Zoning Laws Prevail in First Test Against Curbs of General Plan

Leaders of a homeowner coalition thought they had won a significant victory earlier this year when a court ordered the City of Los Angeles to reconcile its zoning laws with its more restrictive general plan.

Organizers of the effort by 44 homeowner associations, including most of those in the San Fernando Valley, predicted that the court decision would slash the city’s allowable population by 50%.

But last week, their optimism vanished.

Newly available statistics indicate that in the first effort at reconciliation in the San Fernando Valley--in the Van Nuys-North Sherman Oaks planning area--the city permitted a sharply higher population capacity.

100 Separate Decisions

Planners said the increase was the result of more than 100 individual decisions by city officials to retain much of the apartment and condominium zoning that the general plan more than a decade ago said should be eliminated.

The decisions were made piecemeal, planners said, and not until the process was completed were staff members directed to compile statistics indicating the total impact.

“They’re caving in to developers and scrapping all the planning efforts of the past two decades,” said Gerald A. Silver, an Encino homeowner association leader.

Coalition leaders held several meetings last week to discuss ways to roll back the Van Nuys-North Sherman Oaks population capacity increase, which must still be finalized by the Los Angeles City Council. Homeowners also hope to prevent the same thing from happening elsewhere.

“We have to do something about what happened in Van Nuys so it doesn’t happen elsewhere. But just what, we don’t yet know,” said Brian Moore, president of the Federation of Hillside and Canyon Assns., which led the court effort.

But Daniel P. Garcia, chairman of the City Planning Commission, said that activists were “way off base” in suggesting that a large increase in population is now likely in Van Nuys because “market forces are what govern population growth, and in Los Angeles the city has barely been growing at 1% a year.”

For more than 20 years, discrepancies between the city’s general plan and zoning laws have triggered large and small struggles between developers and owners of single-family homes.

Zoning designations are in conflict with general plan designations on 200,000 of the city’s 800,000 land parcels, planners say.

Homeowner activists almost always advocate following the general plan, which they have helped draft, while developers favor zoning, which in most cases permits more intensive development.

City planners said that if developers in all cases were permitted to follow the zoning, much of which dates to the 1940s, the city would ultimately have a population of 8 to 10 million.

On the other hand, if developers were forced to adhere to the general plan in every instance, the city’s ultimate population would be about 4.5 million, up from 3 million at present.

Common Cause of Conflict

Planning Department employees say that the most common instance of conflict between planning and zoning is a single-family neighborhood in which the land is zoned for apartments or condominiums even though the general plan designates the property for continued use as single-family dwellings.

The general plan comprises 35 community plans, each representing one to three communities and each approved by the City Council. In the San Fernando Valley, there are 14 community planning areas.

The local plans have been drafted during the past two decades by committees with representatives from various segments of a community, including business leaders and homeowners. The plans take into consideration such factors as parking, traffic flow and availability of sewers and other utilities.

A decade ago, homeowner leaders throughout the city became alarmed when the City Council refused to take what they considered the next logical step in the community-planning process: the downward revision of the zone plan to match the general plan.

“We worked on this fine community plan,” said Joyce Blaine, president of the Van Nuys Homeowners Assn., “and then nothing happened. The city just went on following the zoning as if there was no plan.”

Consistency Mandated

In 1979, Los Angeles homeowners were instrumental in lobbying for passage of Assembly Bill 283, which requires that cities make their zoning and planning consistent.

But when the City Council, under intense pressure from developers who feared loss of their zoning designations, made almost no effort to comply with the law, homeowners went to court.

Last January, Los Angeles Superior Court Judge John J. Cole rendered a decision that gave the homeowner coalition almost everything it sought.

In April, the council was forced to enact an ordinance requiring that, until the reconciliation process is completed, permits for new construction would generally be issued to conform with the community plans.

And in June, Cole ordered the city to complete the reconciliation process by February, 1988.

However, both the state law and the court order left to the discretion of the council whether the zoning should be made to comply with the local plans or whether the plans should be changed to match the zoning.

While saying that they expect the plans to win out, homeowner leaders have been anxiously awaiting the results of the initial reconciliation efforts.

Thus, Silver said leaders were “shocked and amazed” at a staff report indicating that the reconciliation process in the Van Nuys-North Sherman Oaks planning area boosted the population capacity to 160,900, up from 129,340 in the community plan.

The area’s current population is 111,870.

“What happened to our plan?” demanded Blaine. “Doesn’t it mean anything? Can they just rewrite it without any public input?”

City planning records indicate that the increases occurred against the recommendations of the planning staff, which had urged changes in the Van Nuys-North Sherman Oaks area that would have raised the population only by 5,000, to 134,000.

Developers Prevail

But departmental hearing examiners, who are the first to consider zoning changes, raised the population capacity to 147,000 by siding with developers on hundreds of individual decisions, planners say.

Then, at hearings before the Planning Commission, developers won more battles, and the projected population was increased to 153,000.

When the zone changes were processed by the City Council several months ago, developers won more concessions, raising the population capacity to 160,900, according to planning records.

Councilman Ernani Bernardi, who represents the area, expressed surprise when told that a planning report indicated the population capacity had increased 25% during the reconciliation process.

“I can’t understand how that could have occurred,” he said, “because 95% of the staff recommendations were supported by me. In fact, I suggested many zoning rollbacks myself.”

Bernardi noted that all the zoning changes for the Van Nuys-North Sherman Oaks area still must be incorporated into an environmental impact report “so we will have a chance to look this thing over at that time.”

‘Examiners Know’

Robert H. Sutton, who heads the city’s general-plan consistency program, said he was not disturbed by what occurred with the Van Nuys-North Sherman Oaks plan, even though his staff’s recommendations were largely disregarded.

“The hearing examiners, who are the people who go out into the field and check over the sites, made the decisions,” he said, “and they are in the best position to know.”

Also, he said, “The vast majority of those who showed up at hearings were strongly in favor of retaining zoning over planning. Those who are complaining after the fact are a distinct minority.”

He said that many who attended public hearings were owners of single-family homes on lots long zoned for apartments, and they expressed rage at losing their multifamily zoning.

No Predictions

Sutton said he could not predict whether population-capacity increases such as occurred in the Van Nuys-North Sherman Oaks area are likely to be repeated in any other planning areas in the city.

But he said that in Brentwood and San Pedro, two other planning areas for which the reconciliation process is completed, there were population capacity increases of “only about 5%, although that’s an estimate because we don’t have hard figures on those areas like we do for Van Nuys.”

He said that the reconciliation process is currently under way in the North Hollywood and Sherman Oaks-Studio City planning areas.

Garcia, planning commission president, predicted that because of lack of demand “only a small fraction” of the lots newly designated for apartments would ever be developed for multifamily use.

The commission president also noted that the city is not fulfilling the population quota assigned to it by the Southern California Assn. of Governments, the regional planning agency.

Garcia said that the city’s 1% annual growth rate is less than one-fourth of the growth assigned the city, “and that means that new residences are forced farther and farther out into outlying areas.” COMMUNITY POPULATION CAPACITIES Population capacity is a projection of what the population would be if all parcels were built to maximum density allowed in the community plan. Current population is estimated as of Oct. 1, 1984.

Current Population population capacity Arleta-Pacoima 74,792 79,900 Canoga Park-Winnetka- Woodland Hills 137,453 174,400 Chatsworth-Porter Ranch 72,529 116,300 Encino-Tarzana 68,064 98,480 Granada Hills-Knollwood 56,265 73,980 Mission Hills-Panorama City-Sepulveda 78,223 130,300 North Hollywood 94,785 118,892 Northridge 55,359 64,000 Reseda-West Van Nuys 78,779 123,250 Sherman Oaks-Studio City 66,997 118,970 Sun Valley 62,574 75,000 Hills-Sunland-Tujunga 46,742 68,000 Sylmar 47,979 74,400 Van Nuys-North Sherman Oaks 111,870 129,340* Totals 1,052,411 1,445,212

* Tentatively revised by City Council to 160,900.

Source: Los Angeles City Planning Department