Los Angeles and communities across the state fought Sen. Weiner's previous bills, SB827, SB50, SB1120 and all his bills, the state land use takeover, eliminating local control, and upzoning all of California, failed. But he's back with more bad bills and HPOZs will no longer be protected.. Both Livable California www.livablecalifornia.org And United Neighbors www.unitedneighbors.net have information on the state bills and how to participate in submitting comments, making phone calls, to express opposition to the bills. You can sign up for update newsletters, and to be notified of Livable California's informative state wide teleconference calls with residents, community groups, neighborhood council board members, city council members, mayors, other electeds, from across the state, opposed to, and fighting these bills. Livable California website has important research, facts, and presentations from these calls if you've missed them.

UNITED NEIGHBORS: At a recent Livable California teleconference on how to fight state Sen. Scott Wiener and the nightmare bills SB 9 and SB 10, community leader Maria Kalban explained how she created a huge new statewide group, United Neighbors.

United Neighbors is 100+ groups strong and growing, with homeowner, neighborhood and renter organizations from L.A., the Coasts, the Valleys and Inland Empire, and the Bay Area, all fighting Wiener’s dream of suffocating us in dense, unaffordable, luxury housing, the state enabling developers to infiltrate neighborhoods and build with no say or input from existing communities that live in them.. There is NO affordable in these bills..in the midst of an affordable and homeless housing crisis.

Here is the Feb. 20 presentation by Maria and Jeff Kalban. Watch, share!

• Video: Maria Kalban on how she brought together dozens of groups to fight Bad Bills and Scott Wiener
  

Slideshow by architect Jeff Kalban of a neighborhood morphing into a dense jumble without yards, garages or trees. And not ONE affordable unit.

• Video: Jeff Kalban narrates the morphing of a neighborhood into densely packed unaffordable units, under SB 9 and SB 10
  

• Slides: The morphing, in a silent slideshow format is HERE
  

• Slides: A shorter version, edited by Livable California, is HERE
  

Newly founded United Neighbors’ key goals: -Preserve single-family neighborhoods; -Protect open spaces and environments; -Ensure LOCAL control so housing is built in appropriate areas with adequate infrastructure;

-Create housing in commercial areas and on publicly owned land.

We urge neighborhood, homeowner, and renter groups who oppose takeover of local land-use control, mass upzoning, and displacement of communities: join United Neighbors HERE. United Neighbors presentation is also at Livable California’s site here. UNITED NEIGHBORS LETTER TO L.A. CITY COUNCIL PRESIDENT NURY MARTINEZ March 4, 2021 The Honorable Nury Martinez Los Angeles City Council President 200 North Spring Street, Suite 470 Los Angeles, California 90012 Dear Council President Martinez: United Neighbors (“UN”) is a newly formed coalition comprising previously unaffiliated homeowners’ associations and neighborhood organizations that represent communities throughout Los Angeles. United Neighbors’ 100+ organizations joined together to protect single-family communities from the recent onslaught of deceitful state legislation that purports to create badly needed affordable housing but will actually lead to increased housing prices and added benefits to developers and land speculators without creating any affordable housing units. UN is specifically concerned about SB 9 (Atkins) and SB 10 (Weiner) because these two CA Senate bills will effectively eliminate single-family communities in Los Angeles.

They will also accelerate gentrification and increase the financial pressure on communities of color and our low and moderate-income neighbors who are struggling to find affordable housing to buy or rent. UN urges you and the other 13 members of the City Council to support Councilmember Koretz’s resolutions against SB 9 and SB 10 and to remove any requirement for concurrence by the Mayor from these resolutions. The Council’s support will send Sacramento a strong, unified message on behalf of the citizens of Los Angeles that we demand real solutions to the affordable housing crisis in our state, not deceitful ones. Los Angeles has been a leading advocate for affordable housing and smart growth near transit, and UN is ready to lend its strong support to help our City leaders craft policies and regulations that will actually lead to the creation of more affordable housing in Los Angeles, including the potential repeal of Article 34 in the State Constitution. We believe that single-family communities should be preserved and protected, and we also believe that there are plenty of locations in and around our communities that can be repositioned to accommodate the affordable housing that Los Angeles so desperately needs. Should you need to contact us for any reason or if you require additional information, please feel free to call.. -Maria Pavlou Kalban, Board Member of the Sherman Oaks Homeowners Association and founder of United Neighbors (mpkalban@gmail.com), -Cindy Chvatal-Keane, President of Hancock Park HOA (snorekel@gmail.com), -John Heath, President of United Homeowners’Association (Jheath@uhawhvp.org). Thank you and we look forward to hearing from you. Sincerely, Maria Pavlou Kalban Chair Cindy Chvatal-Keane Vice-Chair John Heath Vice-Chair Contact:Maria Pavlou Kalban email: mpkalban@gmail.com UNITED NEIGHBORS: Adams Hill Angelenos For Trees Baldwin Hills Estates HOA Brentwood Homeowners Association Brookside HOA Century Glen HOA Chevy Chase Estates Comstock Hills Homeowners Association Country Club Park Crenshaw Manor Community Association Doheny Sunset Plaza Neighborhood Association Fairfax Hills Franklin Corridor Communities Franklin/Hollywood West Residents Association Freemont Place Association Friends of Sunset Park Friends of the Hills (Los Altos) Grayburn Ave Club Hancock Park Homeowners Association Hidden Hills Homeowners Association Hollywoodland Homeowners Association Homeowners of Encino Hyde Park Organizational Partnership for Empowerment La Brea Hancock HOA Ladera Heights Civic Association Land Park Community Association Los Feliz Improvement Association Mid-City Santa Monica Miracle Mile Residential Association Montecito Association North of Montana Neighborhood Group North Torrance Neighborhood Association Northwest Glendale Homeowners Old Agoura Hills Old Torrance Neighborhood Association Residents Cross-City Safety & Sanity Ridgewood Wilton HOA Riviera HOA Royal Canyon Property Owners Association Santa Monica Northeast Save Lafayette (Walnut Creek) Save Oaks Savanna Seaside Neighborhood Association Shadow Hills Property Owners Association Sherman Oaks Homeowners Association South Shores Community Association Southeast Torrance HOA (SETHA) Southwood Homeowners Association Southwood Riviera Homeowners Association Southwood Sunray Spaulding Square Neighborhood Association St Andrews Square Neighborhood Association Studio City Residents Association Sullivan Canyon Property Owners Association Sunset Square Neighborhood OrgSutro Ave Block Toluca Lake Homeowners Association United Homeowners’ Association representing View Park, Windsor Hills, View Heights Upper Nichols Neighborhood Association Valley Village Residents Association Venice Homeowners Association Verdugo Woodlands West HOA West Mar Vista Residents Association West Toluca Lake Residents Association West Torrance Homeowners Association Westwood Hills HOA Westwood Hills Property Owners Association Wilshire Park Association Wilshire Village Windsor Square Homeowners Association Woodland Hills Homeowners Association To Join the 100+ United Neighbors Communities, Contact Maria Pavlou Kalban email: mpkalban@gmail.com To sign up for United Neighbors Newsletters, State Bill Updates: https://www.unitedneighbors.net/ UNITED NEIGHBORS UPDATE:...Contact Maria Kalban to join the upcoming....United Neighbors .. March 13 @ 1:00 p.m. zoom meeting. We must work together to get the word out about these misleading bills. All the residents we represent and our electeds need to know the truth about these bills. We have done a lot of zoom calls with groups to explain the bills, but all of you now have this information and slides to help you explain. The slides are on our website: unitedneighbors.net. Last year a lot of our senators and assemblymembers did not know the real impacts of the bills they were voting on. Our job is to make sure electeds and our membership know the truth about these bills. We have to reach everybody. Also, we want to start spreading the narrative that there are better ways to solve the housing problem than by destroying neighborhoods. We are getting another slide show ready for our United Neighbors March 13 @ 1:00 p.m. zoom meeting. We will discuss some of the good bills, their impacts and how good planning can solve some of our housing problems without destroying neighborhoods. Reach out to us if you would like to attend the March 13th ZOOM meeting and if you have some ideas.

Best, Maria

Councilmember Koretz has always led the opposition to these state bills along with Councilmember David Ryu.

L.A.s position is important, and they both led City Council to vote unanimously against previous Weiner bills.

He admitted being on his own with the loss of Councilmember Ryu.

The new CD4 Councilmember supported SB1120, and her rep. expressed that she most likely will support SB9 at a recent community meeting.

All the more reason for Los Angeles communities, through United Neighbors, to unite and support Councilmember’s Koretz’s efforts.