Ladera Heights residents continue to push back on proposed rezoning plans

LADERA HEIGHTS, LOS ANGELES (KABC) -- Communities across California are required to plan for housing needs every five or eight years, but the process can lead to confusion and tension, as is currently the case in Ladera Heights.

On a hot Friday afternoon, Ladera Heights resident Daphne Bradford led neighbors, city and county staff on a walking tour.

"They're going to see our beautiful community," Bradford told Eyewitness News just before beginning the tour.

Bradford, who has lived in Ladera Heights for more than 30 years, has a clear goal in mind: "collaboration and negotiation," she said.

She and other residents are pushing back against rezoning plans in Ladera Heights, a predominantly African American community largely made up of single family homes.

It's an area impacted by Los Angeles city and Los Angeles county plans to create so-called "opportunity zones," areas that would be rezoned for the opportunity to meet housing needs determined by the state, including housing deemed affordable to different income levels.

"We're not against rezoning and affordable housing, but it needs to be truly affordable, and we want to generate generational wealth here," said Bradford, who added that the area is already heavily congested.

"Traffic here is horrendous. If you bring 4,000 units here to Ladera Heights that's just three miles, we won't be able to get out of here."

The county rezoning plan is farther along and set to be adopted this winter. It includes opportunity zones in two commercial areas in Ladera Heights.

If the rezoning plans are approved, building the housing would still hinge on the initiative of private developers.

Los Angeles County Supervisor Holly Mitchell, who represents the area, told Eyewitness News: "I take the feedback and concerns shared by constituents seriously which is why I have organized community meetings for residents to speak directly with the County's Department of Regional Planning ahead of the County's West Side Area Plan public hearing this Wednesday. As a result, changes based on feedback received from Ladera Heights residents and the surrounding communities have already been made to the County's West Side Area Plan. These changes include removing Opportunity Site #1 (Centinela and Green Valley, removing Opportunity Site #10 (Angeles Vista and Valley Ridge), no rezoning along Springpark Avenue and Fairview Blvd, and lowering the recommended height limit for Ladera Center to 45 ft (4 stories), currently LA County's portion of the Ladera Center is zoned for 35 ft (3 stories). I will continue to encourage residents to work with us throughout this process."

"To have the city and the county come out and actually listen to our concerns and to see the character of the neighborhood means loads to us," said resident Latonya Harris Keith, who also shares Bradford's concern of building generational wealth through homeownership in the area.

Bradford praises the results of some of the ongoing dialog. "Traffic was brought up and we knew nothing about some of the wonderful things that the county is doing on a study," she said.

Still, she and others called for plans to be postponed at Wednesday's L.A. County Regional Planning hearing. They want to first advocate for reforms to the tool the state uses to determine housing needs.

"We're trying to find hard to preserve the culture and the character of our community," said Bradford.