City Council Moves to Curb Mansionization, Strike a Blow for Homeowners

NEIGHBORHOODS LA-In passing legislation to curb mansionization last month,  the City Council struck a blow for the rights of homeowners.  No less importantly, it acted to protect the city’s residential neighborhoods.  

These neighborhoods form the backbone of the Los Angeles’ built environment and collectively constitute its most important architectural asset. 

Opponents of mansionization are typically cast as frustrated and resentful about the construction of oversized houses.  Well, we are, and we have good reason to be.  McMansions, as they are often called, are typically built to the very edge of the building envelope—forward, back, side-to-side, and up—as far as the zoning ordinance will allow.  This yields looming boxes that invade privacy, block sunlight, eat up green space, and undermine the character of neighborhoods. 

But those of us who oppose of mansionization are equally proponents of the city’s residential neighborhoods.  We are motivated by what we love as much as by what we oppose.  And what we love are the city’s simple, well-designed, often architecturally and historically significant neighborhoods.  

Los Angeles has less green space than any major city in the country.  The traffic in the city is stifling, and the public transit—though improved—remains substandard.  But Los Angeles has one thing that few other American cities can match: beautiful, livable, architecturally significant neighborhoods.  

Los Angeles has neighborhoods that are “worth caring about,” to borrow a phrase from the James Howard Kunstler.  Many of them were built in the 1920s and 30s, when Hollywood was in its golden age, and the neighborhoods built in that era are living monuments to it.  These neighborhoods are part of the city’s identity, part of its heritage.   Perhaps because our history is short or because we don’t regard these neighborhoods as worth caring about, we all too often fail to see them as part of our heritage. 

Mansionization is not just an assault on the rights of existing property owners; it is equally an assault on the city’s architectural heritage.  Those who favor mansionization often argue that residents have no right to dictate what can be built on the land adjacent to their property, no right to insist that the neighborhood remain as it was the day they bought their house.  There is some truth to this.  Reasonable development ought to be permitted.  But neighborhoods have long deployed a variety of tools to protect their residents from out-of-scale development.  

While residents cannot expect to freeze their neighborhoods in time, they can reasonably expect that the style and size of houses in their neighborhood will not change so dramatically as to radically alter the experience of living there.   

Owning a piece of real estate is both like and unlike owning other things.  Buying a house is not the same thing as buying clothing off of a rack.  With respect to our ordinary possessions, we are free to make use of them, alter them, or dispose of them however we see fit.  Not so with respect to real estate.  While property owners acquire rights to their land, those rights are not absolute.  Communities use zoning ordinances to express the nature and limitations of the property rights citizens acquire when they take ownership of a piece of real estate.  These ordinances delineate prohibited activities, height limitations, and mandatory setbacks, among many other things. 

The city’s Baseline Mansionization Ordinance (BMO), passed in 2008, is an example of such a limitation.  The BMO, however, has proved to be insufficient to prevent mansionization, as the City Council recognized on November 4, when it voted unanimously to amend it. 

As CityWatch has documented, the motion passed by the city is riddled with problems.  It does not mandate an immediate, citywide fix to the BMO.  Instead, it includes an intricate mix of temporary provisions for especially at-risk neighborhoods and puts an 18-month timetable on passage of a finalized amendment to the BMO.  In those 18 months, we are likely to see a mad scramble for demolition permits in the neighborhoods that are not slated to receive temporary relief.  

Already a new citywide anti-mansionization group has emerged to urge the city to address these concerns.  The group is called No More Mansions in Los Angeles (FULL DISCLOSURE: Yours truly is an active supporter.)  Now that the city has finally acknowledged the gaping loopholes in its current approach to mansionization, it ought to act as quickly as possible to close them.

 

(Jason Neidleman is a Beverly Grove homeowner and a Professor of Political Science at the University of La Verne.)

-cw

 

 

 

CityWatch

Vol 12 Issue 99

Pub: Dec 9, 2014