Hillside Squeeze : L.A. Wants Time to Set Rules for Tiny Old Lots in Woodland Hills

Construction of new houses in Woodland Hills’ oldest neighborhood may be halted by Los Angeles officials in a crackdown on development of substandard hillside lots.

City officials said a building moratorium may be needed to give them time to adopt permanent rules for using tiny lots created 64 years ago by the first subdivider of land around the Woodland Hills Country Club, a mile south of the Ventura Freeway.

About 2,000 of the parcels are jammed in a 1 1/2-square-mile area surrounding the country club’s golf course. The lots were marketed in 1922 as weekend cabin sites for city dwellers.

But Woodland Hills homeowners have complained that modern-day developers are increasingly smothering the lots with large, multistory houses that block views and cut off breezes in the hilly neighborhood.

Some of the lots are only 25 feet wide. Although the city now requires residential lots to be at least 5,000 square feet--about four times as large as some of the parcels in the Woodland Hills tract--the small plots now can be developed as “nonconforming” sites. Homes can also be built to the edge of the street because the area is in a hillside zone.

There is a “95% chance” that City Councilman Marvin Braude, who represents the Woodland Hills area, will ask the council to impose the moratorium by summer’s end so city planners can tackle the development problem, said Brad Rosenheim, a Braude aide. Other council members usually approve motions dealing with local issues.

“A moratorium would give time to look into the options we have, and there are a number of them we haven’t anticipated in the past,” Rosenheim said.

The options range from imposition of new standards regarding streets and sewer hookups for the area to creation of new construction formulas that would base the size of a new house on the square footage of its lot, Rosenheim said.

Officials may also begin requiring detailed investigations of lots slated for development to determine whether they have been illegally divided in the past. “It would not make development impossible up there, just more compatible with what has been built there in the past,” Rosenheim said, referring, for example, to the one-story homes built through the 1970s.

“We can’t deprive property owners use of their property,” said Norman L. Roberts, a deputy city attorney who is involved in the Woodland Hills study. “There are certainly limits on the city’s right to regulate land use.”

Other city agencies participating in the study include the Bureau of Engineering and the departments of building and safety, planning, transportation and fire.

Officials said they have come across such things as leaky septic systems that could undermine steep hillsides, and 18-foot-wide roads that are shown on city maps as being 26 feet wide. They said some lanes are so narrow and congested with parked cars that fire engines would be unable to pass.

Unattractive Construction

Rosenheim said rows of large houses are unattractive on small lots meant for “small, cabinish homes.”

Braude was on vacation Friday and unavailable for comment. He vowed a year ago to “do what we can that’s legal” to regulate construction in the area, however.

Homeowners said Friday that a crackdown would come too late for several of the twisting, oak-shaded lanes that meander around the golf course. There are an estimated 500 homes in the area, and another two dozen are under construction.

“It’s like a slum on some streets,” said Gayla Hachenberger, who has lived across a canyon from the golf course for 29 years. Earlier this year, she initiated a letter-writing campaign calling on the City Council to impose an immediate building moratorium.

“There’s no place to park, no place for kids to play, no place to breathe,” Hachenberger said.