The ONV initiative (view/download draft PDF) restores the authority of your local representatives to decide what gets built in your community, on your street, and right next door to where you live. It will amend the California State Constitution, enshrining those decisions at the local level. Lawmakers have used state statutes, which trump local laws and regulations. The ONV initiative trumps state statutes with this Constitutional amendment.

Amending the State Constitution to restore local control of land use and zoning decisions will send a clear, powerful message that the people are back in charge. Recent state housing laws – more than 500 in the last eight years – irreparably harm our neighborhoods. Once that new 10-, 20-, or 30-story “stack and pack” goes in, it’s there forever. Worse, these new laws do not provide any guaranteed affordable housing – in fact, they are making our affordable housing crisis much, much worse.

Developers make billions without paying anything to offset the impact of all this new housing on our communities – sticking all of us with the bill by over-stressing local infrastructure.

We can’t afford more gentrification and economic displacement in working class neighborhoods and communities of color. We can’t afford more traffic gridlock and less parking, since these state housing laws have no funding for roads or transit, and no parking requirements.

Recent state laws let developers tear down the house right next door to you and build a multi-unit, multi-story building – and you have no say in the matter. You’ll be demonized as racist, exclusionary, anti-homeless, and worse. Under these new laws, developers don’t have to conduct environmental reviews, provide onsite parking, or build affordable housing. In fact, they don’t even have to tell you what’s coming. You’ll find out when the bulldozers show up next door on a Monday morning. These laws are blank checks to developers.

The ONV initiative is the strongest weapon we have to fight back against these draconian laws, because it will restore our ability – YOUR ability – to speak out and impact what is happening in our own communities. If you believe that we should have a voice in our own neighborhoods, JOIN US and/or Donate today!

ONV has received significant donations from individuals and organizations. The initiative is supported by a statewide grassroots coalition of Californians that includes Democrats, Republicans, Independents and voters from every part of the political spectrum, including more than 100 local elected officials. Our list of supporters includes some 20,000 Californians just like you. In short, ONV is building a statewide coalition of community advocates, elected officials, and Californians from all walks of life who agree that it is time to restore our voice on local community decisions.

We need to build more of the RIGHT KIND of housing, the kind that’s affordable for middle, working, and lower income Californians. Enabling developers to flood the supply of market rate and luxury housing – which is what recent legislation does – is only creating more expensive housing that few Californians can afford. If dense, market rate and luxury multifamily buildings were the solution, places like Manhattan, London, Moscow, and Hong Kong would be the most affordable cities in the world, not the least.

In contrast to distant state regulators, local governments are best positioned to know where and how to incentivize housing their communities need and want.

The initiative was written to ensure compliance with relevant state environmental laws, fair housing, and anti-discrimination laws. The initiative does not conflict with the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA). Single family neighborhoods are not inherently discriminatory, and many people of color own and rent homes in these neighborhoods that represent the main means of building wealth for them. Now that BIPOC single family neighborhoods exist, Our Neighborhood Voices finds it ironic and disturbing that there is an effort to undermine and devalue the importance of single family homes. 

One of the most pernicious lies the political establishment has spread is that anyone who cares about the future of their neighborhood automatically opposes new development, especially new affordable development. This is the myth of the NIMBY, which stands for “not in my backyard.” Tellingly, the term was coined by corporate marketers in 1979 to smear residents in New Hampshire and Michigan who opposed the construction of new nuclear power plants in their communities (this was in the immediate aftermath of the accident at the Three Mile Island nuclear plant in Pennsylvania, when fears about the dangers of nuclear energy were at a peak). Big corporations used the term in the 1980s and 1990s to demonize people who opposed new landfills, prisons, oil refineries, and other industrial sites in their communities.

ONV leadership and supporters are not NIMBYs. We support affordable housing in our communities. We want our neighborhoods to be as thriving and diverse as possible. We oppose top-down state mandates that lead to less affordable housing. 

We are building a vast coalition of Californians to spread our message. Under state law, in order to get on the ballot we’ll need to obtain 874,641 valid petition signatures from registered California voters. Accounting for signatures that inevitably will be rejected we will need a total of 1.2 million signatures. Once we qualify for the ballot, we will begin our general election campaign to persuade Californians to vote to restore local voices on important local land use decisions.

Our efforts will require at least $50 million. Of that, between $15 million and $20 million will go to paid signature gatherers.