OUR NEIGHBORHOODS ARE ON THE LINE
Maria Pavlou Kalban, SOHA Legislative Committee Chair
June 2025
Just a quick update on Senate Bill 79. As you all know, if passed, SB79 would allow 6- to 7-story apartments anywhere within a half-mile radius of a commuter rail or bus stop in a dedicated bus lane. Currently this would impact a lot of Sherman Oaks. In the years to come, even more impact will be felt through HLA, an initiative passed by voters that requires LA to add dedicated bus lanes anytime they repave 1/8-mile of any major street. SB79 passed all CA Senate committee hearings and heads for a senate floor vote in early June. It had lots of opposition. If passed by the Senate, it moves quickly to the Assembly. We will let you know how our Senator Stern voted and will ask all of you to email our Assemblymember Nick Schultz to oppose SB79: assemblymember.schultz@assembly.ca.gov. We are fighting SB79 because LA has enough housing capacity on transit and commercial corridors to more than meet our needs without ending single-family or low-density multi-family neighborhoods. By mid-July we will know the fate of our neighborhoods. Please get involved.
HOW TO STOP SACRAMENTO FROM TARGETING OUR SINGLE-FAMILY NEIGHBORHOODS
Click the link above to learn more.
HOW TRANSIT STOPS CAN BE WEAPONIZED
Maria Pavlou Kalban, SOHA Legislative Committee Chair
April 2025
The Sherman Oaks Homeowners Association and our coalition of community groups, United Neighbors, are opposed to recently introduced CA Senate Bill 79 because it is a reckless bill that randomly allows six-story apartments in single- and multi-family neighborhoods, historic districts, and light-industrial zones if they are within a one-half mile radius of a transit rail stop or a bus stop that has a dedicated bus lane on any part of its route and provides less than a 15-minute headway (time between arrivals). We translated this to the Sherman Oaks map below with circles showing where SB79 would apply to us – and the impact both north and south of Ventura Boulevard is massive. SB79 applies to almost our entire community. On top of this, since Metro routes are constantly revised, eliminated, or added and headways improved, more and more neighborhoods will meet SB79 requirements to allow six-story apartments. Throughout the whole city, residential neighborhoods will be impacted needlessly. LA City recently passed a massive Housing Element that will dramatically densify the city. It allows lots of density and height on our commercial and transit corridors that complies with the state housing mandate for all levels of housing affordability, while protecting our neighborhoods. SB79 disregards the city’s efforts. Our United Neighbors group was able to get a resolution to oppose SB79 introduced by LA Councilmember Lee and seconded by Councilmember Park. This is a very positive step forward for our city. But unless the full City Council passes this resolution, the city’s lobbyists cannot convey the city’s opposition against SB79 to legislators in Sacramento. We are now asking people to please send a request to LA’s Council President Marqueece Harris-Dawson to expediate a full City Council vote. Please send your request to: councilmember.harris-dawson@lacity.org and copy: karen.bass@lacity.org. Too many resolutions get slow walked through the process and become irrelevant. We can’t let this happen. A few more words about SB79. It is a bill that does not require affordable housing which is what we need in LA. Rather than incentivize affordable housing near transit as done in LA’s Housing Element, SB79 does not require any affordable units and will encourage market-rate housing, which doesn’t help the city reach its affordability requirements and hurts the very people who need to live near transit. Future developments will pop up randomly throughout neighborhoods and will require infrastructure improvements to bring needed water, sewer, and power. Who pays for this? Most upsetting is that the city spent millions of dollars preparing its Housing Element and now a state bill can make it pointless. This is a complete and unnecessary waste of taxpayer money. We contacted our Councilmember Raman whose electronic reply to our letter directed us to Senator Stern because this is a state matter not a local one. But in fact, it is very much a local issue – check out the map. This will affect all of us forever. The city needs to stand up for good planning and so should Senator Stern who lives in Sherman Oaks. Let’s stay united in fighting this bill.
STAYING VIGILANT
Maria Pavlou Kalban, SOHA Legislative Committee Chair
March 2025 | Sherman Oaks Homeowners Association Newsletter
When Los Angeles approved the Housing Element last year, single-family neighborhoods were protected from being impacted with more density. We fought for this Housing Element because we knew that LA had enough capacity to build lots of housing on commercial corridors. But we also knew this would not be the end of the attacks on single-family neighborhoods. Pro-development groups like Abundant Housing, YIMBY, and Streets for All, and even several individual LA councilmembers want single-family neighborhoods included in the rezoning of LA. They want more density in our neighborhoods even though the city has more than enough capacity to build all needed housing on our corridors. It was no surprise, therefore, when CA Senator Scott Wiener introduced two new state bills that would add more density to single-family neighborhoods. State bills have the power to override any local ordinance a city approves. We would be unable to stop higher density in our neighborhoods if these new bills pass. It is unfair to do this before cities have a chance to implement and analyze results from their new Housing Elements. We are currently meeting with the Planning Department and legislative analysts to discuss these complicated bills before we start a statewide effort to stop them. We will eventually need your help to convince our CA Senator Henry Stern and our newly elected CA Assemblymember Nick Schultz to vote against or amend these bills. It won’t be easy to defeat Senator Wiener, the powerful author of these bills, but hopefully we can convince our electeds that these bills will do more unnecessary harm if not defeated or amended. Next month we will start explaining these bills to you and ask for your help reaching out to our electeds. Your involvement will make a difference, especially when added to all the voices in the city that will be part of this effort.
RISING TO NEW CHALLENGES – NOT TO DESPAIR
Maria Pavlou Kalban, SOHA Legislative Committee Chair
February 2025 | Sherman Oaks Homeowners Association Newsletter
As we all begin to recover from the devastation of the recent fires, we must take a moment to express our gratitude to the first responders that gave their all to protect our communities. In the first week after the fires, Sherman Oaks Homeowners Association provided meals to fire station crews that serve Sherman Oaks. We also helped coordinate the delivery of food to other stations citywide by activating the network of communities that make up United Neighbors. We want to thank everyone that helped in this effort, but especially to our many restaurants. Despite facing their own challenges, they stepped up – preparing nutritious meals, offering steep discounts, and even donating food. Special thanks go to Valley Inn, Bone Yard Bistro, Maria’s Italian Kitchen, Carnival, Cava, and Casa Vega for being partners with us in this effort. Many other restaurants volunteered on their own and often partnered with other groups and organizations. Now more than ever, we need to support these restaurants that are very much a part of our community. Looking ahead, we recognize the growing concerns of the Palisades and Altadena residents where large investment firms may attempt to acquire distressed properties and take advantage of new state laws to increase housing density, changing the character of these neighborhoods. Currently the city, county, and state have put in emergency measures that will protect residents from this scenario by allowing only the rebuilding of housing within a similar footprint as was allowed before. The county is even reaching out to the state to pause some of the state housing bills that could enable overdevelopment in fire-affected areas. We must remain vigilant. Pro-development groups continue to push for increased density citywide using the fire as an opportunity to advance their agenda of eliminating single-family neighborhoods. We continue to support the city’s Housing Element that was meticulously crafted and put into place in December with our support. Our city should build with purpose and care. We do not need to end single-family neighborhoods to provide more housing. We need to concentrate our efforts on our major corridors that can handle more density and create more community benefits. We must not lose our focus because of these fires. We have the capacity to build what we need within the commercial corridors we have. Building new housing while replacing destroyed housing will be challenging, but not because we don’t have the space, but because we now need more labor, materials, and funding all at the same time. We have some pretty impressive councilmembers that see the challenge ahead as an opportunity to build better and more thoughtfully. We will stand with these councilmembers as we move forward to rebuild.
EVERYONE WINS WITH THE NEW HOUSING ELEMENT
Maria Pavlou Kalban, SOHA Legislative Committee Chair
January 2025 | Sherman Oaks Homeowners Association Newsletter
Good news – LA’s Housing Element, the Planning Department’s blueprint for rezoning the city, has been approved by the City Council without rezoning of our single-family neighborhoods. This Housing Element will create new affordable housing incentives for developers while protecting single-family, historic-district, and environmentally sensitive areas from higher density. As logical and straightforward as this Housing Element is and how much density it will add to the city, getting the draft approved was not easy. Land speculators want to build apartments in single-family neighborhoods. They have convinced the media, educational institutions, and politicians that unless all neighborhoods are rezoned to allow apartments, we will be unable to build the housing the state mandates. The Vision Committee of the Sherman Oaks Neighborhood Council and our United Neighbors groups have worked with the Planning Department, City Council offices, and the mayor’s office showing them that there is plenty of zoning capacity to build all needed housing along our commercial corridors that run through communities. We can create more affordable housing in mixed-income developments on these corridors because they offer developers favorable economy of scale. After much outreach by all our groups, the Planning Department finally presented the draft Housing Element. This draft found enough zoning capacity to meet the state’s housing mandate while affirmatively furthering fair housing without the need to end single-family neighborhoods. Planning’s focus centered on commercial corridors. As the Housing Element progressed through the city approval process, our United Neighbors groups were there supporting the Planning Department’s draft. With much protesting from pro-development groups and media outlets, the Housing Element still passed all city agency hearings without single-family neighborhoods being rezoned for multi-family. The last hurdle for final approval was the December 10th City Council meeting. At that meeting, our own Councilmember Raman introduced a last-minute amendment that would needlessly rezone parts of single-family neighborhoods. She delivered a speech about homelessness and the inability for the city to meet housing goals set by the state if single-family areas were not included. Perhaps unbeknown to the councilmember, the state had already sent a letter of support to the Planning Department for their draft. The state’s approval is mandatory and is not easily received, so this letter was a big deal. At this hearing, Councilmembers debated the issue about including single-family neighborhoods. Some explained to Councilmember Raman that zoning had nothing to do with the slowdown in getting more housing built in LA. They stated that large housing projects, even on commercial corridors, were not moving forward because banks were not approving loans and the barriers caused by the high cost of borrowing money. Most economist agree that slow housing production is not a zoning issue but an economic issue. Rezoning single-family neighborhoods is not going to solve that problem. Councilmember Raman said she supports “gentle density” in our single-family neighborhoods. State law allows up to four housing units on every single-family lot. Any rezoning that allows just five units of housing (as proposed by Councilmember Raman’s motion) would automatically make that property “multi-family” which grants a developer the right by state law to build a six-story apartment next door to single-family homes – and no one could stop this, not even the councilwoman. That is not gentle density. Hooray! The full City Council voted to approve the Planning Department’s Housing Element without the rezoning of single-family neighborhoods. We need affordable single-family homes just as much as we need affordable apartments. We are currently working with the Planning Department on ideas to add more single-family homes that could be affordable. The fight for single-family zones is not over. We must stay vigilant. We need to keep working together to create a beautiful and inclusive Sherman Oaks. What lobbyists and some politicians may not know – or want to acknowledge – is that developing our commercial corridors could create new vibrant neighborhoods without displacing anyone. It could create plazas for residents to gather and could revitalize our businesses with added foot traffic. Thank you all that helped support our efforts.
A WORD SOMETIMES DOES MATTER
Maria Pavlou Kalban, SOHA Legislative Committee Chair
November 2024 | Sherman Oaks Homeowners Association Newsletter
As Draft #3 of the Housing Element advances through the city process, a Letter of Determination (prepared by the Planning Department) was sent from the Planning Commission to the City Council stating the Commission’s support for the rezoning plan as presented in the Housing Element Draft #3 without “options” that would have opened single-family neighborhoods to higher density. Although the letter stated support for the Planning Department’s staff report, a part of the report that explained all the “options” for rezoning single-family neighborhoods was labeled “recommended by the City Planning Commission”. This was not only incorrect but also could prove damaging since what the Commission recommends is something City Council seriously considers. Having been at the hearing, we knew the Commission had never recommended the “options” and this needed correcting. To be clear, the Commissioners had discussed the possibility of taking a position on these “options”, but they chose not to and simply supported the Planning Department’s staff report. We immediately sent out a letter of concern to Planning Director Vince Bertoni stating that the wording in his department’s communication was in error and needed to be corrected for the record. As you all know, wording matters. Initially we were told the only thing that mattered was the Planning Commission’s support of the Staff Report which clearly omitted the options and the use of “recommended” on the section of the draft report that spoke to the options wasn’t an issue. Frankly we couldn’t see how it didn’t matter. We sent out an alert to our United Neighbors coalition to write to Director Bertoni insisting on the correction. Lots of letters went out that day and within 24 hours the Planning Department informed us that the word “recommended” was removed and a correction was submitted to the Council File and in the letter of Determination going to City Council. Next step for this process is the City Council Planning and Land Use Committee (PLUM) hearing that might occur on November 19th. Hopefully the committee will approve Draft #3 of the CHIP/Housing Element without options and send that recommendation on to the City Council for a full council vote. We know there are councilmembers that support the idea of opening our single-family neighborhoods for apartment developments, but our own detailed analyses concluded that it is absolutely unnecessary to do so in order to build the housing we need and accommodate more people into all our communities. We stand by our position that the city needs to do the least amount of harm to existing neighborhoods (both multi- and single-family) while at the same time encouraging new housing on our corridors that can create tomorrow’s new welcoming neighborhoods with more diversity for each of our communities
CONSTRUCTION STARTED ON NEW SHERMAN OAKS’ CHICK-FIL-A
Tom Glick, SOHA Planning and Land Use Committee Chair
November 2024 | Sherman Oaks Homeowners Association Newsletter
The construction on the new Chick-fil-A at 5043 Van Nuys Blvd in Sherman Oaks is officially underway! Here’s what to expect: Demolition and Construction: Demolition and construction activities began on Monday, October 28th, 2024. Preservation of Historic Elements: The contractor’s team is working closely with historic consultants to ensure the preservation of the building's historic features. Construction Timeline: The contractor’s schedule shows completion in Summer 2025. Monthly Updates: SOHA will provide regular updates to keep the public informed about construction progress and other important information. Security Measures: To ensure site security, the contractor will implement: perimeter fencing with dust cloth cover; an on-site security guard; and video surveillance towers with motion-activated lighting. Questions: Contact the Project Superintendent, Jason Irvine at (714) 258-6670. Chick-fil-A appreciates the community’s patience and understanding they bring this new restaurant to Sherman Oaks.
A VICIOUS LA REZONING BATTLE - NOT FOR THE FAINT OF HEART!
Maria Pavlou Kalban, SOHA Legislative Committee Chair
October 2024 | Sherman Oaks Homeowners Association Newsletter
The process to approve the “Housing Element” document that rezones our City of Los Angeles is a long process. As we have reported, it started for us two years ago with Draft 1 of the Housing Element that had major areas of our single-family neighborhoods targeted for rezoning to allow apartments. We fought that first draft with community maps showing where we could add enough housing on our commercial corridors to meet the housing needs of our city while protecting existing residential areas. The Planning Department presented an updated Draft 2 at the end of June 2024 – it removed the rezoning of single-family and historic districts. SOHA supported Draft 2. Then in July 2024 at a Zoning hearing to approve the Planning Department’s Draft 2, a large number of people organized by the pro-development group Abundant Housing complained that protecting these residential neighborhoods from development was socially unjust and racist, insisting that apartments be allowed in single-family neighborhoods. In September 2024, the Planning Department released Draft 3 – again our single-family neighborhoods were protected. However, unbeknown to us, Exhibit D on page 830 of the 2,050-page Draft 3 document offered seven options for rezoning single-family neighborhoods – the least restrictive option allowing apartments in any neighborhood. Draft 3 headed to the Planning Commission for approval on Thursday September 26 – ten days after being released to the public. The Planning Department’s staff report advocated for Draft 3 without the options to end single-family neighborhoods. However, the options were included in the report and the Planning Commission could include them should they wish. At the Planning Commission hearing, more than 100 people spoke in favor of ending single-family neighborhoods – only ten of us were allowed speak in support of the draft without the single-family-neighborhood-destroying options before the allocated time for public comment ended. Because so many speakers demanded the options be considered, many Planning commissioners waivered on whether to include the options, but at the last moment passed Draft 3 with no options added. The Commission noted that the City Council would deal with this “options” issue. Draft 3 now goes to the Planning and Land Use Management (PLUM) Committee of the City Council and then to the full City Council for a final vote. We have already heard from some council offices that they are considering adding the options back into Draft 3. This would end single-family neighborhoods as we know them. At this point, if you care about neighborhoods – all neighborhoods – working class neighborhoods, Latino neighborhoods, Black neighborhoods, middle-class neighborhoods, wealthy neighborhoods – YOU NEED TO SPEAK UP NOW! Adding apartments in single-family neighborhoods will not bring down the price of housing. Vancouver was among the first cities to add apartments in single-family neighborhoods – and years later they found that house prices continued to climb. Los Angeles needs to fund affordable housing which will require more funding than the city has. This is why the city keeps giving away more and more “incentives” to private developers – hoping these can “solve” the city’s affordable housing problem. But developers build to make a profit and building needed affordable housing is not economically feasible for them. The city is even willing to needlessly end our single-family neighborhoods to get developers to build apartments. There are solutions – but pro-development groups that want single-family neighborhoods rezoned drown out more nuanced voices. Even Mayor Bass – who has always praised our Sherman Oaks housing study – stays pretty quiet about protecting single-family homeowners. Keep an eye out for our email blasts as this process advances rapidly over the next few weeks. And please be part of the solution and make your voice heard. Opening up single-family neighborhoods should be discussed publicly with input from everyone in LA – not determined by a group of well-paid lobbyists. Stick with us. This is not for the faint of heart.
IT DOES TAKE A VILLAGE!
Maria Pavlou Kalban, SOHA Legislative Committee Chair
September 2024 | Sherman Oaks Homeowners Association Newsletter
“Thank You!” goes out to each and every one of you that took the time to send in a comment to the Planning Department regarding Draft #2 of the Housing Element’s rezoning plan. It takes all of us, working together and keeping a close eye on what the city is planning, to ensure good results for Sherman Oaks. We are currently waiting for Draft #3 of the Housing Element to be released sometime in mid-September. We were told the new draft will be based on the recent, public comments received by the Planning Department. By mid-September, we will know whether our single-family neighborhoods and older more affordable multi-family apartments will be protected from being rezoned for more density. All of us must continue to play a part in supporting more affordable housing in our community. Adding density isn’t necessarily a bad thing. – if done correctly, density can enrich our community. But we also want to be sure that as we add housing on our commercial corridors, our existing businesses aren’t displaced and our right to have single-family neighborhoods taken away. We hope our councilmember will help us achieve our vision. She has a big role to play in the future of Sherman Oaks as we continue to work with the Planning Department on our Community Plan.
HERE WE GO AGAIN!
Maria Pavlou Kalban, SOHA Legislative Committee Chair
August 2024 | Sherman Oaks Homeowners Association Newsletter
Every bit of good news seems to be followed by some bad news. That seems to be true with anything involving the city. Especially when it comes to rezoning LA. Last year Draft #1 of the Housing Element was released and showed huge areas of single-family neighborhoods being targeted for more density (allowing apartments). We fought that plan because based on the city’s own data, there was plenty of new housing capacity to meet the state mandate by allowing more density on commercial corridors and large boulevards in each of our high-resource areas (the city identifies Sherman Oaks as a high-resource area). We organized many other high-resources communities and 185-pages worth of maps later we were able to show the city there was plenty of capacity citywide to reach the state housing mandate. In June 2024, a revised Draft #2 was released, all the overlays were removed, and single-family, historic districts, and rent-stabilized units were all protected as the city moved forward with their densification plans. We sent out letters of support for Draft #2 and asked all of you, through our email blasts, to do the same. We also sought support from our citywide partners. The response was massive. But pro-development groups that don’t care how much we build on our corridors, objected to the removal of single-family neighborhoods from being densified. They asked their followers to demand that the Planning Department not protect single-family neighborhoods, historic districts, and the coastal zone. They stated homeowners are all elitist that wield too much influence and refuse to promote social justice in their community by protecting their single-family neighborhoods. They managed to get enough people to call into a public meeting demanding these neighborhoods not be exempt, that the Planning Department is asking for more public input before finalizing their draft and deciding whether to exempt single-family neighborhoods. We are more than disappointed because Draft #2 offered good incentives for more housing while respecting existing neighborhoods. This now becomes a situation of which side screams the loudest rather than what works best for all the residents of the city. We hope you have sent in your comments regarding Draft #2 as per our email blast request. We must speak up now or we will never be able to protect our neighborhoods from large apartments. We need you and your friends to send in comments of support for Draft #2 that protects our neighborhoods to: housingelement@lacity.org by August 25th. Please be sure to reference file number CPC-2023-7068-CA.
IS OWNING A HOME A THING OF THE PAST?
Maria Pavlou Kalban, SOHA Legislative Committee Chair
June 2024 | Sherman Oaks Homeowners Association Newsletter
Looking around our community, we understand how expensive it has become to own a home or rent an apartment. In the past, moving from a small home to a larger one was common practice, and moving from an apartment to a home was a rite of passage. But today staying put is a more financially prudent thing to do. From apartment to home back to an apartment was a normal cycle for many of us, but because we no longer move, young people are shut out of buying homes even when older couples would prefer to downsize into a condo or apartment. Today the city thinks adding more apartments will bring down the cost of housing – but will it? There is a lot of money in LA. That money enables people to buy old homes, remodel them into upscale homes, and sell them for three times the original purchase price. We have so many high-income earners that these houses sell quickly. This leaves lots of people with modest incomes behind. The city has no way to address this problem and continues to advocate for more apartments as the solution. But what if someone wants a home? What is the city doing to help middle-income earners buy a home? This July the Planning Department is releasing the Community Plans for Sherman Oaks that will show in detail how the city will rezone our community block by block. We hope all of you join us at the Sherman Oaks Library on Tuesday, July 18 at 6:30 pm for a discussion and review of what the city proposes and what we can do about it. We hope our councilmember will be part of these discussions as well. Stay tuned and be sure to join us. Please lend your voice to this discussion. SOHA also wants to help by continuing to push for affordable housing on our commercial corridors. We feel there is an opportunity to add attached townhouses to many commercial sites that abut single-family neighborhoods. This would lessen the impact of higher density on residents adjacent to these sites while also creating new more-affordable housing options for people looking for homes.
SB9 DECLARED UNCONSTITUTIONAL – FOR NOW
Maria Pavlou Kalban, SOHA Legislative Committee Chair
May 2024 | Sherman Oaks Homeowners Association Newsletter
SB9, the state law that ended single-family zoning by allowing four homes to be built on a single-family lot or allowing a single-family lot to be split in half with two housing units on each half, has been declared unconstitutional in Los Angeles County. SOHA opposed SB9 because it was presented as a bill that addressed our affordable housing problem but none of the units built under SB9 were required to be affordable. We always felt this was a bill created more to benefit developers than homeowners. The bill caused controversy because the state claimed that affordable housing was a statewide concern and, as a result, the state could overrule any city’s land use laws. In California we have 121 charter cities and Los Angeles is one of them. Charter cities have their own charter that grants them constitutional right to govern their own municipal affairs. Land use is considered a municipal affair. Cities fought against the loss of this local land-use control when SB9 was introduced. The bill ultimately was passed in the legislature and became law in 2021. On April 22, the Superior Court in Los Angeles ruled SB9 unconstitutional, granting a victory for a case brought by the City of Redondo Beach vs Attorney General Rob Bonta. In the ruling the lawyers for Redondo Beach argued that the premise of SB9 was neither reasonably related to its stated concern of ensuring access to affordable housing nor narrowly tailored to avoid interference with a local government’s right to determine its own land use laws. The court stated that the State of California “presented no evidence to support the assertion that the upzoning permitted by SB9 would result in any increase in supply of below-market-rate housing.” The court concluded that “SB 9 is therefore unconstitutional as violative of the home rule doctrine.” This ruling will certainly be challenged by the State of California. The ruling currently applies only to charter cities but has tremendous potential impact. If this ruling is upheld, a charter city that allows SB9 could be sued by individuals objecting to its application. We will keep you informed as this case moves forward.
DENSITY DOESN’T HAVE TO BE A BAD WORD
Maria Pavlou Kalban, SOHA Legislative Committee Chair
April 2024 | Sherman Oaks Homeowners Association Newsletter
The goal of Sherman Oaks Homeowners Association and United Neighbors is to protect our single-family and sensitive multi-family neighborhoods while supporting the city’s plan to add more density in our community. We shouldn’t fear density if it is added responsibly and with the needs of both longtime and new residents in mind. The city has many ways to rezone communities for more density. The Housing Element is one. The Housing Element takes the big picture view of the city, identifying where more housing density should go. The Planning Department is responsible for the Housing Element and is currently focusing their efforts to add more density in areas considered High Resource. By offering more incentives to developers to build in these areas, the city hopes to become more equitable in offering affordable housing throughout LA. Early on, we fought the Housing Element proposals not because they target Sherman Oaks as High Resource but because they considered allowing large apartment buildings in our single-family neighborhoods as well as other neighborhoods throughout the city. By the city’s own data, we showed them that there was more than enough capacity to add the density needed in each of our communities without densifying existing single-family or multi-family neighborhoods. We fought the city and created maps showing where individual communities could add more housing in each of their High Resource areas. We won that battle and single-family neighborhoods in the newly released Housing Element were left untouched citywide. Executive Directive 1 (ED1), the mayor’s directive that fast tracks 100%-affordable housing, is another tool that could rezone neighborhoods. Shortly after the mayor’s directive was put in affect, many developers proposed 7-story apartment buildings in single-family zones. Realizing this as an error, the mayor amended ED1 and exempted single-family neighborhoods from consideration. Currently we are working with the mayor’s office to create guidelines for ED1 because the city is moving to make this directive a permanent ordinance. Our guidelines will continue to protect single-family neighborhoods and also protect areas sensitive to more density such as high-fire zones, substandard streets, areas far from transit, historically significant neighborhoods in many low resource areas, and our environment. We’ve discussed our guidelines with the mayor’s office, and hopefully they will be adopted by the City Council and supported by our councilmember. Finally, we have Community Plans that take the micro view of our city and rezone individual streets in our neighborhoods. We are currently waiting to see the plans for Sherman Oaks that should be released in May. The North Sherman Oaks Plan that rezones a small area of Sherman Oaks (Burbank to Oxnard) has been released and will be discussed at the Vision Committee meeting, 6:30 pm April 4th at the Sherman Oaks library. Join us for the discussion. Many of us regret the loss of low-density Valley communities. For many of us, it was the more relaxed environment that attracted us to the Valley. We can’t stop the city’s need to add more density. But if we do this right, the density we get will be density we can live with. That is why we at SOHA, along with United Neighbors and SONC, remain engaged in all the different processes and hope you all take an interest in the future of Sherman Oaks. Be part of the discussion when the Community Plan for Sherman Oaks is released in May. Details to follow.
WHAT YOU NEED TO KNOW ABOUT MAYOR BASS EXECUTIVE DIRECTIVE 1 PROJECTS
Maria Pavlou Kalban, SOHA Legislative Committee Chair
March 2024 | Sherman Oaks Homeowners Association Newsletter
As you might remember, shortly after Mayor Bass took office, she started issuing Executive Directives – a means to quick start her housing policies. The first directive, ED 1 was intended to streamline the planning approval process for any 100%-affordable housing project in hopes of getting needed affordable housing built quickly. ED 1 saves developers a lot of time and money by not having to go through environmental or community reviews. This streamlined process helps make many projects “pencil out” financially for developers. However, ED 1 was initially issued with no detailed guidelines in place to protect communities from overly aggressive development. As a result, soon after ED 1 was announced, projects began to be proposed for several sites in single-family neighborhoods. The mayor’s intent was never to allow apartments in single-family neighborhoods, so her office quickly corrected the omission and exempted single-family R1 zones from eligibility. There are three projects still in single-family neighborhoods in the Valley that were submitted before the neighborhoods were exempt and are now in litigation. But this was not ED 1’s only shortfall. Now, throughout LA, communities are noticing inappropriate projects being proposed in their neighborhoods. A proposed project in the Hollywood Hills is a 10-story apartment building on a substandard single-lane, curvy hillside road. Another ED 1 project in Windsor Village is seeking waivers from the city on setback requirements, parking requirements, tree preservation, bike spaces, and open space – and more. Another large Japantown project is proposed on Sawtelle in an historic Japanese community with small duplexes and single-family homes. Lawsuits are mounting up. Currently the city is moving to make ED 1 a permanent ordinance. Once that happens, detailed guidelines for what is allowed must be made clear and legally binding. We are currently working with the mayor’s ED 1 point person to help add common-sense guidelines to the ordinance to avoid the problems the directive is causing. We have submitted ten guidelines for the draft ordinance that we feel would protect communities from these problematic projects while supporting all other 100%-affordable housing projects. The draft ordinance must go before the City Council’s PLUM Committee. We are currently trying to meet with committee members. If our guidelines make the draft, we feel the entire city will benefit. It doesn’t help anyone if lawsuits keep being filed. With the right guidelines, ED 1 could help bring to reality 100%-affordable housing projects that are worth fast tracking while protecting communities from invasive projects. We think this was the mayor’s original intent. But that intent failed because ED 1 lacked detailed guidelines.
WE NEED YOUR SUPPORT AS NEW HOUSING REZONING MAPS MOVE FORWARD
Maria Pavlou Kalban, SOHA Legislative Committee Chair
February 2024 | Sherman Oaks Homeowners Association Newsletter
As many of you know, we started a citywide coalition of neighborhood groups called United Neighbors to give city stakeholders a voice in determining how their communities will be developed. Communities throughout LA have their own unique personalities, but the city and state love to pass sweeping policies that don’t take that uniqueness into account. The issue we have been covering this past year is how to add needed affordable housing appropriately and tailored to each community’s unique needs. It’s a real challenge! Over the past year, the LA Planning Department proposed rezoning several single-family neighborhoods to allow apartment development in order to meet state-mandated housing requirements. But the Planning Department failed to rezone many areas on commercial corridors that are much better suited to accommodate large multi-family housing than our residential neighborhoods. We approached the Planning Department with zoning ideas and pointed out sites much better suited for up-zoning in Sherman Oaks. They replied that they appreciated our “ground view” to their 30,000-foot view of the city. To us that meant we could become collaborators for the best outcome. The Planning Department didn’t see it that way and remained focused on rezoning neighborhoods. We reached out to other LA City communities and found the Planning Department was using the same generic approach for up-zoning new housing into their neighborhoods. SOHA and United Neighbors joined with many of these communities, created community-based maps with better solutions for more housing, and shared these with many councilmembers, the Planning Department, and members of the Mayor’s staff. Your support alongside our community partners played a pivotal role in convincing the Planning Department in October to step back from rezoning our single-family neighborhoods in the upcoming Housing Element. THANK YOU! However, we must remain vigilant, knowing that there are groups advocating for the unnecessary rezoning of our neighborhoods. We continue our engagement with the Mayor’s office, Planning Department, and City Council offices. Our coalition of communities have found many great areas for developing more affordable multifamily housing, even including solutions for adding more attached single-family dwellings. As we begin a new legislative year in Sacramento and anticipate potential changes in City Hall, we are committed to keeping you in the loop on the goings on in our city. Knowledge is our greatest weapon. We at SOHA and United Neighbors are here to keep you informed because your involvement is crucial. Together we will continue to advocate for community-based solutions for affordable housing. Change is inevitable but it must be done correctly with community input.
WAITING AND WAITING FOR NEW HOUSING MAPS
Maria Pavlou Kalban, SOHA Legislative Committee Chair
January 2024 | Sherman Oaks Homeowners Association Newsletter
Here’s what you need to know about the city’s rezoning plans – because it can greatly impact Sherman Oaks in 2024 and many years to come. As we have reported in the past, the LA Planning Department’s “Housing Element” is one mechanism by which the city will rezone our communities to allow for more housing. We have been working for the past year with our councilmember, senior planning department staff, and the mayor’s office showing them that in Sherman Oaks and much of LA, there are more than enough building opportunities on commercial corridors to add all needed housing mandated by the state. At the same time, we showed them that this new housing can become a real asset to the community and that we can still protect single-family and sensitive multi-family neighborhoods from unnecessary higher density. This is not NIMBYism – it’s just common sense. The Planning Department’s current maps show many of our single-family neighborhoods rezoned for apartments. The city had planned to issue revised Housing Element maps based on broad public input by late summer. In early Fall the Planning Department announced that the revised Housing Element and new maps were delayed but informed us that single-family neighborhoods throughout the city would not be further densified. We are still waiting for the Planning Department to release the revised Housing Element and maps. These are the only way we can verify that our neighborhoods are truly being left alone. The originally promised late-Summer release became late Fall, then became early December, and is now late January 2024. What this means is that the public comment period on the new maps is getting shorter – in fact there may be no comment period – because the final submission date to the state is set for February 2025. Once the Housing Element and maps are released to the public, they will need to go immediately into the Environmental Review process and then through review by all city agencies that need to approve them – the Planning Commission, City Council PLUM Committee, City Council, City Attorney, and back to City Council – before being submitted to the state. All this is quite disheartening because every delay gives the public less time to fight if the “promised” changes have not been made. The mayor always says communities need to have “skin in the game” when determining where new housing should appear in neighborhoods. Yet, all her new directives and the Planning Department’s Housing Element keep trimming or cutting out public comment time. We were recently invited to again present our community maps in late January 2024 to senior Planning Department staff and the Deputy Mayor of Economic Development. We will attend and present at that meeting but find this a bit disingenuous since the time to discuss better alternatives and changes to the city’s plans will be long since passed. We ask all of you to stay with us as we continue to fight for smart planning in our community and across the city. Remember, we need to add affordable housing, but the real issue is where and how to add it. We will update you as soon as we see the new Housing Element and maps. We may quickly need you to submit comments. Fighting for good planning in Sherman Oaks is easier if we have an advocate in City Hall. Be sure to attend our January debate with Council District 4 candidates so you can decide who will be the best advocate for us. Believe me, it has always mattered – but matters even more now!
THE ETHEL PROJECT – HUGE APARTMENTS COMING TO YOUR NEIGHBORHOOD SOON
Maria Pavlou Kalban, SOHA Legislative Committee Chair
November 2023 | Sherman Oaks Homeowners Association Newsletter
The LA City Council has just approved The Ethel Project – a 7-story, 200-unit affordable housing development in Sherman Oaks in an R1 single-family neighborhood. How did this project happen? Mayor Bass issued Executive Directive 1 which streamlined the approval process for any project that was 100 percent affordable housing. Streamlining means no public notices, no environmental reviews, and limited parking requirements – which saves developers so much time and so much money that they think they can profitably build such projects. With this streamlining process in place, suddenly more than 30 projects became feasible in single-family residential neighborhoods. The city says their intent was not to build apartments in single-family neighborhoods, so the mayor’s directive was quickly amended to exclude R1 residential neighborhoods. As a result, developers stopped most of these 30 projects. But eight projects were green lighted before the mayor’s amended directive was in place. The Ethel Project was one of those allowed to proceed. THE ETHEL PROJECT IN SHERMAN OAKS 200-Unit Apartment House in a Single-Family Residential Zone Because Sherman Oaks’ COUNCILMEMBER NITHYA RAMAN SUPPORTED THE ETHEL PROJECT, the City Council approved the project. Our neighboring Councilmember Bob Blumenfield did not support the projects in his district, so the City Council voted them down. The neighbors around The Ethel Project are now left to fight on their own. But The Ethel Project is really just the tip of the iceberg for LA residents and communities. Los Angeles has an abundance of land to accommodate housing on hundreds of miles of commercial corridors and on other publicly owned property. This is where the apartments should be and where the city can meet its housing needs. But the LA Planning Department is thinking about allowing apartments in our single-family neighborhoods. How? The LA Planning Department is currently rezoning communities through the Housing Element which is part of the city’s General Plan and is also called “The Plan to House LA”. The Housing Element identifies LA’s housing needs and opportunities, and SUPPOSEDLY establishes clear goals and objectives to inform future LA housing decisions. The Planning Department meets their “clear goals and objectives” by up-zoning many of LA’s single-family neighborhoods for 4- to 6-story apartment buildings – including many Sherman Oaks neighborhoods. IMPACTS OF THE HOUSING ELEMENT ON YOUR NEIGHBORHOOD 4, 5, and 6-Story Apartment Houses in Our Single-Family Residential Zones If the city approves the Housing Element as the LA Planning Department currently proposes it, get ready to have many huge apartments like The Ethel Project as next-door neighbors – approved with no public notice to residents and no public input from us. We can’t wait! We must fight this together now! Remember – Mayor Bass amended her Executive Directive 1 to exempt R1 single-family neighborhoods from huge apartment buildings. So, we feel strongly that the LA Planning Department’s Housing Element must also exempt all single-family neighborhoods from huge apartment buildings. But so far, the Planning Department is ignoring the problem – and our neighborhoods will suffer. The city needs to focus its efforts where we have the most opportunity to develop significant amounts of affordable housing – our existing commercial corridors which already have the space and the infrastructure to accommodate large apartment buildings. Leave our residential neighborhoods alone! SOHA will be soon sending out a CALL-TO-ACTION eblast asking you to send letters to Mayor Bass and Councilmember Raman demanding that they stop this unfair and unneeded assault on our single-family neighborhoods. Please have everyone in your family send a letter. Please ask your neighbors to send letters. DON’T STAY SILENT – BECAUSE YOU WILL REGRET IT.
LOOKING FOR THE GREATER GOOD IN OUR CITY’S HOUSING CRISIS
Tom Glick, SOHA Planning Committee Chair
November 2023 | Sherman Oaks Homeowners Association Newsletter
Many of our local leaders equate affordable housing production to the reduction of homelessness. Several studies do justify that point of view and it is hard to argue with the fact that we are in a severe housing crisis. My daughter lives in San Diego with three other roommates and still pays almost half of her monthly income for housing. Fortunately for her, she has a safety net in my wife and myself – but so many people don’t have that safety net. It is a fact that the price of housing in Los Angeles is outrageous in comparison to the other parts of the country and I applaud the efforts of many local and state leaders to produce more affordable housing. Unfortunately, many of these efforts are aimed at the wrong places, such as single-family neighborhoods. Los Angeles City is the largest metropolitan area by land area in the State of California and the 7th largest in the United States behind only Anchorage, Jacksonville, Houston, Oklahoma City, Phoenix, and San Antonio. The City of LA has plenty of underutilized land in all land-use categories, including commercial corridors, multi-family residential corridors, and surplus government land. There are so many areas in LA ripe for redevelopment with affordable housing. But the disconnect for many is why it seems like the state’s target – and our more-than-complicit city – is to incentivize this production – not in those higher-density and higher-intensity areas, but in our stable single-family neighborhoods. This doesn’t make sense because many single-family neighborhoods lack the necessary infrastructure to handle any housing increases, let alone huge apartments. Our local leaders, especially Mayor Bass, insist that they support the preservation of single-family neighborhoods – but there is always a caveat in their support saying “... but of course this all depends on what the state does.” So, our local leaders have chosen to hide behind the state and rationalize that they are pro-single-family – but they are also afraid of the state sanctioning our city. It is totally understandable for our local leadership to feel this way because we have a state with overwhelming Democratic leadership that is out of control – especially when it comes to producing housing. However, many think what the state is doing is a direct reaction to years and years of NIMBYism (not in my backyard) by many local jurisdictions that are afraid to challenge many powerful single-family homeowner groups that seem to fight every major (and sometimes minor) project in their community. And while many people and groups are trying to provide for rational solutions away from single-family neighborhoods – such as densification of commercial corridors and the like – it is never a certainty that whenever a project is proposed on a large commercial lot like the Sportmen’s Lodge housing development with its 15 percent affordable housing proposed for Studio City, the nearby neighborhoods still come out in opposition. The city’s threat to our single-family neighborhoods is real. The only way we can convince our leaders to look elsewhere to build is to stick together and not oppose affordable housing projects if located where they are best suited on underutilized commercial and multi-family residential land, as well as on underutilized public land – with direct reference to those neighborhoods who came out in opposition and effectively killed Councilmember David Ryu’s proposal five years ago to propose two underutilized commercial public lots in Sherman Oaks for homeless housing. WE ALL NEED TO LOOK TO THE GREATER GOOD IN OUR CITY’S HOUSING CRISIS
JUST THE TIP OF THE ICEBERG – A 7-STORY APARTMENT BUILDING ON ETHEL AVENUE
Tom Glick, SOHA Planning Committee Chair
October 2023 | Sherman Oaks Homeowners Association Newsletter
Building a seven-story 200-unit apartment building at 5511 Ethel Avenue in a single-family-zoned area is unacceptable! For the people who live in this quiet neighborhood, the shock of this immense apartment building on a large lot one block south of Burbank Boulevard and next to their two-story homes couldn’t have been greater. The site is adjacent to a tight-knit community of family friendly neighbors and The HELP Group, a school for special needs children and young adults. Without prior warning to anyone, the city approved this apartment building. Why? How? Here are the facts. Mayor Bass issued Executive Directive 1 that streamlined approvals for 100 percent affordable housing and removed the need to go through the public review process, provide parking, or conduct an environmental review. The directive allows 100 percent affordable projects to be built in low-density multi-family neighborhoods. But because the mayor failed to exempt R1 zones (single-family residential neighborhoods) from the zoning description, the Ethel Ave project and several others in the Valley got through the gate before the Mayor’s Office amended the directive to exclude R1 zones. The city tried to deny the project but then decided to back away, realizing they could face a lawsuit. Despite a tremendous amount of community opposition, especially from the large family-oriented local neighborhood and the HELP Group, the City Council passed the project on an 8-to-5 vote with a major push of support from our own Councilmember Nithya Raman. This situation is nuanced. The initial Executive Directive 1 and state laws combined made this project “by right” (essentially pre-approved) even if it was not the intent of the directive. But there are sensitivity issues for the residents and the school that should have been part of the discussion prior to approving the project – but weren’t. Decision makers should have taken the time to understand the community’s concerns – and helped them. Instead, blinded by a desire to build affordable housing at any cost, the city failed to weigh the needs of other vulnerable communities around that site. The city left the neighborhood to fend for itself. The residents would welcome the project if built on the boulevard and not in among their homes. The developer of the project has voluntarily agreed to come before Sherman Oaks Neighborhood Council Planning and Land Use Committee on November 16, 6:30 p.m. at the Sherman Oaks Library to hear community concerns. We need to work together to make sure problems get resolved before we move forward with projects. Come to the meeting and voice your opinions.
STANDING UP FOR OUR COMMUNITY
Maria Pavlou Kalban, SOHA Legislative Committee Chair
October 2023 | Sherman Oaks Homeowners Association Newsletter
This past year, our United Neighbors group has educated communities all over the city about the LA Planning Department’s proposal to rezone our single-family neighborhoods to allow large apartment buildings. We are troubled by the city’s lack of transparency in explaining impact and location of this rezoning to neighborhoods. The city’s supposed outreach about their rezoning plans included online webinars that never showed any actual maps or details about which neighborhoods would be rezoned. Community members sat through presentations that were general in nature and not specific about the impact. Even our LA councilmembers, who have access to the maps, didn’t reach out to their constituents through weekly newsletters or any other way to tell them what was being proposed in their communities. When we spoke with Councilmember Raman, she assured us that she would protect our neighborhoods as long as we found housing solutions on commercial corridors. We did this. We showed her maps of our community and which areas could be rezoned for more housing that left single-family and sensitive multi-family neighborhoods alone. But last week Councilmember Raman stated in a public meeting that she had no problem with apartments in our single-family neighborhoods. Hopefully, all of you have seen our email blast instructing you on how to contact the councilmember and the mayor to let them know you strongly oppose rezoning our residential neighborhoods for apartments. We need to stand together and show our opposition before the end of Fall when it will be too late to change the maps. We know there are ways to solve the housing needs of our community without rezoning our neighborhoods. It’s time the city listened to us first before acting so outrageously.
REZONED MAPS JUST THE BEGINNING
Maria Pavlou Kalban, SOHA Legislative Committee Chair
September 2023 | Sherman Oaks Homeowners Association Newsletter
The dark-shaded areas on the map below show you how Sherman Oaks will be rezoned in the next few months unless we convince city officials to change their minds and their maps now. Shaded areas in existing single-family neighborhoods will allow apartment building developments and shaded areas in older multi-family neighborhoods will allow newer, bigger, more expensive apartments. Look closely – this will impact many of us in Sherman Oaks. And it’s not necessary! We have shown the city and Councilmember Raman that there is plenty of room on our commercial corridors to accommodate the required housing, conform to state laws, and actually produce the more-affordable housing that we need. Homeowners and renters need to fight this together – or we all lose. We’ll need your help soon so please watch for our action plans.
REZONING NEIGHBORHOODS DOES NOT MAKE THEM AFFORDABLE
Maria Pavlou Kalban, SOHA Legislative Committee Chair
August 2023 | Sherman Oaks Homeowners Association Newsletter
As we continue to draw your attention to the LA Planning Department’s strategy to rezone the entire city, we want everyone to understand that residential neighborhoods are in jeopardy. If rezoned, we will have large apartments with no parking requirements in many of our neighborhoods. We want to point out – this is not necessary – in any way. We have lots of unused zoning capacity on our commercial corridors where we can add more housing without effecting our existing residential neighborhoods. Here is the data – and it’s terrifying. The state has mandated LA to zone enough land to allow for 455,000 units of housing in the city over the next eight years. The LA Planning Department added a “buffer” to the state’s number and is using 485,000 units as their mandate. Planning also stated that there is enough current zoning for 230,000 units – thus, they need up-zoning for 255,000 additional new units. But the Planning Department proposed up-zoning of 1,400,000 units instead – more than six times the actual number needed – and that means up-zoning a lot of our residential neighborhoods for no reason. By the city’s own data, if all the additional rezoning capacity they identify in our multi- and single-family residential neighborhoods was removed, the city would still have zoning capacity three times higher than the state mandate. Just to put everything in perspective, 1.4 million units means capacity to accommodate 3.9 million more people in LA over the next eight years. There is no population data supporting such a massive increase – almost double – of people in LA. The Planning Department is wrong. But remember, once our communities are up-zoned, we are forever vulnerable to developers building apartments next to our single-family homes. What Los Angeles really needs is affordable housing – and rezoning our residential neighborhoods will not produce affordable housing. We can build more housing on our commercial corridors, on publicly owned land, and through adaptive reuse of existing buildings – but to make them affordable the city needs to get serious about how to finance affordable housing and streamline the process for accessing the multiple funding sources developers need to build affordable units. Because of our committee’s outreach, communities throughout the city are waking up to this issue. We must all fight for more affordable housing and fight to protect our neighborhoods. We are working hard to do this and have established a coalition with the like-minded communities of Encino, Studio City, and Los Feliz. We have until late Fall to convince Councilmember Raman that this massive rezoning is not necessary and in fact detrimental to all people living in LA. So far, it’s been an uphill battle.
DUMBER THAN DIRT!
Maria Pavlou Kalban, SOHA Legislative Committee Chair
June 2023 | Sherman Oaks Homeowners Association Newsletter
We need affordable housing, but current housing policies have not produced the affordable housing we need. You have all heard the mantra: build more housing and housing will become more affordable. The problem is private developers don’t build more houses to bring down housing prices. The business model they live by is building houses to make profit. Our current housing policies depend on developers to build affordable housing, but developers can only build a very small portion (10 to 15 percent) of affordable units and still make a profit. Even adding state-legislated incentives like more height, more density, and zero required parking have not made new developments more affordable nor produced the number of affordable units needed. In fact, state incentives have encouraged more market-rate housing than we need. Overbuilding market-rate housing actually makes living in a community less affordable because the community’s cost of living goes up. To build significant amounts of affordable housing, we need to subsidize or properly incentivize such housing. The state used to grant cities large annual subsidies for affordable housing – but that stopped in 2008. Current state incentives help, but not to the degree needed. Building more affordable housing along commercial corridors is our best hope. But instead of incentivizing developers to build housing along commercial corridors, the LA Planning Department is supporting the old mantra of “build more anywhere”. They propose rezoning LA to allow 1.4 million new housing units – five times more than required to meet the state mandate. “More” won’t bring down housing prices or add enough affordable housing. Even worse, to get enough sites for 1.4 million units, the Planning Department has proposed rezoning many of our neighborhoods. If the city removed all their proposed rezoning from all our neighborhoods, they still would have identified three times more zoning capacity than the state requires. Several of our Sherman Oaks neighborhoods have been targeted. We have presented solutions that incentivize building on commercial corridors where there is plenty of space and infrastructure to build more affordable units and create new single-family attached housing – while leaving existing single-family and older more affordable multi-family neighborhoods alone. We have presented our concerns and findings to Councilmember Raman who can tell the Planning Department not to rezone our neighborhoods. She told us she will protect our neighborhoods. In our United Neighbors group, we have engaged neighborhoods throughout the city to work together and find solutions for more affordable housing. We have also met with many councilmembers. Together, we will push for sensible planning solutions. We must hold the city accountable to produce the housing we need while not needlessly dismantling neighborhoods. Changing the city’s mind will not be easy, but we need to fight “dumber-than-dirt” ideas
DOES LOCAL CONTROL MATTER?
Maria Pavlou Kalban, SOHA Legislative Committee Chair
May 2023 | Sherman Oaks Homeowners Association Newsletter
Everywhere we turn people are talking about “local control”. What does that really mean? The California Constitution recognizes the right for cities to choose between being a Charter City or a General Law City. LA is a Charter City. Therefore, it operates under its own city charter that has the force and effect of state law regarding municipal affairs. Land use has always been under the control of the city because it is considered a municipal affair. Because the state declared a housing crisis of “statewide concern”, the state took control over Charter Cities’ land use, forcing cities to zone more land for housing. Cities no longer have control over how and where their cities grow, how high or dense a development becomes, whether the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA, one of the most progressive environmental protections any state has enacted) is enforced, and whether public input is considered. Through the numerous state laws being enacted, the right to control a city’s future is determined more by developers and the state than the city itself. The loss of local control over housing starts with the Regional Housing Needs Assessment (RHNA). It is prepared by the state and identifies the state’s housing needs based on projected state population growth, vacancy rates, and household overcrowding during an eight-year cycle. Each city is allocated their housing numbers and needs to show the state they have enough zoning to accommodate their mandated housing. The RHNA numbers allocated to each city for this current cycle are so high – more than double the previous cycle in most cases – that many cities could not find enough zoning to achieve their state-mandated housing goals. Not meeting these goals opened cities to monetary penalties and their right to control their own development. Many cities have questioned their RHNA numbers, and a state audit was conducted. The findings were damming. The RHNA methodology was found to be flawed and the data not accurate. Independent researchers weighed in and stated that the housing numbers were mistakenly double counted, causing the massive increase in “needed” housing units. But the state has not backed down and instead threatens cities with major penalties if they do not meet the RHNA requirement within the next 8 years (2021-2029.) Will cities ever regain their right to plan their own communities? With a pending lawsuit and a possible ballot initiative to regain local control, we will find out. We will keep you updated on their progress.
PLEASE GET INVOLVED AND AFFECT CHANGE
Tom Glick, SOHA Planning Committee Chair
April 2023 | Sherman Oaks Homeowners Association Newsletter
In my time with the LA Planning Department, I worked on several big land use projects which went through rigorous reviews with a lot of public input. We sent out hundreds – even thousands – of public notices for a project and advertised in local newspapers. In the end, once construction began, many would ask “Why is this happening?” and “Why didn’t I know about this project?” I would always explain that the project was not done in secret and there were many opportunities for public input – but this was never enough. Fortunately, we live in a democratic society that allows people to get involved in public discourse but also permits them not to as well. This is not unique to planning decisions. In the 2022 midterm elections, LA County voter turnout was an abysmal 35 percent. People need to take advantage of their right to voice concerns at public hearings or vote in an election – if not, they lose their ability to affect change. There is an opportunity now to get our community involved in our Southeast Valley Community Plan Update process. The city will be proposing land use changes in Sherman Oaks which could up-zone many neighborhoods. Some up-zoning may be appropriate such as commercial corridors and under-utilized residential corridors. But some may not, such as in stable single-family neighborhoods. The LA Planning Department held several community meetings about this prior to the pandemic but has since been relatively quiet. But have no doubt that they have used the pandemic years to concentrate on our community’s zoning and it is up to us all to get involved when they come back with proposed zoning changes. We need to stand up and fight against any zoning changes that affect our single-family neighborhoods. We need to make it crystal clear to Councilmember Raman that our single-family neighborhoods cannot be messed with. Our community must stand together and oppose any up-zoning that negatively affects our homes and homeowners.
HOW THE HOUSING ELEMENT CAN AFFECT YOU
Maria Pavlou Kalban, SOHA Legislative Committee Chair
April 2023 | Sherman Oaks Homeowners Association Newsletter
The city is preparing a state-required “Housing Element” that must show how they will build about 480,000 state-mandated housing units over the next eight years. According to the Planning Department, LA has enough areas currently zoned for housing to build half these units and the rest must come by up-zoning our communities. The Housing Element becomes the blueprint through which Community Plan Updates are used to up-zone communities. We must pay attention to how this up-zoning is done. Our Sherman Oaks community groups know it can be done with no up-zoning of our single- and multi-family neighborhoods. The Valley and much of LA was built on a half-mile major street grid, and we have a huge opportunity to provide more housing and revitalize our communities by building along these streets. If our city officials had used the grid to promote better transit, buses could run up and down these grid streets – our commercial corridors – and all of us would be within a half mile of a bus with access to the entire Valley. But that never happened. Now as we must accommodate more housing, we think of these commercial corridors as perfect places to build. And if we support this type of development, we could work to make more housing units affordable for the people who work here and for our children who want to remain in the communities they grew up in. What’s the problem? The city doesn’t always do what makes perfect sense. If we don’t stand up and insist that housing be built on these commercial corridors, we will see our old multi-family apartments up-zoned for higher density – and many demolished for new apartments. And our single-family areas that already allow three housing units per lot will be up-zoned for even more units. Every year, the state makes more density mandatory. We need to say “YES” to affordable housing on our commercial corridors and “NO” to densifying our multi- and single-family neighborhoods. SOHA’s Legislative Committee and SONC’s Vision Committee are working together and meeting with many city officials to make sure that the Sherman Oaks of the future is one we want to live in. We hope by continuing to work collaboratively with Councilmember Raman, the LA Planning Department, and the mayor’s office, our efforts will be successful.
THE STATE AND ITS INFINITE WISDOM
Maria Pavlou Kalban, SOHA Legislative Committee Chair
March 2023 | Sherman Oaks Homeowners Association Newsletter
SOHA’s Legislative Committee usually focuses attention on specific state housing bills that will affect our community. However, we are finding that it isn’t necessarily one bill that we need to be concerned about. The real concern is a growing trend in both state and local legislation that slowly erodes public participation on matters that effect all of us. At the state level, new legislation each year keeps taking away local control from cities and giving it instead to state agencies and private developers. And at the local level, our City Council keeps listening less and less to their constituents while city agencies seemingly pay even less attention to public concerns. Although this may not seem problematic, it actually erodes the democratic process to the point that the public has no say in what happens in their communities and no confidence in the process. New Senate Housing Bill 423 is an example of this loss of local control. This bill involves the Housing Element that is mandated by the state and requires every city to identify enough zoning capacity to meet its housing needs as set by the state during an eight-year cycle. SB 423 would allow housing developments that have some affordable housing units to be built “by right” even if they don’t meet local zoning standards (too big or too high) if a city looks like it will not meet the housing goals set in its Housing Element. This type of development approval is called a “Builder’s Remedy” project. The state will require cities to submit a report every two years on how much housing is being built and then compare it with the goals in the city’s Housing Element. If a city seems unlikely to meet its quota, Builder’s Remedy is triggered. But cities don’t build housing, developers do – and market conditions will determine whether developers build housing or not. Therefore, cities will be penalized for something they cannot control. The City of Los Angeles must fight SB 423 or we will have no control over any part of our built environment. SOHA will oppose this bill.
ANOTHER STATE BILL TO CAREFULLY WATCH
Maria Pavlou Kalban, SOHA Legislative Committee Chair
February 2023 | Sherman Oaks Homeowners Association Newsletter
Another legislative year has begun and so far, we are watching Senate Bill 4 introduced by Senator Scott Weiner. This bill would allow religious and teaching institutions to build affordable housing and shelters on their properties. This is a repeat bill that was introduced two years ago but failed to pass. We have always been in support of affordable housing and shelters. But the senate must amend this bill so the allowed housing can only be built on an institution’s main campus – and cannot be built in single-family neighborhoods where many of these religious and teaching institutions own single-family homes. It is well known that many people “will” their homes to their place of worship or alma mater, and these institutions often buy homes in single-family neighborhoods for their staff. These homes should not be available for shelters. Similarly, City of LA Motion 22-0158 also introduces the right to build shelters on campuses of religious institutions. Again, we have sent a letter to the city clerk stating we are in support as long as these shelters are on the institution’s main campus. The motion should not include homes owned by these institutions that might be away from their main campus and in single-family neighborhoods. We believe we all must work together to get more affordable housing in our community and that this can be achieved without building apartments or shelters in our single-family neighborhoods. We will keep you posted. Please contact Maria Kalban at mpkalban@gmail.com with questions.
CAUTIOUSLY OPTIMISTIC ON COMMUNITY-BASED HOUSING SOLUTIONS
Maria Pavlou Kalban, SOHA Legislative Committee Chair
January 2023 | Sherman Oaks Homeowners Association Newsletter
SOHA’s Legislative Committee is optimistic that Mayor Bass will be a leading voice supporting Community-Based Housing solutions. She has referred to the Sherman Oaks Housing Study as a great example of how to solve LA’s affordable housing issues by allowing community input and leaving single-family neighborhoods alone. The Housing Element being finalized now by the Planning Department targets several single-family neighborhoods in Sherman Oaks as possible candidates for rezoning. If approved by City Council, the rezoning would allow six-story apartments with 100 percent affordable housing in these neighborhoods. The Legislative Committee and the SONC Vision Committee have been working together to show Planning that our Community-Based Housing solutions can meet state-mandated housing quotas without rezoning single- or multi-family neighborhoods. We identified many miles of underutilized commercial corridor that if rezoned could provide a richness of housing types, offer mixed-income housing, and create thriving retail environments. We presented these ideas to many of our elected officials and showed them that Sherman Oaks and many other communities around us have identified ample sites to meet the state’s housing needs without rezoning our single- or multi-family neighborhoods. We have received many positive and supportive comments from them. However, Councilmember Raman has not yet supported our plan. We will meet with her and the Planning Department again in January and will continue to meet with other councilmembers and mayor representatives to advance our Community-Based Housing solutions. Sherman Oaks residents must work together and allow more density on our commercial corridors. If we don’t our single-family neighborhoods will be targeted.