COLUMN ONE : Digging In to Defend Their Turf : Want to build a park? Not in my neighborhood, some residents growl. Jittery about home values, they try to keep out civic amenities, even churches. But they may end up harming the areas they seek to protect.

Time was, a neighborhood nuisance was nothing more than the right thing in the wrong place, like a pig in the parlor. No one wanted to live next door to a jail or a brick factory or a slaughterhouse.

But these days it seems nearly everywhere can be the wrong place for nearly everything.

Across Southern California, more residents are rallying to defend their homes and their fortunes against churches and parks as well as factories. And in some communities, they don’t have much use for treehouses or the local grocery either.

After watching their real estate values take a nose-dive in recent years, some jittery homeowners are scrambling to raise the drawbridges connecting them to the outside world. As a result, they are likely to oppose any change in their neighborhoods, except more single-family houses like their own.

And some don’t even want those.

The reactionary trend eclipses the Not In My Back Yard--or NIMBY--syndrome that emerged during the boom of the 1980s, experts say. Today, some facetiously use such acronyms as NOPE--Not On Planet Earth--or BANANA--Build Absolutely Nothing Anywhere Near Anyone.

This mood is most pronounced in upper-middle-class suburban neighborhoods in areas such as the San Fernando Valley, where soaring home prices created a topsy-turvy world of unearned wealth that homeowners want to protect, especially during the current slump.

Planners and sociologists fear this just-say-no school of thought is also popping up in less-affluent areas, particularly in neighborhoods where the pace of change has been so rapid that longtime residents hunker down and try to turn back the clock.

Such attitudes can shred the bonds that traditionally have held society together, planners say. As neighborhoods become more insular and less tolerant of how land is used, public spaces disappear--as does a sense of civic obligation.

“What’s at stake here is nothing less than the idea of common citizenship and the old idea of a common space,” said urban historian Mike Davis, author of the book “City of Quartz.”

By cloistering themselves, many residents inadvertently may be destroying the very neighborhoods they are trying to protect. Young families are locked out by high prices, parkland for children becomes scarce, and people don’t trust their neighbors.

“The trend over the last 10 years has been to change the definition of nuisances,” said Jon Perica, Los Angeles city zoning administrator. “People now see in a negative light things that are not really nuisances. They are striking out in frustration.”

In the past, Perica said, residents were more objective and able to recognize the good as well as the bad. “Now there is a much blinder view of the world,” he said. “This myopic view says that if it generates traffic, we oppose it--whether it is a hospital, a school or a church.”

In other words: “They don’t want a damn thing,” said Gideon Kanner, a Loyola Law School professor and property rights expert. “They want to raise the drawbridge. They are so drunk with power that they think they can dictate to the city how things ought to be run. We do things in this city that are stunningly crazy.”

Leaders of homeowner associations say they are just trying to protect what they have from developers’ avarice and government apathy and argue that they are the most qualified to decide how their neighborhoods should look and grow.

“If we sound a little protective, I put the blame on our elected officials,” said Don Schultz, president of the Van Nuys Homeowners Assn., one of the Valley’s largest such groups. “If they spent more time on sound planning and less time just trying to get reelected, we would not have as many active homeowner associations as we do.”

Experts say the resistance to change is rooted in the natural conservatism of homeowners, whose largest investment--and dearest possession--is often their house. In years past, many homeowners could move if they felt that their investments were threatened.

But now, after watching their houses double and triple in value during the 1980s, homeowners face a sluggish market and can no longer easily sell at a profit and escape to greener pastures. So they dig in.

The balancing act facing planners, elected officials, developers and homeowners is to protect neighborhoods from undue burdens without abandoning the public’s greater needs.

“We live in a city of 3.5 million people,” said Los Angeles Councilman Zev Yaroslavsky, who represents parts of the Westside and the Valley. “Very few of those people live near a bona fide nuisance. But those who do deserve to have their quality of life protected.”

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Indeed, Los Angeles planning officials have broad powers to rein in traditional neighborhood nuisances--including liquor stores that sell alcohol to minors or cheap motels that attract prostitution.

But there are seemingly innocuous proposals that have sparked neighborhood ire:

* In Claremont, residents are fighting to block expansion of a board-and-care facility for 20 seniors with Alzheimer’s disease. Among their reasons: They don’t want disoriented patients wandering around the neighborhood.

* Residents near a Bell Gardens youth center intended to keep teen-agers out of trouble protested that the facility would instead attract gang members. After a year of operation, their fears have proved to be unfounded and the center, which offers sports and other activities, has been deemed a success. “People are afraid of change,” said the center’s director, Sgt. Joe Marquez. “But sometimes it works out.”

* Hollywood residents fought the conversion of a house into a 12-bed AIDS hospice, saying the facility--where frail patients would spend their last days--would generate too much noise and traffic. One man said that he didn’t want hearses driving down his quiet street. “It gets a little sick sometimes,” said Northridge zoning consultant Pauline Amond.

* In West Hills, a community north of Woodland Hills, residents rallied against a planned church-and-school complex, complaining that it would clog their streets with traffic. A hearing on the project ranked among the longest in city history: more than seven hours. Even after zoning officials approved only the church with a long list of restrictions, homeowners were unhappy.

“What are the cases that generate the most opposition?” asked Perica, the zoning administrator. “Oil refineries? Hell no. Churches. If you have the audacity to propose building a church, you have to run the gantlet. You would think that this was the Chernobyl power plant going into a neighborhood.”

One Presbyterian church passed community muster in Rancho San Diego three years ago only after church leaders agreed to build it without a steeple. It looks like a house.

This backlash against even those projects once considered amenities has been brewing for decades. In part, it has bubbled over now because, as many homeowners see it, developers increasingly consider the bottom line rather than neighborhood wishes.

As the urban landscape around them has evolved dramatically, some homeowners also feel overwhelmed by the pace of change.

“Things that used to be good, acceptable uses are now brushed with the same tar of opposition as mini-malls, auto repair shops and those types of things,” Perica said.

“More and more the city is looking like an armored honeycomb,” author Davis said. “There is a growing conviction among homeowners that they own their neighborhoods.”

In some cases, they do. In a posh enclave of Westlake Village, residents two years ago forced a group of young boys to tear down their back-yard treehouse because it did not meet the strict design standards included in the planned community’s covenants. Even after an architect offered to help the boys spruce up their fort, neighbors insisted on its destruction.

“The social contract comes from social contact,” said Ed Blakely, an urban planning professor at UC Berkeley. “These people are not asking for the right to participate, they are asking for the right to withdraw from society. That’s how Rome fell apart.

“By privatizing the whole notion of a community, people don’t think they have to deal with the burdens that are outside,” Blakely said. “I can’t imagine anything more destructive. It makes our democracy a laughingstock.”

To Arleta resident Jose Bonilla, that fortress mentality drives a wedge between those who have and those who don’t. In his community, he said, catering trucks and pushcart vendors are drawing complaints from mostly white, longtime residents who fear the mostly Latino entrepreneurs are wrecking their neighborhoods.

“What you are saying is that you are not really interested in new ideas and different cultures or in new ways of living,” said Bonilla, past president of the Arleta Chamber of Commerce and Residents’ Assn. “You are kind of set in your ways and everyone else is just a kook.

“The sad part is that these sorts of things actually make the city a safer place to live,” Bonilla said. “You get to know each other. Eventually, you’ll all go to the same place to buy a soda or have a shoe sewn or buy your kid an ice cream.

“There is this attachment that comes from talking and touching.”

Homeowners say they are not being narrow-minded.

“I view what we do as a method of protecting our neighborhoods,” said Richard Close, president of the Sherman Oaks Homeowners Assn. “Without it, our neighborhoods will decline. Any time you have limited resources--whether it’s parking spaces or funding--government has to prioritize and residents have first priority.”

Protests by Close and other neighbors prompted the city to limit parking and operating hours at the Insomnia Cafe, a Ventura Boulevard coffeehouse in Sherman Oaks. Residents had claimed that the cafe caused parking problems and drew teen-agers at all hours of the night.

Overprotective attitudes can encourage urban sprawl by making most close-in suburbs--built after World War II to give veterans and young people the opportunity to own homes--unaffordable to young families.

“Low-cost housing--just those words will send every single homeowners association into orbit,” Amond said. “No one wants low-cost housing or even affordable housing in their neighborhoods.”

As a result, developers are forced farther out, where land is cheaper and public opposition to development is low. This produces even more long-distance commutes, making everyone’s drive longer and more frustrating.

And fewer young people--considered a key to sustaining a community over the long term--move into established neighborhoods, planners say. For instance, the rate of homeownership among 25- to 40-year-olds in far-off Lancaster is more than double that in Los Angeles.

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Some homeowners association leaders acknowledge that theirs is not a perfect world. But they are not about to let down their guard without assurances that their way of life will not be sacrificed.

Experts agree that better planning is critical. But good planning, they say, may mean big changes--even in single-family neighborhoods--that have long-term benefits.

“If we were to follow everything that the public tells us, you would end up with single-family homes on large lots with no commercial and no industrial, no parks and no churches,” said John Schwarze, head of the Los Angeles County Regional Planning Department’s current planning division. “If you stop and think about it, the roads wouldn’t be paved and we’d probably all be on septic tanks.

“What kind of lifestyle is that?” he asked. “This is not the Ozarks.”

Schwarze and others point out that while a church may bring more traffic, it also provides a community meeting place and a spiritual core. Parks may attract potential troublemakers, but they also give young people a place to play close to home. And a hospice helps the sick die in peace.

“Churches, synagogues, schools and parks are all pains in the neck when you live next to them,” Yaroslavsky said. “But without them, we wouldn’t have a civilized society. We have to fit them in in a way that is harmonious.”