This year, Los Angeles single family communities are under siege from Sacramento’s one-size-fits-all wildfire mandates. The proposed “Zone 0” defensible space regulation—backed by the insurance industry and advanced by the California Board of Forestry—threatens to strip away gardens, shade trees, and neighborhood green space while placing new financial and legal burdens on homeowners.

The special interests supporting Zone 0 say it’s about “fire safety.” The reality is that this regulation is an attack on city living and private property rights, especially in tightly packed Los Angeles neighborhoods where houses are only 5 to 10 feet apart. Zone 0 is not fire protection—it is political cover for insurers and developers.

Why Zone 0 Fails Los Angeles

• Shifts risk onto neighbors. In neighborhoods where buildings sit close together, clearing vegetation within five feet of one home automatically pushes it into the five-foot zone of the next. Compliance is physically impossible without stripping yards bare.

• Destroys urban shade and habitat. Los Angeles is already in a heat crisis. Removing small gardens, privacy plantings, and shade trees eliminates the very cooling and moisture-holding landscapes that reduce fire risk.

• Ignores real vulnerabilities. Research shows most home losses come from being in close proximity to another home and lack of firefighting resources—not healthy vegetation. Zone 0 leaves these vulnerabilities untouched.

• Targets the wrong people. Homeowners—especially older and working residents with modest homes —will face fines, liens, and contractor enforcement at their own expense, while insurers and developers are let off the hook.

• Creates inequity and conflict. Wealthier homeowners may pay to comply or litigate disputes. Others will be forced into bare yards, neighbor conflicts, or noncompliance penalties and jail time. 

What Zone 0 Really Means

If adopted, Zone 0 would criminalize resilience by treating maintained gardens as hazards, erasing green space that cools our city, supports pollinators, and stabilizes soil. Enforcement under AB 3074 allows local governments to hire crews to clear private property and bill residents, creating due process nightmares for homeowners who never even knew they were subject to this rule.

Zone 0 is not fire safety. It’s environmental scapegoating: shifting responsibility for wildfire risk away from the industries that profit from building in fire-prone landscapes and onto the backs of ordinary homeowners.

How to Engage

Zone 0 is still under review. Local elected officials, including the Los Angeles City Council, have the power to push back against Sacramento and demand a regulation that reflects the realities of dense cities, not just rural landscapes.

• Tell your Councilmember: Los Angeles cannot comply with Zone 0 without destroying its urban canopy and neighborhoods.

• Spread the word: Most residents have never heard of Zone 0. By the time they do, enforcement could already be underway.

• Join the coalition: Join neighborhood associations and community groups in the Hands Off My Yard campaign opposing this flawed policy.

Los Angeles deserves real fire safety solutions—home hardening, retrofits, and structural resilience—not political theater that devastates communities and leaves homes just as vulnerable.

The right to own, enjoy, sell and use property without undue influence from government is a foundational element of our country. While some regulation is needed, too much regulation is bad for the property owner, the economy, and the community as a whole. Zone 0 is bad for Los Angeles.