A Santa Clara Superior Court judge ruled that Los Gatos improperly tried to block two developers from building new housing in the Silicon Valley city of 30,000. Thanks in part to an amicus brief by YIMBY Law, the court ruled in Town of Los Gatos v. Arya Property, LLC, et al. that the law in California allows developers to make multiple attempts to fix incomplete applications.
Read MoreAt the very end of 2025, the day after Christmas, we got a strange email. Apparently, an attorney representing NIMBYs in Rancho Palos Verdes had reported YIMBY Law to the CA State Bar, complaining that we are engaging in the practice of law without a license. Their evidence is the letter we sent to RPV telling them they had to implement their housing element. We send hundreds of letters like this, all over California. For the past decade, it has been core to our strategy of enforcing state law. Here's coverage from Housing Wire, the SF Chronicle and our own substack blog, In Practice.
Besides the danger to our ability to successfully advance our mission, this is a direct threat to anyone seeking government accountability. If the CA Bar succeeded here, it wouldn't stop with us - it could embolden cities and bad-faith actors everywhere to intimidate advocates into backing off.
So instead of pausing our enforcement while the investigation played out, we decided to fight this on First Amendment grounds and to continue our enforcement work. We teamed up with the Institute for Justice. We demanded the CA State Bar close the investigation, or else face a federal lawsuit.
On Friday Feb 6, 2026 we received word that the CA State Bar responded to our pressure, ending the investigation and finding that "there is no evidence Sonja Trauss or YIMBY Law is engaged in the unauthorized practice of law." You can read their letter here.
Newport Beach is one of the richest cities in California. If you lived there, you'd assume you wouldn't have any reason to throw a tantrum. But then again, for some NIMBYs, there's no excuse too small to try to block housing. An initiative slated for the November 2026 ballot would toss out a zoning plan that tooks years for the city’s staff to write and is already approved by the state for one cobbled together by local NIMBYs that would allow a fraction of the housing the city needs to be built.
Read MoreA case about criminal sentencing may be the key to enforcing statewide zoning reforms.
Late December, Colorado housing advocates won a victory in an unexpected place: a criminal court decision by the state supreme court. Following the logic of that decision, state courts should find that housing reforms are not only good policy; they are supported by well-established legal principles.
Read MoreA ruling at the tail end of 2025 brought with it a rebuke of the few things NIMBYs hold dear: their money and their anti-housing philosophy.
In 2020, the small coastal city of Pacifica, California approved eight units of housing, and opponents spent five years fighting to kill the projects. They lost, but they didn’t stop there: the next step was to charge the city $1.2 million in legal fees on the basis that stalling new housing was a service to the public. Thanks in part to YIMBY Law, they lost that argument, too, and will not be rewarded for their years-long effort to block new homes.
Read MoreThis case is about ensuring that California’s housing laws work the way the legislature intended. When cities follow SB 35 and approve much-needed homes, those approvals should stand. Frivolous lawsuits like this one threaten to delay or derail housing that our communities urgently need.
Sonja Trauss, Executive Director of YIMBY Law
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