Outside the Circle.  How California Homeowners Lost Their Seat at the Planning Table

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CALIFORNIA HOMEOWNERS - 

Outside the circle is where the community is.

It may sound backwards, but for many Californians, it increasingly describes their experience with the land-use planning process.

Somewhere inside the circle are developers, land-use attorneys, consultants, lobbyists, planning officials, elected representatives, and the professional organizations where many of them regularly meet to discuss development and public policy. They know one another because they work in the same world every day.

Outside that circle are the people who live in the neighborhoods.

They attend hearings.

They write letters.

They organize community meetings.

They testify.

They volunteer.

They vote.

Yet many leave with the same unsettling realization: the most important decisions often appear to have been made long before they ever entered the room.

That realization changes people. It changes the way they view government. It changes the way they view planning. Eventually, it changes whether they believe the public planning process still belongs to the public.

For generations, California offered its citizens an unwritten social contract.

Work hard.

Save your money.

Buy a home.

Raise your family.

Become part of a community.

The promise was never that neighborhoods would remain frozen in time. Communities have always evolved.

The promise was something far more important: if change came, it would come through a planning process that valued public participation, respected community plans, and gave the people who lived there a meaningful voice.

People didn't simply buy homes. They bought into that system.

They accepted thirty-year mortgages believing the rules governing their neighborhoods meant something. They trusted the zoning that existed when they purchased their homes. They trusted that community plans reflected long-term commitments rather than temporary suggestions. They believed that if those rules were ever fundamentally rewritten, they would have a meaningful opportunity to participate in the decisions shaping their communities.

That wasn't merely a planning process.

It was a social contract.

Over the past decade, many Californians have begun to wonder whether that contract has quietly changed. Not because neighborhoods evolve—they always have—but because the process itself increasingly feels out of reach.

Questions are asked.

Letters are written.

Neighborhood councils vote.

Communities organize.

Yet many residents leave believing they remain outside the circle where the most consequential decisions are made.

No one piece of legislation moved Californians outside the circle.

It happened gradually.

One streamlining law.

One exemption.

One waiver.

One reduction in public review.

One narrowing of local discretion.

How the Circle Changed

Viewed individually, each change can be defended. Taken together, they have fundamentally altered how many communities experience the planning process.

Residents understood that growth would occur. They understood that cities change and that no neighborhood remains exactly the same forever.

Change itself was never the issue.

The expectation was that change would occur through a transparent process in which the people most affected could ask questions, present evidence, and have confidence that their concerns would receive meaningful consideration.

Increasingly, many Californians believe that expectation has weakened.

Today, communities often find themselves trying to understand legislation that has already taken effect, projects that have already advanced, and planning decisions that appear to have gathered momentum before residents have had a meaningful opportunity to participate.

The questions are remarkably consistent.

Can our roads safely handle additional traffic?

Can emergency vehicles get through?

Has anyone evaluated wildfire evacuation?

Is there enough water?

Can our infrastructure support additional density?

Where will people park?

How will schools, police, fire protection, and other public services keep pace?

These are not the questions of people who oppose change. They are the questions of people who will live with the consequences long after ribbon cuttings and press releases have faded from memory.

The people inside the circle often know one another.

Developers work with land-use attorneys.

Attorneys work with consultants.

Consultants meet with planners.

Planning officials coordinate with elected offices.

Professional organizations, including groups such as VICA, bring together many of the same participants who regularly discuss growth, development, and land-use policy. There is nothing inherently unusual about experienced professionals working together or sharing ideas.

The question is whether the people who live in the affected communities have an equally meaningful place in the conversation.

Outside the circle, life looks very different.

The people there are teachers, firefighters, nurses, engineers, accountants, contractors, retirees, parents, grandparents, and small business owners.

They are not professional participants in the planning process.

Most never imagined attending zoning hearings, filing public records requests, reading environmental documents, or spending evenings trying to understand legislation with names like AB 130 or SB 684.

No one grows up dreaming of becoming an expert in land-use law.

Communities learn those subjects only when they believe they have no other choice.

They become students of planning because planning suddenly arrives on their doorstep.

A notice appears in the mail.

A familiar property goes up for sale.

Construction stakes appear on a vacant lot.

A neighborhood begins asking questions.

What starts as concern about one project often becomes something much larger.

Residents begin to understand not only what is being proposed, but how decisions are made—and who participates in those decisions.

Across California, communities that have never met one another are discovering they are asking remarkably similar questions.

Different neighborhoods.

Different projects.

Different laws.

The same feeling that they have somehow ended up outside the circle.

Three Communities, One Experience

Granada Hills was one of those communities.

At first, it seemed like a local land-use dispute. A proposed 98-unit assisted-living and memory-care facility was planned for a site in or near a Very High Fire Hazard Severity Zone. Residents began asking what they believed were straightforward questions.

How would elderly residents requiring assistance evacuate during a wildfire?

Could surrounding roads safely accommodate an emergency evacuation?

How would nearby schools, churches, and existing traffic affect emergency access?

Did California's recently enacted streamlining legislation actually apply to a licensed care facility of this nature?

Those were not ideological questions.

They were practical ones.

The community wasn't asking Sacramento to abandon its housing goals. It was asking legislators, planners, and decision-makers to explain how those goals fit within the realities of a neighborhood that lives with wildfire risk.

The answers never seemed as clear as the questions. Despite repeated efforts to obtain clarification many residents felt that the questions they considered most fundamental—about wildfire evacuation, public safety, and the intended reach of California's streamlining laws—remained unanswered.

What began as concern about one proposal gradually became concern about the planning process itself.

As residents dug deeper, they found themselves navigating a planning system that had become increasingly difficult for ordinary citizens to understand. Environmental review. Ministerial approvals. Streamlining. Housing accountability. Public records requests. Statutes they had never heard of suddenly became part of everyday conversation.

Then something unexpected happened.

Residents from other communities began telling remarkably similar stories.

In Woodland Hills, neighbors questioned a proposed high-density development with no on-site parking. Their concerns centered on traffic, emergency access, infrastructure, and whether existing streets could safely absorb additional demand.

In Sherwood Forest, homeowners watched legislation intended to encourage housing create new pathways for subdividing large residential parcels with substantially less discretionary review than many residents expected.

Different communities.

Different projects.

Different legislation.

Yet the conversations sounded strikingly familiar.

Residents weren't simply asking whether more housing should be built. They were asking whether California's planning process still provided meaningful opportunities for the public to influence decisions before they were effectively set in motion.

That is the common thread connecting these communities. It is not opposition to growth. It is the belief that growth should occur through a planning process that is transparent, accountable, and genuinely participatory.

When people begin to feel that their role is limited to reacting to decisions rather than helping shape them, the planning process loses something far more valuable than efficiency.

It begins to lose public confidence.

Was the Promise Kept?

Every social contract is built on an exchange.

California asked its communities to accept sweeping changes to the planning process. More streamlining. Greater density. Fewer discretionary reviews. More ministerial approvals. More opportunities to subdivide long-established neighborhoods. Less local control over decisions that had traditionally been shaped by community planning.

The justification was clear. These changes, Californians were told, were necessary to address a housing affordability crisis.

That was the promise.

Public policy should ultimately be judged by results. If Californians were asked to accept fundamental changes to the planning process in exchange for greater affordability, then affordability should be measurable. It should be visible in the communities where these policies have been implemented. That is the evidence many Californians are still waiting to see.

If California has rewritten the social contract, where is the evidence that the bargain is working?

You don't need to be an economist to understand why so many communities are asking that question.

Drive through parts of the San Fernando Valley.

Throughout parts of the San Fernando Valley, condominium developments that were marketed for sale are now also being offered as rentals. Whatever the reasons in each individual case, those developments have become part of a larger question Californians are asking: Where is the measurable evidence that streamlining and increased density have delivered the affordability that justified rewriting the rules?

Homeownership remains beyond the reach of many teachers, firefighters, police officers, nurses, and young families.

At the same time, communities are asking why other planning priorities appear to have been pushed aside. While streamlining laws have accelerated approvals and subdivision laws have transformed long-established neighborhoods, many residents are still waiting to see the affordability they were promised. Instead, they see one- and two-acre residential parcels divided into multiple homes, community plans fundamentally altered, and, in some cases, questions raised about whether wildfire evacuation planning and other public safety considerations have received the attention they deserve.

Communities were asked to accept these changes because they were presented as necessary to achieve a broader public benefit.

If communities are being asked to accept greater density, diminished opportunities for public review, and fundamental changes to neighborhoods that evolved over generations, then government has an obligation to demonstrate that those sacrifices are producing the public benefits that justified them. Asking Californians simply to trust that the strategy will work is no substitute for showing that it is working.

That is the other half of the social contract.

Government depends on public confidence.

So does planning.

For generations, Californians believed they were participants in shaping the communities where they lived. They understood they would not prevail in every debate, but they trusted that their voices mattered and that the planning process belonged to the public as much as it did to professionals.

Today, many communities are no longer questioning only the outcome of individual projects. They are questioning the process itself. They are asking whether the social contract that encouraged generations of Californians to invest in their neighborhoods has quietly changed.

Those are questions worth answering.

Because outside the circle is where the community is.

(Eva Amar is the Granada Highlands Community Coordinator and has been actively involved in issues involving wildfire evacuation planning, land-use policy, and community advocacy throughout the west San Fernando Valley.)