Byers is a paid staffer for a national network whose member groups co-sponsored SB 79, the state law about to put seven-story+ towers across West Hollywood, and eliminate parking requirements. She called residents who objected “irrational.” And she never disclosed who signs her paycheck.
Some West Hollywood residents have noticed that Councilmember Byers has taken a strangely intractable position advocating for unrestricted SB 79 implementation and an end to single-family homes. What she has never told you is that she is being paid to push those policies.
Chelsea’s day job is as the Policy Campaign Manager with a national 501(c)(4) anti-single-family-home pro-unlimited upzoning lobby organization called the Welcoming Neighbors Network. The groups that wrote and sponsored SB 79, California YIMBY and Abundant Housing LA, are that network’s California member organizations.
Byers’ employer, the Welcoming Neighbors Network, publicly championed SB 79: it flagged the bill to its followers as a priority “BILL ALERT,” cheered it out of the State Senate, and when Governor Newsom signed it into law called it “a HUGE victory and a monumental step,” congratulating its own California member, California YIMBY, for “getting this done.” California YIMBY and Abundant Housing LA, the two member groups that actually wrote and sponsored SB 79.
Byers is not a disinterested member of the City Council with a strong opinion about housing. She is a paid campaign manager for the lobbying machine behind the laws eliminating local control in California. She has never named her employer from the dais, never recused herself, and never mentioned it in a single interview.
And, tomorrow night, you have a chance to demand her recusal.
Byers is paid by the Housing lobby
Every councilmember signs an annual financial disclosure, the Form 700, under penalty of perjury. For both 2024 and 2025, Byers reports a salary from the Welcoming Neighbors Network. You can pull it yourself from the West Hollywood NetFile portal by searching “Byers.” Federal campaign records list the same employer, with her title as “Policy Manager.” So does her own LinkedIn and the network’s company page, which give her role as “Manager, Policy Campaigns.” Her literal job is running campaigns to pass laws like SB 79. To put it plainly: she supports SB 79 and is fighting for an end to single-family homes, and she is paid by the network whose California affiliates wrote the bill.
These groups did not stop at writing the bill in Sacramento. They came to West Hollywood and lobbied the City Council directly, and hired one of our Councilmembers.
At the May 18 council meeting, captured in the official record, Byers did not improvise. She used her employer’s coached vocabulary almost line for line, and she avoided every honest word the deck tells staff never to say. Put her words next to the playbook:
| What the WNN playbook coaches | What Byers said on the record, May 18 |
|---|---|
| Say “allow homes of all shapes and sizes.” Never say “upzone” or “rezone.” | “We can allow every neighborhood to have different types of housing… It means allowing it.” |
| Say “more home choices.” Never say “density.” | “the possibility of something more“; “different types of housing.” |
| Lead with the benefits, the climate and the economy, not the building. | “it’s good for the planet. It’s good for our economies… that’s just the fact of it.” |
| Reframe density as a gain, never a loss. | “It’s not erasing anything. It’s allowing the possibility of something more.” |
| Never say the honest words: “upzone,” “density,” “end single-family zoning.” | In her entire pitch, she says none of them. |
That is not how a neighbor describes her own street. It is the focus-grouped script her employer paid pollsters to build, coming out of her mouth at the dais. The only time the blunt words “denser” and “taller” surface in the room is when residents use them to describe what they are afraid of. And at one point Byers said the quiet part plainly anyway: “We have to be attractive to developers.”
Some people will tell you this employment relationship is fine because Byers disclosed her conflict on a form.
That is false. California law does not let an official write down a conflict and then vote anyway. It requires her to step aside.
Disclosure does not grant permission.
A line buried on an annual form in a government database is not the same as telling the residents in the room before voting against them. The form proves only one thing: she knew exactly who paid her on every SB 79 and TODAP vote, and cast them anyway.
SB 79 was not written by the public. It was written and sponsored by California YIMBY and Abundant Housing LA, two of the most powerful pro-development lobbying groups in the state. California YIMBY, which says it has more than 80,000 members, is the bill’s lead author. And both groups are the California affiliates of one national parent: the Welcoming Neighbors Network, the organization that employs and pays Chelsea Byers.
That is the whole chain, and it is short.
The groups that wrote SB 79 answer to the same national network that signs her paycheck. When she fights for SB 79 in West Hollywood, she is advancing the work of her own employer’s affiliates. You can see the two of them on the official sponsor list on California YIMBY’s own bill page: California YIMBY and Abundant Housing LA, alongside Streets For All, SPUR, the Bay Area Council, Greenbelt Alliance, and Inner City Law Center. Of all the sponsors, the two California pro-housing affiliates are the ones tied directly to Byers.
Byers’ organization trains supporters to hide true policy goals
The Welcoming Neighbors Network does not just lobby. It manufactures the language used to sell upzoning, and it trains its people never to say the honest words out loud. By the network’s own account, this language was focus group tested by professional polling firms through two national surveys followed by randomized controlled trials.
They ran scientific experiments to find the words that get past you.
Byers’ network publishes three documents that lay this out, and you can read all of them:
-
“Crafting Powerful Pro-Housing Messages”
The messaging deck · archived copy -
“Pro-Housing Messaging Framework”
The companion three-pager · archived copy -
“How to Start a Pro-Housing Group”
The organizing guide · archived copy
The deck is built as a list of dos and don’ts. The left column below is what the network coaches its staff to say. The right column is the plain, honest words it tells them never to say.
| What they coach staff to SAY | Words they tell staff NOT to say |
|---|---|
| “Allow homes of all shapes and sizes” | End single-family zoning; upzone; rezone |
| “More home choices in connected communities” | Density |
| “Homes tucked into existing neighborhoods” | Infill |
| “Bans on affordable housing choices” | Single-family zoning |
| “McMansions and luxury remodels” | Single-family homes (your house) |
| “Small apartment buildings up to [X] stories” | Mid-rise; multifamily; 5-over-1s |
| “Working family housing” | Workforce housing |
Look at the fifth row. The network coaches its staff to call single-family homes, the kind most of West Hollywood lives in, “McMansions and luxury remodels,” and never to say the plain words “single-family homes” at all. Its goal is to end single-family zoning. It just trains people to call it “more home choices.”
The organizing guide is just as plain. It tells activists to build a private list of 60 to 80 contacts, hold “house parties” and neighborhood walks, table at farmers markets, and above all recruit supporters to speak at planning and zoning hearings, targeting “local Democrats, places of worship, environmental groups, Chambers of Commerce, and racial justice groups.” It is a manual for manufacturing turnout to outnumber the actual neighbors at a public meeting. Running that playbook is the job Byers holds.
Now hear her own words. At the May 18 council meeting, taken from the official video, Byers defended SB 79 as “good for the planet, it’s good for our economies, it’s good… that’s just the fact of it,” called the law “pretty exciting,” and sold the room on “different types of housing” and “the possibility of something more.” That is not how a neighbor talks about her own street. That is the focus-grouped script her employer paid pollsters to build, coming out of her mouth at the dais.
Byers’ paycheck and that campaign budget come from the same place. Where does that money come from?
The network’s director, Henry Honorof, is an Emerson Collective Fellow and a documented Arnold Ventures grantee, and the network also serves as a program partner helping steer Arnold Ventures’ national housing-grant program. The wider funding ecosystem behind this YIMBY network includes Open Philanthropy (Dustin Moskovitz and Stripe’s Patrick Collison), John Arnold, Steve Ballmer, and Michael Bloomberg.
This is billionaire money, aimed at our zoning, with our councilmember on staff.
And the local tie is personal. Abundant Housing LA’s director, Leonora Camner, personally donated to Byers’s 2022 council campaign, according to West Hollywood records. Her group helped write SB 79; she gave to Byers’s election; and the network those California groups belong to pays Byers’s salary.
What Byers’ employer says about you, in its own words
You do not have to guess what the Welcoming Neighbors Network thinks of residents who speak up at city hall. It posts it, in public. Here are its own statements, ordered from the most contemptuous to the most polished. The blunt ones are from its Mastodon account; the cleaner, recent ones are from its Bluesky feed. The message does not change. Only the makeup does.
One message, blunt or polished: local control is the enemy, public meetings are a nuisance, and people who object are bigots. That is how the people who sign Byers’s checks describe public hearings and the residents who attend them. Then Byers, their paid campaign manager, voted at the regional board to let the state override West Hollywood, opposed the local-control TODAP, and called her own constituents “irrational.” She is not freelancing, she is carrying out her employer’s policy agenda.
She Volunteered Your Neighborhood for SB 79
Here is the fact that should settle the argument, because it is not about her paycheck or any inferred motive. It is a recorded vote. For three weeks this June, West Hollywood was going to escape SB 79 entirely, and Chelsea Byers personally tried to drag it back in.
SB 79 only applies to neighborhoods that land on a regional transit map drawn by SCAG, the Southern California Association of Governments. Byers is West Hollywood’s delegate to that body. Here is what happened, by date.
June 1, 2026. SCAG released its official SB 79 map, and West Hollywood’s three planned K-Line stations were not on it. The city was off the hook. SB 79’s by-right development, with no public hearing and no council vote, would not apply here. (WEHOonline)
June 4, 2026. At a special SCAG committee meeting, the panel voted 32 to 3 to keep that protective map. West Hollywood’s own delegate, Chelsea Byers, cast one of the three votes against it, against her own city’s protection. Then she went further: she moved a substitute motion to strip the environmental-clearance requirement from the map’s methodology, a change that would have put West Hollywood’s K-Line stations onto the upzoning map. Her motion got no second. Not one other official on a regional housing committee would touch it. (WEHOonline)
June 22, 2026. The state’s housing department, HCD, ordered SCAG to add planned projects that have an approved route, and the K-Line got its approval from Metro back in March. That restored West Hollywood to the map. (WEHOonline)
July 1 and 2, 2026. SB 79 takes effect, and SCAG formalizes the correction, listing the K-Line Northern Extension as Item 25. West Hollywood is on the map.
Read June 4 again. Three weeks before Sacramento forced West Hollywood onto the SB 79 map, Byers stood up at a regional board and tried to do it herself, to her own constituents.
This is also why her stonewalling on the TODAP matters. The only protection West Hollywood actually controls is a local Transit-Oriented Development Area Plan, the TODAP. City staff have confirmed that more than 1,100 rent-stabilized homes are exposed without it. The one durable shield is the one Byers keeps blocking.
The neighbors already objected
This was never a fringe worry. In the city’s own public-comment record, more than twenty West Hollywood residents wrote in to oppose SB 79 and the upzoning it forces, against a smaller core of form letters organized by the pro-housing groups. And at the May 18 council meeting, roughly 38 residents in a row stood up to ask for a TODAP. Byers was one of only two members who stood against them.
One of those residents, Jay Jacobson, went straight at the conflict without even knowing its name. Council members “with ties to developers, lobbyists, or organizations that could financially benefit from City decisions should recuse themselves,” he said, as recorded in the official minutes.
He had no idea Byers worked for the network behind SB 79. He could feel the conflict anyway.
“Your hands are not tied” was the residents’ answer to the excuse they kept hearing from the dais, that the city was powerless against the state and could do nothing. They were right. The city was never powerless. It could pass a TODAP tomorrow. One of its councilmembers simply had reasons of her own not to.
The Santa Monica Case, and Remedy
In 2025, Santa Monica faced the identical situation now in front of West Hollywood. One of its councilmembers, Jesse Zwick, held a private job as the Southern California Director of a pro-housing advocacy group called the Housing Action Coalition. Santa Monica’s own City Attorney asked the FPPC a direct question: with that job, can Zwick legally vote on the city’s housing decisions, things like a local density-bonus program and an interim zoning ordinance?
On December 8, 2025, the FPPC said no. And the reasoning is what matters, because it is not a loophole or a technicality. Here is the passage every West Hollywood resident should read:
“It is reasonably foreseeable that each of the housing production decisions… may have a financial effect on the Coalition, including its costs or reduced costs of future advocacy, as well as the prospect of increased or decreased membership and donations resulting from the Coalition’s perceived success in achieving its stated goals. Under the nexus test standards, this effect is deemed material, and Councilmember Zwick may not take part in the decisions identified.”
California Fair Political Practices Commission, Advice Letter A-25-153, December 8, 2025
Read that twice. The conflict is not only that the group wants more housing. It is that every housing win makes the advocacy group look successful, and that success grows its membership and its donations, its money. So when the councilmember votes for the group’s agenda, he is voting to fund the group that pays him. The FPPC called that a material financial conflict and barred him from the votes. Zwick had even arranged for his employer to stop working in Santa Monica, and the commission barred him anyway. And because part of the question fell under Section 1090, the state’s criminal conflict-of-interest law, the FPPC was legally required to forward the matter to the California Attorney General and the Los Angeles County District Attorney.
Now put Chelsea Byers in Zwick’s place. The facts line up almost exactly:
| Jesse Zwick · Santa Monica | Chelsea Byers · West Hollywood |
|---|---|
| Paid Southern California Director of a pro-housing advocacy group, the Housing Action Coalition | Paid Policy Campaigns Manager for a pro-housing advocacy network, the Welcoming Neighbors Network |
| A member-supported nonprofit that runs on member dues and donations | Also member-supported: WNN recruits pro-housing member groups and is “funded by generous individuals, foundations, and organizations” (its own Join and Give page) |
| Voted on the city’s housing decisions: density bonus, zoning amendments | Votes on SB 79, the TODAP, and zoning, and never recuses |
| Every housing win grows the Coalition’s membership and donations, its funding | Every housing win grows the Network’s membership and donations, its funding, in the exact same way |
| Barred by the state from housing votes | Still voting on every one |
Every element the FPPC found disqualifying in Santa Monica is present in West Hollywood. The Welcoming Neighbors Network is funded by its perceived success, and Byers’s SB 79 and zoning votes hand it exactly that. By the commission’s own test, the same conflict bars her. The only thing missing is the single step Santa Monica took and West Hollywood has not: its City Attorney asked the question.
And one last fact that is no coincidence. The Housing Action Coalition, the very group whose paid director the state just barred from housing votes, is one of the ten organizations that signed the June 15 letter lobbying the West Hollywood City Council. The same operation is already working this city.
Read the ruling yourself: FPPC Advice Letter A-25-153 →
Here is the part West Hollywood can copy, because the state did not act on its own. In Santa Monica, six neighborhood associations demanded an investigation. One of them, Northeast Neighbors, sent the City Attorney a letter on October 5, 2025 laying out that Zwick “continually voted in alignment with the Housing Action Coalition since he was endorsed by them.” The City Attorney asked the FPPC, and the ruling came within weeks. The council is now having to go back and redo housing votes Zwick took part in. West Hollywood has its own resident associations and its own councilmember in the same position. The first move is a letter.
Read what happened in Santa Monica:
- State Orders Jesse Zwick To Recuse From Housing, Zoning Votes
WEHOonline - State Regulators Say Councilman Zwick Is Conflicted on Housing Votes
Santa Monica Daily Press - Santa Monica Councilman Challenged Over Conflicts
Westside Current - A neighborhood association’s letter to the City Attorney
North of Montana Association · the template West Hollywood residents can copy
What to do at Monday’s council meeting
This is the last meeting before SB 79 takes effect: two items on Monday’s own agenda come straight from Welcoming Neighbors Network playbook.
Item C.4 would “streamline development permit review for qualifying housing projects,” the by-right, fast-track approval the Welcoming Neighbors Network exists to push.
Item C.5 would rewrite the city’s parking regulations, the exact change Abundant Housing LA lobbied the council to make on June 15 when it urged the city to “eliminate parking minimums citywide.”
Byers should not be voting on either one. You do not need to be a zoning expert. You need to show up and say a few clear things.
- Demand she recuse, by item. During public comment on items C.4 and C.5, and on every future SB 79, TODAP, and housing vote, say it plainly: Chelsea Byers is paid by the lobby behind this agenda and must step aside from these votes. Disclosure is not enough. The law requires recusal.
- Demand an emergency TODAP meeting. Ask the council to schedule a special meeting this week and pass a TODAP before Wednesday, the way Beverly Hills already did.
- Demand an FPPC referral. The City Attorney answers to the council, not to you. Demand that Mayor John Heilman or Councilmember Lauren Meister direct the City Attorney to ask the FPPC for a formal opinion on Byers, exactly as Santa Monica’s City Attorney did.
- Put it in writing before Monday. Email the Mayor, the full Council, and the City Attorney. Name items C.4 and C.5, demand the recusal and the FPPC referral, and send it to every neighbor you know. In Santa Monica, resident letters are what started it, and the ruling came within weeks.
Who to contact, and how
To be added to Monday’s speaker list, you must email the public-comment address by 12:00 p.m. on Monday, June 29. Written comments to the Council can be sent any time.
To speak or comment on Monday: publiccomment@weho.org (deadline noon, June 29)
The entire City Council, in one email: council@weho.org
Or reach them individually:
- Mayor John Heilman · jheilman@weho.org
- Councilmember Lauren Meister · lmeister@weho.org
- Councilmember John Erickson · jerickson@weho.org
- Councilmember Danny Hang · dhang@weho.org
- Councilmember Chelsea Byers · cbyers@weho.org
City Attorney Lauren Langer (of Best Best & Krieger, the firm the city contracts for legal services) · lauren.langer@bbklaw.com. She works for the Council, so the strongest move is to demand the Council direct her to seek the FPPC opinion. City Clerk: (323) 848-6800. City Hall: 8300 Santa Monica Blvd, West Hollywood, CA 90069 · (323) 848-6400.
Sources. SB 79 sponsors and bill status: California YIMBY SB 79 page. WNN members, mission, and channels: welcomingneighbors.us, Bluesky, Mastodon, Instagram, LinkedIn. WNN playbooks: “Crafting Powerful Pro-Housing Messages” (deck, archived); “Pro-Housing Messaging Framework” (3-pager, archived); “How to Start a Pro-Housing Group” (guide, archived). Byers employment: Form 700 (WeHo NetFile), FEC employer record, LinkedIn. Money and funding: WNN ProPublica listing (501(c)(4); donations not tax-deductible), WNN funding model (“a majority of WNN’s budget directly funds work on the ground”), Honorof / Emerson Collective, Arnold Ventures. Law and precedent: Gov. Code Section 87100, FPPC, FPPC Advice Letter A-25-153 (Zwick). West Hollywood record: SCAG vote and “irrational” remark, HCD restores K-Line to the SB 79 map, May 18 meeting video, May 18 minutes, public-comment record on SB 79 / upzoning (West Hollywood agenda-packet correspondence), June 29 agenda.
Thank you for this detailed article and the extensive research behind it! Every concerned West Hollywood resident should consider commenting to the City, whether by letter, in person, or both.
Having attended many City Council meetings, I’ve personally been frustrated by what I see as a consistent pattern in which Council member Byers — along with two other council members — dismiss or minimize residents’ concerns about safety, congestion, parking, environmental impacts, and quality of life issues, using many of the network’s “do’s” you listed in your article. From my perspective, they have remained firmly committed to policies that prioritize additional development, particularly with regard to removing R1 and R2 neighborhoods, despite significant community opposition.
The issues raised in this article deserve careful review by and transparency from the City and its elected officials. Thank you as well for outlining specific actions residents can take if they wish to seek further review or accountability through the appropriate channels.
It’s time for West Hollywood residents to have a stronger voice in decisions that shape our neighborhoods and our future.
And perhaps someday soon we’ll all be saying, “Bye Bye Byers.”
This is truly sickening. At the June 4 SCAG meeting, Chelsea Byer’s showed her unfathomable corruption. For starters, she said that West Hollywood was one of the first cities to support SB79. False. It wasn’t the City but City Council, in a narrow 3-2 vote. But her hypocrisy goes further. She is fully in favor of SB 79 but, in meetings with residents she claims that “Sacramento imposed SB79 on City Council and her hands are tied to do anything.” Thanks to your article, we now know that she works for the organization that creates SB79. HOW CORRUPT IS THAT!
At the SCAG MEETING, her allies such as Weho Planning Commissiner Andrew Solomon and lobbyists kept calling with threats about lawsuits and the need for “abundant housing”. Not one mentioned AFFORDABLE HOUSING. That’s the main issue. Chelsea Byers is planning to displace renters and destroy rent-control buildings and single-family homes to replace them with luxury apartments with no parking and she has the audacity to call it “equitable housing”.
At that meeting, Byers attempted to AVOID ENVIRONMENTAL REPORTS prior to approving the subway stops. What makes it worse is that Byers is aware that West Hollywood lies over a high-water table (La Cienega means the swamp in Spanish). Building subway stops on a high-water table would have CATASTROPHIC effects on West Hollywood.
Now we understand that, when Chelsea Byers said that not proceeding with an immediate SB79 over-densification leaves WeHo vulnerable, what she truly meant is that it makes HER vulnerable in front of the billionaires and developers who funded her campaign. Chelsea Byers doesn’t represent the We in Weho. She represents developers and lobbyists and she should resign immediately BYE BYE LIER BYERS!!
For the same reason that whether of not she should be able to vote on WeHo Housing / SB 79 issues because of a conflict of interest, she should not vote as a Regional Council Member of SCAG. She not only needs to recuse herself from these types of votes, given the function of SCAG, she shouldn’t even be on the committee. SCAG should also ask for an opinion from the FPPC.