By Walter Contreras, Co-founder, Black & Brown Clergy and Community Coalition
California has built its reputation as a place of infinite possibility, of innovation, and diversity – a place that grants second chances and opportunities for dreamers.
However, as a co-founder of the Black & Brown Clergy and Community Coalition of California, an organization dedicated to empowering Black and Brown clergy, union leaders, and their communities, I have witnessed firsthand the stymieing of positive community improvements due to costly, untimely regulations and compliance requirements that hamper communities and small businesses.
In the last several years, we have witnessed a tipping point where excessive regulation and government involvement has resulted in serious, unintended consequences to the very people it’s seeking to help and protect. With over 420,000 restrictions – more than triple the national average of 136,000 – it’s clear that California is wildly overregulated.
Two years ago, my dear friend and fellow co-founder of the Black & Brown Coalition, Pastor Stephen “Cue” Jn-Marie, purchased the Skid Row People’s Market, a longtime family-owned business and vital asset in the struggling neighborhood. For decades, this grocery store has served as an economic hub for the Skid Row community, providing job opportunities and local access to healthy food options and other necessities.
The previous owner of the shop, Danny Park, inherited the store, formerly known as Best Market in Skid Row, from his parents. In an effort to promote a safe, community-driven environment, Danny renamed the shop Skid Row People’s Market and introduced new services, like store credit to low-income and unhoused customers, and became one of the few stores in the area to offer fresh produce. Pastor Cue’s plan is to continue and expand the services that Park’s family began.
One would think that changing the ownership of the grocery market, which would still remain a grocery market, with clear community benefits – providing fresh food access in a food desert and contributing to local revitalization – would be fast-tracked. Instead, it took over two years to secure the necessary city permits. Two years!
This kind of delay not only undermines jobs and investments into historically marginalized communities, it also disproportionately turns back the hard work of minority small business owners, and discourages many more from ever taking the leap of starting their own business in the first place.
This is what we’re dealing with in California right now. Businesses across our state are working harder than ever to make ends meet, but with costs increasing on everything from supplies to wages and property, they’re facing economic pressures like never before. For many of these businesses, particularly for minority-owned small businesses or those in low-income communities, they live on the edge between staying afloat or losing their business and family livelihood.
Business in California has become almost untenable due to the extreme level of overregulation impacting our economy. Unfortunately, this is the economic environment that California has become known for – overregulated with unreasonable delays that lead to missed opportunities for improvements in our communities.
I’m speaking up because I believe in the future of California, not to lay out a laundry list of frustrations. We have one of the most diverse states in the country and our elected officials recognize the promise of communities like mine and Pastor Cue’s.
However, if our lawmakers are serious about growth opportunities for small businesses, particularly in Black and Brown communities, they must commit to cutting overly prohibitive red tape – this is a social justice commitment that will grow our economy. Governor Newsom agrees – following the January wildfires and the examples of permitting delays that became clear in the wake of the devastation, he made combatting overregulation a priority for 2025 and recently signed legislation into law to streamline regulations to boost our affordable housing supply.
I urge local and state lawmakers to follow his lead and take that agenda even further by asking themselves how they can make it easier, not harder, for minority businesses to launch, grow, and succeed.