L.A.’s Dysfunction Hits Home

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By ELLIA THOMPSON

Most of us have dreamed of someday building a home on our own piece of land. Whether you can afford a small lot in a rural area or a large piece of land with spectacular city views, the dream resonates for all of us.

Nowhere in the dream do we fantasize about tackling the labyrinth of confusing zoning and planning laws or dealing with the political grandstanding and emotional uproar that has become common with land-use cases in Los Angeles. And then there’s the nightmare of spending tens of thousands of dollars on expert reports and architectural plans only to see the city deny the project in order to appease a neighbor who doesn’t want to live near construction.

Take for instance my client who is trying to build one house on a 40-acre site in the Hollywood Hills. His project has drawn a great deal of media attention recently, due in part to a councilman who thinks individual property rights are his to dismiss and outright lies are an acceptable form of communication, especially when the cameras and microphones are on.

After living in the Hollywood Hills for more than a decade with his wife and children, my client decided to build his dream home on his 40-acre lot located directly above his current home. He carefully chose the home’s location to ensure the least amount of disturbance – both to the natural habitat of the entire parcel as well as to his neighbors.

To date, he has spent nearly seven years and hundreds of thousands of dollars on various city fees and consultants to obtain approval to build on his legal, residentially zoned lot. One reason for the delay is the city’s ill-advised hillside baseline ordinance, which appears to have been aggressively pushed forward by political pressure from anti-development groups rather than based on careful analysis by the city’s top engineers and environmental consultants.

Another reason is due to the political maneuverings of Councilman Tom LaBonge, who stated emphatically in front of a group of reporters that he had asked the property owner “to meet with him in the field (and) he chose not to.” The truth is we met with the councilman and his staff no less than four times – twice at the property site. I have the emails, letters, related documents and even a parking receipt to prove it. At the meetings with us, LaBonge would grandly pontificate that he “envisioned a public park at that site,” instructing my client to donate his privately owned property for such use. The fact that this is a privately owned, residentially zoned parcel didn’t factor into the councilman’s equation.

Rights impacted

Other clients of our firm have found their property rights severely impacted by other city actions, including two neighbors who have each lived in their home for more than 20 years. Both property owners have spent the past five years saving and planning for a major renovation to make their home larger and more functional for their respective families. They aren’t developers or flippers. They are husbands and fathers who love the neighborhood they live in so much that their idea of a dream home is one that they build themselves in the neighborhood they’ve lived in for decades.

Just a few weeks before they planned to submit their plans to the city, they were informed that an “urgency ordinance” had just been passed by the City Council to institute tight construction limits designed to eliminate major renovations or new construction within their neighborhood.

The restrictions aren’t imposed because of any real safety or public health issue – i.e., loss of low-income units or massive traffic congestion. Nor is the ordinance designed to create a historic district. Rather, these restrictions came about because certain people living in the area don’t like other property owners building bigger, more modern-style homes. The result of these arbitrary changes in the city’s planning and zoning code is that some people in the neighborhood will live in a larger, more modern home while others will be stuck in a smaller, older home with limited ability to ever enlarge or substantially renovate their property.

And this isn’t just happening in one small area. It’s happening in numerous pockets throughout the city whenever a vocal, organized group can convince a council member that enough votes are at stake to make that lawmaker act in their interest.

And therein lies the problem. Strategic planning for any city, let alone one as large and complex as Los Angeles, should rely on the expertise and evidential findings of engineers, professional urban planners, demographic researchers and environmental consultants, while taking into account the opinions of the community – not the other way around.

It might be debatable whether increased building footprints and modern architecture boost property values or dilute the character of a neighborhood, or whether the city should have purchased a 40-acre lot for a public park years ago when it had an opportunity. What is certain is that the inconvenience of new construction and neighbors’ preferences should not be given greater deference than constitutionally protected property rights.

Ellia Thompson is managing partner at CA Land Use Professionals, an L.A. law firm specializing in land use,environmental and other real estate issues.

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