The short version of what's happening, why it matters, and what would fix it.
Allows ministerial subdivision of certain lots into as many as ten lots and ten units — again by right, with no hearing. It was written for ordinary infill housing, not for neighborhoods leveled by a disaster.
After the January 2025 Eaton Fire, out-of-town investors began buying burned single-family lots and filing to subdivide them into dense, by-right projects — before survivors could rebuild. At least ten such subdivisions are already in Los Angeles County records, together proposing to turn roughly ten burned parcels into more than eighty. Reporting has documented investor and corporate purchases jumping from a small share of Altadena sales before the fire to roughly half afterward.
Los Angeles County's own June 1, 2026 implementation memo (which says it "supersedes any contrary provisions in Titles 21 and 22 of the County Code") sets eligibility tests that heavily burned blocks often fail:
These ambiguities are being stretched at the exact moment survivors are least able to fight them parcel by parcel.
SB 1123 gives a developer a fast, by-right path to carve a fire-cleared lot into up to ten units — no hearing, no neighbor notice. The displaced homeowner next door, rebuilding one house, faces the slow, discretionary permitting every rebuild requires. That inverts disaster recovery: survivors should be first in line to come home, not outpaced on their own block by speculators with a ministerial shortcut.
Altadena's foothill neighborhoods sit on narrow, often single-access streets that just failed in a deadly, fast-moving fire. Adding households and cars to those same streets is a direct life-safety hazard — it lengthens evacuation on roads that already couldn't clear residents in January 2025. The risk is compounded by missing sidewalks, inadequate parking, septic systems instead of public sewer, and undersized roads. Those same gaps show these blocks don't fit the urban-infill premise SB 1123 assumes — and the law's own criteria (public sewer; 75% developed perimeter) confirm many don't qualify.
SB 1090 (Sen. Sasha Renée Pérez, co-author Asm. John Harabedian) lets a declared disaster area pause SB 1123's by-right lot-splitting during recovery. It is look-forward protection: it doesn't repeal housing law or block building — it keeps speculative subdivision from locking in before families return and a real, community-informed rebuilding plan can take shape.
It passed the State Senate on May 27, 2026 and is now in the Assembly, referred to the Housing & Community Development and Local Government committees, with a Housing & CD hearing set for June 24.
Take action on SB 1090 →SB 1090 is a narrow, time-limited fix for the Eaton Fire disaster area — not a statewide change and not a precedent. After the same January 2025 firestorm, the Pacific Palisades received emergency relief from these density provisions, but the relief was keyed to a fire-hazard-severity-zone map that left most of Altadena's burned neighborhoods out. SB 1090 simply gives Altadena the same protection a comparable community already received — bounded to this disaster area and justified by Altadena's specific circumstances (a utility-linked disaster, deadly single-access foothill streets, and septic/infrastructure that doesn't fit SB 1123's urban-infill premise), so it sets no precedent for anywhere else.
Altadena Recovery Watch is an informal group of Altadena residents, property owners, and Eaton Fire survivors working — in coordination with Save Altadena and other fire-affected communities — to protect the town's recovery from speculative overdevelopment. We are not a nonprofit and we don't collect money on this site. Our work is advocacy and public education; nothing here is legal advice.
Get involved: act on SB 1090, join the list, or email noelhyun@gmail.com.