New Homes, Poor Roads Stir Fears in Hillsides

Jim Nelson veered onto a scruffy dirt road near the top of Laurel Canyon, his Jeep spitting dust as it dug into the dry ground. It was a clear autumn afternoon, and in the distance the city sparkled like the backdrop of a Hollywood set.

But Nelson, the bearded leader of several hundred hillside dwellers, was not taken by the view. His eyes were fixed on the road--what there was of it--and nearby stacks of lumber and some freshly poured concrete.

“Can you believe they are allowing this?” he asked, pointing to some homes being built on a steep ravine at the edge of the unpaved street. “It’s a little bit of the Wild West up here.”

300 Miles of Unpaved Roads

In a city distinguished by its graceful freeway interchanges, thoroughfares wide enough to land jumbo jets and rivers lined with concrete, there are thousands of Los Angeles residents who still live on dirt and poorly paved roads, many of which are so narrow or badly engineered that fire trucks and ambulances simply cannot use them. City officials estimate that there are about 300 miles of such roads in Los Angeles, most of them nestled in the nooks and crannies of the Santa Monica and Verdugo mountains and other hillsides throughout the city.

For years, the city largely ignored the “unimproved” and “substandard” streets--as they are called at City Hall--accepting them as a fact of life for residents looking to escape the concrete regimen of Los Angeles. But with skyrocketing housing prices in recent years, remote or unwieldy hillside lots once passed over because of costly engineering obstacles are filling up with homes--and city officials are beginning to worry that hillside streets cannot handle their new-found popularity.

“The problems of access have proven to be a real threat to public safety in the event of fire or other natural disasters, such as an earthquake or flood,” Councilman Michael Woo wrote in a recent letter to hillside residents in his Hollywood-area district. “This situation cannot be allowed to continue any further.”

Fire officials say they routinely have difficulty getting to homes in the hills, particularly when the narrow roads--both paved and dirt--are cluttered with illegally parked cars. In the winter, rains turn dirt into mud and undermine skimpy road foundations, making many cliff-side dirt roads too dangerous for fire trucks.

“At that point we have to change our game plan,” said Fire Capt. Jack Coburn, whose station on Mulholland Drive covers canyons in the Hollywood Hills. “It becomes a hand operation. The firemen grab the hose and start running with it to get as close as they can. . . . We will always get there, but by the time you pack in equipment and firefighting lines, there is definitely a time delay.”

Capt. John Holloway, who deals with access problems citywide for the Fire Department, said the difficulties in the Hollywood Hills are not unique.

While he would not cite specifics, he said there have been cases in various hillside neighborhoods of ambulances unable to reach victims because of inadequate streets. In new subdivisions, fire officials are able to require builders to provide streets wide enough and stable enough for safety vehicles, but they have no such authority over homes going up on existing roads.

“Historically in the fire service, all fire problems are pooh-poohed until something happens,” Holloway said. “It usually takes a loss of life or a major dollar loss before something gets passed.”

During the last year, according to city statistics, building permits for single-family homes and requests for additions to existing homes have doubled in one hillside stretch of particular concern--between the San Diego and Hollywood freeways south of Mulholland Drive. While the numbers themselves do not seem high--about 80 building permits and 200 additions--officials say the construction is concentrated in several canyons where roads are already crumbling.

“Now that the (San Fernando) Valley . . . and the Westside are all built up and there is still pressure to put up homes, people are moving into the mountains where there is some vacant land,” Deputy City Engineer Larry Burks said. “And when you come up with more development and more people, there is a greater need for public services like streets and fire protection.”

Varying Code Requirements

Most of the street problems can be traced to the original subdivision of hillside neighborhoods, which in some cases date to the early 1900s. Many hillside communities at that time were not part of the city of Los Angeles, meaning that code requirements varied widely and enforcement was often lax. Tiny lots--most smaller than the minimum 5,000 square feet now required by the city--were crowded along equally tiny and often unpaved streets.

In the canyons above Hollywood, for example, many of the lots were known as “magazine subscription lots” because they were given away to subscribers as promotions. Some owners built small weekend cottages on their property, many without plumbing or electricity. Occasionally they would throw asphalt on the road outside their homes or hire someone to pave a small stretch. Over the years the roads have become patchworks of dirt and asphalt with little or no attention paid to engineering, grading or water runoff.

Now, as property owners squeeze large year-round homes on the small lots, city planners and many residents fear the canyons will become too crowded for the roads. To Nelson, the Laurel Canyon homeowner leader, and many of his neighbors, the influx of new building on some of these roads has been alarming.

Nelson lives in what he refers to as “my dream home” on a narrow, paved road overlooking Hollywood. He built the house several years ago on the site of one destroyed in a 1979 canyon fire--a disaster that ruined or damaged two dozen homes in the area. Two charred chimneys still stand on a steep hillside down the road from Nelson.

There are two routes to Nelson’s house. One is up a steep but passable street; the other is on a narrow road--it thins to about 10 feet at one spot--with a hairpin curve. Nelson said fire engines have been unable to negotiate the curve, and he worries what would happen if there is another fire and the passable route is blocked.

Nelson said some homes burned in 1979 because fire trucks were unable to get close enough to them, but others--including one firefighter who helped battle the blaze--say the homes were lost because the fire swept through the canyons so rapidly.

‘Pay the Price’

“The situation is terrible as it is, yet the city continues to issue more (building) permits,” Nelson said. “In the end, the existing homeowners are going to pay the price.”

Sarah Jane Paxton, who has lived in Laurel Canyon since 1948, said she owns 18 lots near her Brier Drive home but has rejected numerous offers to sell because she fears speculators would build large homes that will make matters worse.

“I don’t object to anyone using his land to build a home,” Paxton said, “but I think there have to be some controls. They are putting up homes that don’t conform to the land. . . . I don’t think many people in the plan-check department have even seen these hills.”

City officials acknowledge that building permits are routinely issued by employees who often have little or no familiarity with hillside neighborhoods, but they said the city has no authority to deny permits for projects that meet city codes on dedicated streets--regardless of how rugged or narrow they may be. As a result, advocates of greater controls have taken a different approach: pushing the city to change code requirements on a neighborhood-by-neighborhood basis.

There have been some successes. For example:

- In Hollywoodland, the city has imposed temporary building restrictions that require hillside developers to build homes at least 5 feet from the front property line so that emergency vehicles can pass even when a road is too narrow. “The fire trucks may drive over the petunias, but at least they can get through,” said Sharon Keyser, planning deputy to Councilman John Ferraro, who represents the area.

- In the Girard Tract area of Woodland Hills, new building permits have been restricted for the last two years because massive homes were being built on tiny lots on inadequate streets. City planners are drafting ordinances that would limit the size of new homes, increase off-street parking requirements and encourage builders to combine small lots. Planners will also recommend better enforcement of parking restrictions.

- In Mt. Washington, one of the city’s oldest residential communities, the city has placed temporary restrictions on new home construction because of concerns about overbuilding on small lots and narrow streets. A citizens committee is looking into ways to permanently address the problems while preserving the community’s rural charm.

- In Laurel Canyon, the city severely limited building on small lots for one year because of concerns about safety and access. Since the temporary restrictions expired last July, however, building has resumed.

- In January, the city’s Planning Commission is expected to vote on a proposal to restrict building on substandard hillside streets in an 8-mile-wide stretch south of Mulholland roughly between the San Diego and Hollywood freeways, including Laurel Canyon. The temporary controls, proposed by Councilmen Woo and Zev Yaroslavsky, are intended to limit new building until the city can come up with some way to improve the local roads.

But not everyone wants to stop the building. Efforts to control construction have set off bitter clashes among homeowners, property owners and builders. The Woo and Yaroslavsky proposals, for example, have ignited a furious debate in canyons from Bel-Air to the Hollywood Hills.

While there has been agreement that streets need to be upgraded, some real estate agents, builders and property owners complain that the proposals punish them while letting current homeowners off the hook.

Homeowners’ Fears

Some homeowners have also joined the opposition, citing fears that the controls would prevent them from renovating their homes or developing adjoining lots. Opponents have been particularly critical of Nelson, who has built several homes in Laurel Canyon but, as chairman of the Coalition of Laurel Homeowners, now wants to put a cap on building.

“It aids those who have managed to squeeze into the housing market and cuts out those who are still about to get in,” complained Berndt Lohr-Schmidt, head of the Hillside Property Owners Assn., which has organized opposition to the proposals supported by Nelson and his group. “All of us know the hillsides are the one place where there (is) still some room left to build.”

The uproar prompted the Planning Commission to twice delay making a decision on the proposals, to hold a special community workshop and to instruct planning officials to recraft the restrictions to address objections, particularly those related to remodeling. It has also chilled interest among other City Council members for similar building restrictions.

“They have had such hassles . . . we are waiting for the dust to settle before we attempt anything,” said Keyser, the Ferraro planning deputy.

But the debate has also persuaded some officials--including those in Mayor Tom Bradley’s office--that the city needs to take a comprehensive, citywide look at hillside street problems--and that, some homeowners say, has made all the acrimony worthwhile. In November, Bradley ordered city engineers to conduct a three-month study of a sample hillside area to determine what kinds of problems there are.

Besides narrow, poorly maintained roads, in some parts of the city dirt-road dwellers do not want new roads--several years ago horse lovers blocked efforts to pave a road leading to horse trails in Sun Valley--while in other areas the city has tried to cut down on traffic by declaring roads “withdrawn from public use.”

In the next few weeks, city engineers will begin combing a 3-square-mile area of the Santa Monica Mountains, including most of Laurel Canyon, Beverly Glen and portions of Nichols Canyon. The engineers will drive every street in the sample area, documenting the condition of the roads and how accessible they are to safety vehicles.

After the survey, Bradley said, a committee--with planners, engineers, firefighters, building inspectors and city attorneys--will try to come up with solutions to the problems, including the possibility of writing new building codes for hillside areas citywide. He said the task force will have three months to draft a series of recommendations.

‘As Accessible as Possible’

“My goal is to make this area as accessible as possible to fire trucks, telephone and gas companies and ambulances while maintaining the character of the community,” Bradley said in November.

While most hillside residents, including supporters and opponents of the temporary restrictions on the Westside, welcome Bradley’s involvement, there are still bitter divisions among hillside dwellers--and many unanswered questions. At the top of the list: Who should pay for any recommended road improvements or repairs?

Many homeowners say builders are reaping windfall profits by erecting new homes without first making costly street improvements. They argue that the burden of repairing the streets should fall on the people who are filling in the vacant lots. Others argue that streets serve all hillside residents--newcomers and old-timers alike--and that the cost of repairs should be shared through a community-wide assessment district. Still others say the responsibility lies with the city, which they blame for allowing the problems to fester for so long.

City officials say it is too early to know who will pay for the new roads, and they caution that it could be several years before permanent solutions are in place. Even then, they said, residents should not expect all of their problems to go away. Some roads cannot be widened because homes have been built in the right of way, while others may be too expensive to bring up to standard because of engineering problems.

“It is a 50-year-old problem,” said Eric Roth, Councilman Woo’s planning deputy. “It is going to take some time to sort things out.”