With the passage of Senate Bill 79 (SB 79), the City of Los Angeles must decide how it is going to implement the new legislation. The law’s provisions are slated to go into effect July 1, 2026, but municipalities are given options to delay effectuation or create alternative plans of their own.

Los Angeles appears poised to delay effectuation of the bill in all areas of the city, including most HPOZs, by expanding provisions of the Citywide Housing Incentive Program (CHIP) Ordinance.

At a special November 17, 2025 meeting of the Planning Land Use and Management (PLUM) Committee, Councilmembers deliberated on how the City of Los Angeles will react to this year’s most contentious piece of housing legislation, Senate Bill 79. The City is essentially presented with four “approaches,” which are detailed in a memo prepared by City Planning.

Approach A would be to fully embrace SB-79 and let it dictate zoning, an option that was firmly rejected by the Committee. Approach B allows for “delayed effectuation” of the bill until 2030 on sites including locally designated historic resources (HCMs and HPOZs), very high fire risk areas, areas of sea level rise, and more.

The other two options may be used to tailor zoning around certain stations to address reinforce existing patterns of development. Approach C gives the city the option to upzone some areas near transit in order to delay effectuation until 2030, and Approach D would to implement an city driven local alternative plan, which will likely be a multiyear effort.

On February 24th, 2026, City Planning returned to the PLUM Committee with more details and analysis, outlined in a February 18, 2026 memo. Some aspects of the report were positive from the City’s perspective – 88% of SB-79 station areas could be temporarily exempted due to environmental criteria or sufficient zoned capacity. To achieve permanent exemption, however, 66% of stations would need some level of upzoning before 2030.

City Planning presented the PLUM Committee three “options” to expand elements of 2025’s Citywide Housing Incentive Program (CHIP) Ordinance to station areas in order to achieve delyaed effectuation citywide, with increasing degrees of intensity. Option 1 would expand CHIP’s Corridor Transition (CT) Program to 55 moderate and high resource station areas. Option 2 pursue the same CT expansion plus expand the Transit Oriented Incentive Area (TOIA) program to 25 operational rail stations. Option 3 would expand both the CT and TOIA programs in all of these areas.

The PLUM Committee voted 2-1 to support Approach C, Option 2, but would excludes HPOZs established before 2015 or those in low opportunity areas from upzoning. The City Council will likely make a decision on which of the three options to pursue in early-to-mid March. All options can be studied in more detail through the Senate Bill (SB) 79 Storymap.

The Conservancy is still evaluating the approaches and options presented for their impact on historic resources, both designated and eligible.

However, we believe that all locally designated resources, including all Historic-Cultural Monuments (HCMs) and Historic Preservation Overlay Zones (HPOZs), should be included in a citywide delayed effectuation ordinance under the provisions of SB 79.