Todo Items

- Tour of neighborhood with CM Parks

- Write to M Bass. Stability of family, community and maintain our homes.

- isolation of the neighborhood and population

Response to our meeting with CP Park.

Dear Councilwoman Park, Thank you so much to you and Michael for coming out to meet us this past Saturday. We appreciate you taking the time to reassure our community of your support. As discussed during our meeting, we had a couple of requests and clarifications about the data and materials used by the Planning Department to arrive at its current draft. They’re listed below:(Like you, we have many questions regarding the equity of the upzoning in the Westside Community Update, such as why the area around the Palms expo station been almost completely exempt from up zoning while the Planning Dept is proposing to leave our community with only 5 ½ blocks of single family zoning!) We ask that the Council Office provide the current zoning capacity (including TOC incentives and C zones) of the WLA Sawtelle Neighborhood Council District (“Sawtelle” Community) and the neighboring Westside NC districts; Westside NC and Rancho Park NC. It is our understanding from our meeting with Jeff Khao that he has this information. A. We also ask to know where this data comes from, i.e., who has analyzed / curated it? What is the expected population increase in Sawtelle over the next 30 years? Based upon the answer to #2, what is the desired number of additional units for the Sawtelle area in this Community Plan Update, taking into account the expected lifespan of this Community Plan update? What are the desired number of additional units for the other Westside NC districts in this Community Plan update? The State HCD rejected the City’s initial Housing Element submission because it was not sufficiently based on fair housing and social justice. As we noted in our meeting, the Rancho Park area adjacent to the Metro line stop and along the Exposition Corridor has largely been exempt from increased density requirement in the Community Plan update, while our historically redlined community is once again targeted for upzoning, with a plan that will remove even more than the 90% off single-family housing already taken from us by the City. The Council Office was to query the planned development in this area of Rancho Park to explain the difference in proposed zoning between historically redlined and non-historically redlined districts. The Council Office remarked upon the inability to develop hillside areas of the City at both our meetings with your office. We would like to point out that upzoning based upon geography may not mitigate past harms from redlining and segregation. It is important that increased density, and Housing Element appeasement, be distributed as evenly as possible throughout the City’s Neighborhoods.