A network of advocates opposing many of the housing bills in the California Legislature have ramped up their efforts after a rousing community meeting in Palo Alto. They will most target Senate Bill 50, Sen. Scott Wiener’s transit-housing bill that would alter zoning standards across California by eliminating “hyper-low-density zoning” near major transit hubs.

Elected officials and community leaders outlined their arguments Sunday in front of hundreds of cheering supporters. Their efforts, timed to the legislative process that will inevitably revise and sink some of the housing bills, include raising money through grassroots donations and lobbying Sacramento lawmakers.

“They’re carpet-bombing us,” said Dennis Richards, a member of the San Francisco Planning Commission who spoke at the meeting as a private citizen, about housing bills being considered in Sacramento. “It’s almost like they’re throwing so much shit at us, we can’t duck. We get hit.”

The community meeting was meant as a model for whipping up opposition to SB 50 and other housing bills in other California cities, said Susan Kirsch, the founder of the advocacy group Livable California. The coalition, founded over a year ago, has grown to include elected officials from the Bay Area, Los Angeles, and San Diego.

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“We want to be the statewide opposition to the objectionable nonsense coming out of Sacramento,” she said at the meeting.

Livable California was recruiting residents for a lobbying day in Sacramento on March 26. They would target the dozens of proposed bills meant to address California’s housing shortage with new zoning, affordable housing, and tenant protection laws that could supersede local planning decisions.

Bill Brand, the mayor of Redondo Beach, said he was looking to start fundraising millions of dollars to launch an initiative process for a constitutional amendment that would protect local zoning. He called it a “neutron bomb” in a suite of options to slow and stop the proposals in Sacramento.

“That’s going to undercut, undermine all of what Sacramento is trying to do, and they’re very nervous,” he said.

Nearly all the hands in the audience went up to support the idea.

The size and engagement of the audience at the community meeting over the weekend showed that the message of SB 50 opponents to protect local control over housing decisions—and abate home development during a housing crisis—resonated with many community members. Three Caltrain stations in or near Palo Alto would subject neighborhoods of mostly single-family homes to potential zoning changes under SB 50.

But Palo Alto itself is split over SB 50. While Mayor Eric Filseth argued against the bill in his State of the City address this month, Vice Mayor Adrian Fine and others support the bill.

“I’m really sorry all the people who say ‘no’ get all the attention,” said Elaine Uang, president of pro-housing group Palo Alto Forward. “This caricature has emerged of Palo Alto, but I don’t think that’s representative. There are also people who have actively been trying to say ‘yes.’”

Uang’s group joined with others, including Silicon Valley @ Home, to host a competing event last week to explain the principles that came out of the lengthy Committee to House the Bay Area (CASA) process that form the backbone of many of the new Sacramento bills. The room there was packed as well.