Two of the cities hit hardest by the January 2025 fires have agreed to stop blocking a state housing law inside their burn areas.
Pasadena's council voted unanimously on July 20 to repeal its ordinances and begin accepting applications under SB 9, and Malibu agreed to do the same by September 29, according to CalMatters. Both settlements resolve claims brought by YIMBY Law, a pro-housing nonprofit.
What SB 9 does
SB 9 took effect in 2022. In single-family zones it requires cities to approve, ministerially rather than through discretionary hearings, a split of one lot into two, and duplexes on the resulting parcels. In practice a property that allowed one home can allow up to four units. Cities may impose objective standards but cannot use design review or discretionary findings to say no.
The point of the ministerial route is that it removes the stage at which a project usually dies.
How the fire zones came to be exempt
After the fires, Governor Gavin Newsom and Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass signed executive orders that let local governments set SB 9 aside in "very high" fire severity zones inside the burn scars. Malibu and Pasadena used that opening to bar lot splits and duplexes while rebuilding proceeded.
YIMBY Law sued Newsom, Bass and four jurisdictions, arguing that neither a governor nor a mayor can suspend a statute the Legislature passed. Neither city litigated that question to a ruling. "For people who are living, or hoping to live, or hoping to move back to Malibu and Pasadena, SB 9 is back," said Sonja Trauss, YIMBY Law's executive director. "The writing is on the wall."
The case each side makes
The housing argument is about money. Rebuilding costs have run ahead of what many insurance settlements cover, and a second unit on a lot is an asset: rental income to service a construction loan, or a parcel that can be sold to fund the rebuild of the first. On this reading, suspending SB 9 in the burn zone took an option away from fire survivors at the moment they most needed it.
The opposing argument is about getting out. Malibu depends heavily on Pacific Coast Highway, and Pasadena's fire-exposed neighborhoods sit on hillside streets that were already difficult during the January evacuations. Residents and some officials argued that adding units to those blocks adds cars to roads that had been overwhelmed within living memory.
Both are serious. It is worth being precise about what SB 9 does and does not do in relation to the second one: it permits an owner to build more, it does not require anyone to, and how much additional density actually materializes in a burn zone is an empirical question that will not be answered for years. Whether that marginal density measurably changes evacuation times is a question neither side has resolved with evidence, and the settlements did not resolve it either. They resolved who has the authority to decide.
What is still open
The settlements cover Malibu and Pasadena only. The City of Los Angeles, Los Angeles County, Newsom and Bass are still defending the underlying case, which means the central legal question, whether an executive order can suspend a housing statute, remains live.
For homeowners in Pasadena, the practical change is immediate: applications are being accepted now. In Malibu the change comes by the end of September.
