building… I think you need to build with communities… I think that if you impose it on a neighborhood, then you will have hardcore NIMBYs.”

Welch pushed back, asking whether yielding to neighborhood opposition simply entrenches anti-development sentiment. The back-and-forth crystallizes Bass’s broader posture: avoid confrontation with local opponents to limit political blowback.

Policy actions and critique

During her term, Bass has signaled support for new and affordable housing while also resisting rapid or broad-scale production that reduces city control. She launched a program called ED1 to streamline approvals, then moved to scale it back after a surge of development applications. She also opposed California's S.B. 79, which would allow more housing near transit, arguing the city should retain fine-grained control over where and how many units are built.

Critics — and some housing advocates — argue that accommodating NIMBY demands in order to reduce conflict is self-defeating: if you allow fewer projects, there will be fewer objections only because fewer homes are proposed. The result, they say, is a city that remains undersupplied and unaffordable. Supporters of a more confrontational approach counter that political leaders seeking affordability must be willing to push through land-use battles rather than retreat.

Congress: ROAD to Housing Act in limbo

At the federal level, the bipartisan ROAD to Housing Act, a package of modest changes intended to boost housing production, passed the Senate as part of the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA). But House Financial Services Chair French Hill has delayed House consideration of the NDAA until housing provisions are removed; he says some Republicans object to specific provisions and prefers the ROAD measures to be considered as a standalone bill.

Senators Tim Scott and Elizabeth Warren offered deals intended to keep the ROAD language in the NDAA, but those offers were reportedly rejected. Advocates are managing expectations about passage before Congress recesses for December, while noting ongoing momentum and a planned House hearing on barriers to housing supply.

DOJ reaches provisional settlement with RealPage

The Justice Department has reached a tentative antitrust settlement with RealPage, a property-management software firm accused of enabling landlords to coordinate pricing through algorithms that use lease, rent and vacancy data. Assistant Attorney General Abigail Slater emphasized that competing firms must make independent pricing decisions and warned of vigorous enforcement as algorithmic pricing tools spread.

Under the proposed settlement — still subject to court approval — RealPage would face limits on using real-time leasing data to train models and would be barred from making geographic recommendations narrower than the state level. RealPage attorney Stephen Weissman said the company's historical use of aggregated, anonymized data produced procompetitive effects and that the firm is implementing changes while denying any admission of wrongdoing. Federal litigation may be provisionally resolved, but several state attorney-general suits continue.

Other developments

A recent investigation found that developers with political ties to a major city's mayor are earning outsized returns on a city-subsidized affordable housing project, prompting questions about oversight and value for public dollars. Data visualizations continue to show San Francisco's long-running difficulty in expanding housing production. In New York, incoming Mayor Zohran Mamdani reportedly discussed the city's lengthy land-use review process (ULURP) with national leaders; his housing transition team includes some pro-housing (YIMBY) figures but appears not to include owners of rent-stabilized buildings facing financial distress.

Finally, analysts and columnists continue to highlight a decades-long decline in per-capita housing construction across many U.S. cities — a trend with deep implications for affordability and metropolitan policy.