Dear Los Angeles,
The 2023 holidays were such a struggle this year. Three weeks ago, the Sawtelle community found out that our cultural core, where I live, is slated to accommodate 7,000 housing units to comply with State laws. Providing for all these units results in long established families, neighbors being forced to sell. Over the wreckage of their homes, the low rent units are constructed. We, the residents, are being displaced. We are set to lose our homes, our neighborhood. This breaks my heart… Why is my city doing this to me and my community? Why target this small area with so many units? I heard this grim news at a sparely attended community meeting three weeks ago. We are not a well-organized neighborhood, mostly middle-class, busy trying to provide for families, maintain jobs and care for our homes.
This proposed plan destroys our hard earned Japantown designation. This area was crucial for the Japanese-Americans. They returned from the WWll concentration camps. It was here where families were re-started, opened businesses, created gardens, practiced their arts and a community recreated its life.
We have a proposal for a viable Alternative Community Plan for the City. We are willing to work with the City, absorb the burden of 7,000 housing units, but we want zoning protection for our cultural core. The City heard our alternative plan. It is realistic, affordable, good for our new neighbors living in the units. The City asked us to now prove citizen support through petitions.
We frantically started to organize the neighborhood, finding volunteers, distributing, collecting petitions to support the Alternative Community Plan – all before a February deadline. We collected local institutional endorsements, the important temples and churches.
The petition process is slow, very stressful. It’s a complex issue, everyone is doing their best, paying out-of-pocket for the City required color-coded petitions to accommodate the zoning map. We set up an online presence. We created ways for people to return the petitions, set up tables, find volunteers, keep the community informed. It’s been exhausting! I work at a local nursery. I’m sure everyone of us had our obligations that had to be met as well as protecting the neighborhood this holiday season.
On Christmas Day, we heard that as a result of Mayor Karen Bass Executive Directive 1 , a 44-unit, no-parking project, erected right in the heart of the cultural core of our community passed. ED 1 requires no notice to anyone at any time. Any developer can purchase a property. and begin a domino effect of a loss of liveability for those choosing to remain.
ED 1 is being codified into law as an Affordable Housing Ordinance as a way to fulfill its State mandated housing quota. The communities are not allowed a say in where these units are located. Instead of our Alternative Community Plan, the City intends to subject our cultural core to an emergency measure turned into law that gives no community any notice of the type of structure that would be developed – the City admits that the projects are substantially out of scale with the surrounding area. The project already approved in our area sits in amid small, narrow residential streets in the interior of a culturally designated community, that was known as a haven after the redlining era.
This directive removes all of our zoning protections unless your home is R1. (R1s are in the wealthier neighborhoods, the majority of our homes are R2.) Developers come in, pressure people to sell their homes and build without restrictions 4-6 story dwelling, 400sq foot units, no set-backs, no trees or garden, no parking requirements…right next door! Our Alternative Community Plan gives the low rent residents much more in the new proposed zoning area, green space, job opportunities It protects our cultural core. This is in contrast to the Affordable Housing Ordinance.
Mayor Bass, please issue an exemption to ED1 for named cultural districts. Give us the equal protection you afforded wealthy single family zoned neighborhoods. Traci Park, as our City Council representative, please issue an Interim Control Ordinance to protect our cultural core. This gives us time to make the wisest choices. This is important. Consider our plan. Its solid, practical, thoughtful, realistic. Our community wants to work with the City on this issue. Do not destroy this rich historical Japantown neighborhood in haste.
So this is my plea for 2024, help us Los Angeles. For those of you who enjoy the Sawtelle restaurants and shops, if you love to celebrate Obon with us, if you enjoy the unique architecture of this area, visiting the Yamaguchi bonsai collection, participate in kendo training, enjoy the beautiful garden of the West LA Buddhist Temple, or just like walking around our wonderful multi-cultural neighborhood enjoying the relaxed diversified friendly feeling…please help us protect and preserve it.
Write,call the Mayor and Council District 11 Traci Parks.
Halt the building temporarily with an Interim Control Ordinance. Endorsement our Alternative Community Plan quickly so we can begin to help the housing crisis of this city.
Thank you
stay safe, well,
K. Hoffman