To the editor: I’m a never-homeowner dwelling in an residence constructing on a avenue filled with residence buildings. I’m a contract author and pastry chef who qualifies for the Supplemental Vitamin Help Program. (“Los Angeles has to rezone all the metropolis. Why are officers defending single-family-home neighborhoods?” Sept. 26)
I perceive why folks in single-family properties don’t need their peaceable streets disrupted by higher-density housing. I additionally perceive why social justice teams need extra density.
What either side fail to grasp is the artwork of empathy and compromise. What we have now here’s a case of competing, authentic wants from all stakeholders. If either side might dig of their heels much less, we might even see some progress on housing.
I dream of dwelling in a quiet house with no shared partitions to compensate for extreme sound sensitivity attributable to neurodivergence. As a local of Los Angeles, I’ve numerous Latino and Black mates raised in dense environments who’ve labored onerous to to maneuver to single-family neighborhoods. To take that away is an insult.
Elements of Los Angeles are awash in unused business buildings and warehouses. In my very own neighborhood, we get well being meals retailer after well being meals retailer, gymnasium after gymnasium, and we don’t want any of it. These business heaps can go to reasonably priced housing.
Is degrading the standard of life and property values of some Angelenos by constructing high-density housing in quiet neighborhoods the reply? Metropolis leaders ought to ask themselves this. Maybe we must always prioritize innovation and empathy.
But when there really aren’t any options to rezoning residential neighborhoods, then it is sensible to go that route.
Tracy Chabala, Los Angeles
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To the editor: We have to up-zone single-family neighborhoods to guard residents from bear assaults. Neighborhoods filled with single-family properties naturally appeal to bears. Clearly, the one factor that may keep at bay this ursine menace is a mixture of small and mid-sized residence buildings, which routinely repel bears.
Disclaimer: This isn’t true. There isn’t a proof that single-family properties appeal to bears. Identical to there isn’t a proof that constructing residence complexes in single-family neighborhoods decreases property values. A number of research have discovered that flats don’t cut back the worth of neighboring properties.
Some owners select to not consider this truth, and native officers bend over backwards to appease them. Most lately, the Los Angeles Planning Fee voted to exempt single-family neighborhoods from town’s new housing plan. In the midst of a housing disaster, the fee placated individuals who have chosen to consider in an simply disprovable falsehood.
L.A. policymakers are extra aware of folks’s delusions than precise info. Which is why I urge them to clear the best way for heaps and many flats in single household neighborhoods earlier than all of us get eaten by bears.
Truman Capps, Studio Metropolis
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To the editor: The Occasions’ editorial board has but once more gone to warfare towards single-family neighborhoods, making them out to be the villain in our reasonably priced housing disaster. (“A take a look at for Mayor Bass’ Planning Fee — assist reasonably priced housing or protect single-family zoning?” Sept. 25)
This ignores the hundreds of vacant and underutilized retail and business buildings that await redevelopment all through town. It’s the job of the mayor and Metropolis Council to give you insurance policies and incentives that will make such commercially zoned parcels pencil out for builders.
As a substitute, The Occasions means that single-family neighborhoods be destroyed, ignoring the very fact they supply social stability and a middle-class presence, to not point out valued property tax income and financial shopping for energy for metropolis coffers.
As soon as these middle-class single-family neighborhoods are gone, the detrimental penalties are everlasting.
Eric Ritter, Los Angeles
