City Planning Wants Input?
The Planners Are Asking For Input
The planners continue to say they want our input.
First, Kentwood Home Guardians, Kentwood’s large homeowners association, hosted the planners for a presentation and Q&A in October. The whole Planning Team for our Community Plan Update attended and they reiterated they want to hear about the community’s alternatives to their published maps. KHG is preparing a position letter and will likely come out in support of The Peripheral Plan.
Second, City Planning has published a survey asking for opinions on densifying Single-Family Home neighborhoods and we need to come out strong and loud on this survey. The survey is short and we provide sample answers below. Easy-peasy! And important.
Quite literally, the survey says “We still need your help to identify residential areas where more housing can be added through the Citywide Housing Incentive Program effort. Where would you like to see more housing in existing residential areas in the City of Los Angeles? Check all that apply.”
Please join us in filling out the survey like this:
For the “other” box, use this: I think the corridors are the best place for density, but in Westchester, we have LAX traffic gridlocking our corridors. If any additional housing has to be in Westchester, I support the Peripheral Plan endorsed by our Neighborhood Council.
Not sure if you’ve already submitted? They don’t seem to be keeping track of who is submitting, so submit today. It’s critical we are all heard.
Why this approach? We like this approach to answering the survey because this is a citywide survey and we believe that the corridors, rather than single-family neighborhoods, are generally the right place for residential density. It just happens that in Westchester we have unique challenges with LAX on our corridors. We hope the planners recognize this and shoot for less dense impacts in our community, but we still want to be heard on the topic of the whole city.
Also, the “corridor plan” is being advocated by United Neighbors, a very large group covering the entire city. United Neighbors has had great success in securing meetings with the Mayor and various councilpeople. Their plan is just plain common sense and it helps to have everybody support the same plan wherever possible.
For us, the corridor plan makes sense everywhere except in Westchester. And if our LAX argument doesn’t fly, the corridors beat our single-family neighborhoods all day long. We believe we make both points by answering the survey as suggested.
Do we really believe the city will listen? We do really believe that our voices (especially United Neighbors’ voice) prompted this survey and now it’s on us to respond and support. What the city does with the results is anybody’s guess, but we’re going to do our part. 🙂
Please take a minute right now to have your voice heard.
And About That Survey…
If you didn’t read the lengthy introduction to the survey, nobody would blame you! But please know there is a big win buried in that wall of words! The important part appears below.
The City is hearing our voices about saving our single-family neighborhoods! They’ve taken R-1 out of two major programs in the Housing Element. This new development isn’t related to our Community Plan Update, but our community is also subject to the new Housing Element changes. We’ll be sharing more about the Housing Element in coming weeks, but for now please know the City is listening and the needle is moving.
Tracy In The Community
Tracy moderated the Kentwood Home Guardians meeting in October with the Planners. Lisa was on hand asking the hard questions. Reply to this email if you want a link to the recording.
Tracy spoke recently to a group of Concerned Neighbors in Emerson Manor at a house party hosted by an Emerson Manor Concerned Neighbor. 20 more petition signatures. Yay!
Tracy is available to speak to any group you might want to host so we can share our Concerns about our Community Plan Update and Housing Element. We are available for zoom meetings, too.
The Peripheral Plan
Our community, as gateway to LAX, has unique challenges when it comes to traffic. And that is without adding a single additional housing unit. The city’s draft Community Plan Update is proposing to rezone our community for 10’s of thousands of new units and that is unworkable, for us and for LAX.
For this reason, we developed the Peripheral Plan, recommending density, if any absolutely has to be added to our community, on the periphery of our community.
The map is shown below. These are the benefits:
No upzoning for any residential lots;
No upzoning for multi-unit lots along our corridors with high RSO and Section 8 housing (to preserve the affordable housing we already have in our community);
Reuses existing office buildings for mixed use housing (close to transit and environmentally preferred);
Provides new affordable housing in areas on the periphery where affordable high density housing can easily be developed without impacting residential zoning and our gridlocked corridors; and
Prevents further demise of “F” rated intersections from high density housing in communities close to these corridors. Sepulveda, La Tijera, Lincoln and Manchester are used by the 65 million Los Angeles World Airport passengers (expected to double in the next ten years).
Reminding You What We’re Fighting
photo courtesy of United Neighbors
And One Parting Share…
Below is an update on the crazy project photo we built all our branding around at the outset of this project. Everybody was outraged by the original photo and now the project appears to have sprouted two more stories! 😳 What a travesty for the single-family neighbors.
Please take a minute right now to forward this email
to 3 neighbors or local friends.
Concerned For Westchester Playa - Providing upzoning and housing policy information and guidance to residents in Westchester, Playa del Rey, Ladera and Playa Vista
Copyright (C) 2023 Concerned For Westchester/Playa. All rights reserved.