INVESTIGATIVE ANALYSIS - Sacramento has streamlined housing approvals so aggressively that residents rarely get a hearing at all. But when they do, five years of Los Angeles voting records reveal an uncomfortable truth: at least over the last five years, public opposition hasn't moved the needle. The projects go forward anyway
California has spent years streamlining housing development. Hearings disappear. Appeals disappear. Local discretion disappears. More projects move through processes in which the people who actually live next door have little meaningful opportunity to affect what gets built.
But occasionally, the public still gets through the door.
Del Moreno was one of those cases.
The proposal is a 71-room residential-care facility for the elderly in Woodland Hills, across from Taft Charter High School, with zero automobile parking. The neighbors organized. More than 600 people signed a petition opposing the project. They researched it, wrote letters and showed up at the August 27 City Planning Commission hearing. When their turn finally came, residents were limited to roughly 60 seconds apiece.
Years for the project. Sixty seconds for the people who live there.
I expected the usual land-use fight. Instead, I was gobsmacked—not by the neighbors, but by the commissioners.
They practically made the case against the project themselves.
Commissioner Saitman acknowledged the public's concerns and ultimately said, "Our hands are tied." Commissioner Rosenstein said that years ago a project like this "in no way would...have flown." Vice President Choe asked, "This can be built, but does it make sense to me?" Her answer was no.
Commissioner Klein said it was not something that "from any perspective" should be approved. Commission President Monique Lawshe called it "too big for the location," said the developer had "maxed out every square inch of the land," and criticized the consideration given to the quality of life of the 71 residents who would live there.
Those aren't angry neighbors talking. Those are the people who voted to approve it.
Six commissioners. Six yes votes.
Something about it left a nasty taste in my mouth, like chewing on a Band-Aid. So I started digging.
This Isn't an Apartment Building Anymore
Del Moreno has been through Los Angeles before. Its earlier incarnation was a seven-story apartment/mixed-use proposal that included 65 automobile parking spaces. The City stopped that proposal from proceeding as submitted. The developer and housing advocates sued and prevailed on important application-processing and housing-law issues, sending the matter back through the City's process.
But what eventually came before CPC was materially different: a 71-room residential-care facility for the elderly with zero automobile parking.
That distinction matters. People living in ordinary apartments generally come and go independently. A residential-care facility exists precisely because some occupants may need assistance with daily living. Some Del Moreno residents may be completely ambulatory. Others may use walkers or wheelchairs or require assistance during an emergency.
So who will operate this facility? How many employees will work each shift? Where will they park? Where do visiting nurses, therapists, families, vendors and delivery vehicles go? What transportation will the facility maintain? During a fast-moving emergency, who gets 71 rooms' worth of elderly people out?
I didn't hear those questions meaningfully answered at the hearing.
The public materials I reviewed have not identified a clearly committed operator. In a subsequent filing, I asked Planning to identify the operator and explain the operational basis for a 71-room care facility with zero onsite automobile parking.
Commissioner Saitman did ask applicant Akhilesh Jha about ambulances and emergency transportation. Jha described an interior emergency drop-off and pickup area. When Saitman asked whether buses or some form of onsite transportation could evacuate residents during a broader emergency such as a fire, Jha replied: "That's the law."
Maybe he meant nothing more than exactly that. But those three words landed like a thud in a hearing where commissioners themselves repeatedly insisted the law had tied their hands.
More troubling was what Planning told the Commission: LAFD and Building and Safety would conduct structural and life-safety plan review post-entitlement—after approval. Your eyes are not deceiving you. A facility for elderly residents who may be unable to self-evacuate, across from a high school—and important fire and life-safety review comes after entitlement approval.
That creates a remarkable Catch-22. Commissioners discussed the narrow circumstances in which a specific and adverse public-health or safety impact can provide grounds for denying a Density Bonus waiver. Yet government life-safety review hadn't happened.
How do commissioners evaluate the safety exception before approval when important safety information comes afterward?
This is California. Wildfire isn't theoretical. And we are talking about elderly people.
The hearing even revealed confusion over whether the property lies within a Very High Fire Hazard Severity Zone. Planning acknowledged that ZIMAS showed the site inside such a zone but told commissioners newer CAL FIRE mapping placed it outside. Whatever the correct current designation, that contradiction deserved clarity before the vote.
"Our Hands Are Tied"
I've heard that phrase before in Los Angeles land-use fights: We understand. We sympathize. But Sacramento tied our hands.
At Del Moreno, Rosenstein encouraged residents unhappy with the laws to contact their state senator, Assemblymember and Governor.
Don't look here. Look north.
Sacramento unquestionably has stripped enormous amounts of discretion from local governments in the name of producing housing. But "Sacramento made us do it" cannot substitute for explaining what Sacramento actually made you do.
Density Bonus Law is powerful. It is not a four-word statute reading: APPROVE THE DAMN PROJECT.
It contains standards and exceptions. If the Commission's hands truly were tied, show the public the knot. Identify exactly what state law required, what discretion remained and why applicable health-and-safety provisions could not change the result.
Maybe detailed legal analysis occurred outside the hearing. If it did, I want to see it. The transcript does not show commissioners receiving a serious, on-record legal analysis of those exceptions while repeatedly announcing an absolute conclusion: We have to approve.
"Our hands are tied" is not legal analysis.
Then I discovered something else. Public records show Jha involvement with similar RCFE/Density Bonus projects on Polk Street, Baird Avenue and Vassar Avenue. Del Moreno and Polk propose zero automobile parking; Baird's plans state "Required Parking Zero / Provided Parking Zero"; Vassar was shown as on hold in the materials reviewed. My filing asks Planning to identify materially comparable non-Jha Los Angeles RCFEs using this Density Bonus/non-ELD pathway and, importantly, any comparable facility actually licensed and operating with zero onsite automobile parking.
If they exist, show me.
Then I Followed the Votes
By now I wanted to know whether Del Moreno was extraordinary. So I went through five years of land-use decisions involving three places where Los Angeles residents can still encounter public review: the City Planning Commission, the North Valley Area Planning Commission and the Los Angeles City Council.
The results were startling.
In five years of City Planning Commission records, we found ONE PROJECT the CPC actually voted down: the Robertson Boulevard hotel project, rejected 7–0 in November 2021.
That's what a project denial looks like.
At the North Valley Area Planning Commission, our five-year audit found zero projects voted down outright.
And in our five-year review of planning appeals reaching the Los Angeles City Council, we found one proposed development the Council actually stopped at that stage.
Want to guess which one?
Del Moreno.
I couldn't believe it. The project that sent me down this rabbit hole turned out to be the extraordinary exception sitting inside the voting history.
Los Angeles had actually said no to the earlier Del Moreno proposal. The developer sued. The matter returned. And the version that eventually came before CPC wasn't the apartment proposal with 65 automobile parking spaces. It was eldercare, with zero automobile parking.
Commissioners themselves described what they thought was wrong with it.
Then voted 6–0 to approve it.
Three Stops on the Way to Yes
This is where the voting record punches the system in the nose.
Five years. Three public decision-making bodies. CPC: one project voted down—Robertson. North Valley Area Planning Commission: zero. City Council: one—Del Moreno.
And Del Moreno came back.
After five years of voting records, one fact becomes painfully difficult to ignore: Los Angeles almost never says no.
Del Moreno provides an almost absurd illustration. The applicant requested 14 Density Bonus waivers. CPC approved 12 and denied two.
The two it denied?
Bicycle parking.
There is something surreal about debating bicycle parking for a 71-room eldercare facility while commissioners themselves question zero automobile parking, emergency transportation and whether the project makes sense.
For the Density Bonus waivers, CPC is the City's final administrative decision-maker; those waivers do not simply proceed to City Council through an ordinary appeal.
So residents finally get one of those increasingly rare hearings. More than 600 sign a petition. They get their minute. They make their case.
And then the administrative ladder ends.
A microphone is not power. A hearing is not necessarily independent review. And an appeal isn't particularly meaningful if almost every road leads to the same destination.
Who Is Sitting at the Table?
Then there is the Commission itself.
Commission President Monique Lawshe has been unusually candid about the perspective she brings. In a UCLA Anderson profile, she said, "You could say real estate development is in my DNA." She described CPC membership as a way to put her "passion for development to good use" and said, most remarkably, "I bring the 'developer's' mindset to our discussions."
Professional expertise isn't misconduct. But when the president of the body says she brings a developer's mindset to the table, residents are entitled to ask what mindset is sitting on the other side.
Especially after looking at five years of outcomes.
Sacramento should answer for the laws Sacramento passed. Los Angeles should answer for the decisions Los Angeles made under them. Accountability shouldn't disappear somewhere on Interstate 5 between City Hall and the State Capitol.
Maybe these aren't three backstops.
Maybe they're three stops on the way to yes.
Los Angeles should publish a citywide audit of its land-use decisions: project by project, ultimate outcome by ultimate outcome. How many developments were actually stopped? How often did resident objections materially change the project? How often did a project Los Angeles supposedly rejected simply come back another way?
No bureaucratic word games.
Don't follow the word. Follow the project.
More than 600 people signed the Del Moreno petition. They showed up. They spoke. Several commissioners essentially agreed with them about serious shortcomings in the project.
Then every commissioner voted yes.
That's not something I can unsee.
After looking at five years of voting records, I'm left thinking about the old saying that started this article: If you don't have a seat at the table, you're probably on the menu.
At Del Moreno, the public wasn't given a seat at the table. It was devoured.
This is Part One of a series examining Los Angeles land-use decision-making, public participation and what happens to development projects after residents object.
(Eva Amar is a West San Fernando Valley community organizer, national sexual assault victim advocate, and CityWatch contributor covering land-use legislation and government accountability.)
