The Los Angeles City Council on Friday, Oct. 13 denied a developer’s request to allow a 360-unit, seven-story affordable housing project in a Winnetka neighborhood to continue on a fast track to approval.
Friday’s decision — which has one housing advocacy group mulling a lawsuit — came 2½ weeks after a divided City Council allowed a large, multi-level building next to single-family homes in Sherman Oaks to move forward under the fast-track approval process.
At issue is whether applications for 100% affordable housing projects can remain on the fast track if the paperwork was submitted before Mayor Karen Bass updated her Executive Directive 1 (ED1) to clarify that such projects proposed in single-family residential neighborhoods aren’t eligible for fast tracking.
Bass issued ED1 in December to hasten approval of affordable housing projects and shelters. But her directive initially failed to specify that projects in single-family residential neighborhoods aren’t eligible for fast-track approval.
“The project in question is a high-density, multi-family project on a single-family zoned lot,” Councilmember Bob Blumenfield said during Friday’s meeting as he urged others on the council to deny the developer’s request to remain on the fast track.
“The intent of ED1, again, was not to include single-family zones, and the mayor clarified this,” Blumenfield said.
The councilmember represents a West Valley council district that includes Winnetka, Canoga Park and Reseda, where a handful of multi-story apartments have been proposed in single-family neighborhoods, some of them directly next to or behind homes.
Although Bass ultimately clarified that projects aren’t eligible for fast-tracked approval in single-family zones, several applications were submitted to the city before the mayor amended her executive directive.
In recent weeks, the city’s planning department informed those developers that their projects no longer qualified for ED1…
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