HAPPY WITH 500 SQUARE FEET: Marty Greer (left) moved to Sunland, Calif., in 1974. He says a boom in larger homes (right) is changing the area's character. PHOTOS BY DAN WOOD
Posted on 08/03/2005 11:33:32 AM PDT by Cincinatus' Wife
SUNLAND, CALIF. – Leaning on the wrought-iron fence that defines the front lawn of his cottage-size home, Marty Greer says he doesn't like what is happening to this California foothill community.
"They're tearing down homes like mine and putting up homes like those," says the 31-year resident, pointing to a two-story home one block away. The magenta-stucco home dwarfs the one-story bungalows that line these hillside streets. Its walls stretch to the edges of the property line, not even leaving room for a swath of yard
"I don't like it and the neighbors here don't like it," says Mr. Greer, who bought his 500-sq.-ft. home here in 1974. "It'll change this place forever."
The trend toward building ever bigger houses, which has gained momentum for over a decade in suburbs across the nation, has now arrived in one of America's largest bedroom communities: the San Fernando Valley. This week the Los Angeles City Council approved the first "anti-mansionization" ordinance in one small section of the country's second-largest city. More L.A. enclaves are lined up to follow suit.
"Mansionization has become one of the most pressing issues in my district," says Wendy Gruel, the city councilwoman who sponsored the legislation, which goes into effect immediately upon formal approval this week. The measure will limit homes built on lots of 8,000 sq. ft. or less to 2,400 sq. ft. - or 40 percent of the lot size, whichever is greater. The move affects just one community of her district (known as Sunland-Tujunga). Neighboring towns of Pasadena, Glendale, and Burbank have visited the issue, some coming up with similar ordinances, and Ms. Gruel says other areas of the San Fernando Valley are clamoring for their own laws as well.
"It's a quality of life issue that goes to the heart of many of the values that Americans cherish," says Gruel.
As in other cities across the US where the issue has already forced a clash of values, long-established residents are rankled by prospective owners who want bigger or different styles of homes. Developers actively promote the benefits of building as do some city officials eager to gain the benefits of higher property taxes that support school, police, and fire departments.
The trend also reflects changes in how Americans view their nests and how they use them.
Younger generations, who often want bigger rooms for electronic entertainment and state-of-the-art kitchens, eschew the millions of pill-box homes built after World War II. Immigrants from Asia, Iran, and the Middle East have dreams of homes with cathedral ceilings and often say they have little use for spacious yards.
The trend also reflects a shift in investment strategies away from the stock market to property and housing. Another factor is simply workers who want to combine a shorter commute and access to a downtown cultural life with the ample square footage found in exurbia.
"This is a phenomenon that is impacting every city and community in America," says Siim Soot, research professor at the Urban Transportation Center, University of Illinois at Chicago. "For decades, the demographic trend has been for cities to sprawl further and further outward because of the American sense of dream and entitlement to own one's home. Now more and more are looking at ways to achieve that by altering the very idea of residence in already established communities."
Buying an older home and then demolishing it to rebuild a larger home is an increasingly attractive financial option to buyers over finding a bigger home in newer communities that are farther away, say Mr. Soot and others.
"This is driven by the price of land elsewhere, the choice of people not to live so far from employment, changing ways of American life by Americans, and the desire for immigrants to design their own dream," says Joel Kotkin, author of several books on urban development.
Here in California, which is cradled by mountains on one side, the limits of sprawl are aided, in part, by geography. While residents like Greer have often lined up to complain about a loss of tradition and sense of place, some analysts have a more positive take: the mitigation of further sprawl already rampant in the area east of Los Angeles. "I am pleased by the trend by some builders and home buyers to build bigger homes on smaller lots because it restricts the overall expansion of urban areas into wild and still-green areas," says Soot.
In other communities of the San Fernando Valley, the issue is also drawing debate, including Valley Glen, Mount Washington, and Glassell Park. But national observers say that despite the struggles, compromises can be reached.
"We have found that communities here have learned on a region by region basis, with each one learning at a different rate," says Glenn Geiger, a real estate land-use analyst in New Jersey. "Each one has tried to address how to balance retaining community character alongside the economic growth needed to continue to thrive. The answers are different in different areas."
HAPPY WITH 500 SQUARE FEET: Marty Greer (left) moved to Sunland, Calif., in 1974. He says a boom in larger homes (right) is changing the area's character. PHOTOS BY DAN WOOD
Place on the right looks okay to me.
Could it be the other owners are simply jealous?
Naaaaaaaaaa....ya THINK? ;)
nah, couldn't be.
It never matters that the derided 'McManions' end up generating more in taxes and using less in services than equivalent smaller housing or apartments- they must be demonized!!!
The only thing that troubles me about this article is that someone would build a magenta-colored house.
My brother-in-law says that they call these things "McMansions".
Maybe I'm just a provincial redneck, but I've never heard of a 500-square-foot house. My brother's first single-wide TRAILER--er, excuse me, "manufactured home"--was bigger than that. My wife lived in an efficiency apartment before we got married, and that was 500 square feet. Wow.
Just more proof that your land is not your land anymore.
}:-)4
So how many cities with post-war housing will be looking at the recent Kelo decision? I hear a new motto now - "We condemn, you rebuild!"
Oh, I've seen worse. Imagine a house that looks like it was painted with pepto
It's more of a salmon pink. You see that color a lot in southern Florida and out in the Desert Southwest. Nowadays it is color added to the cement stucco, but I think it originally was a result of the source of mud used. If you made stucco from a region with a lot of red clay, it would probably be that pink color.
Sounds awfully restrictive. Even though I don't like "greenspace" laws I'd be more comfortable if the law only required 30% greenspace, not 60%.
I do not see a problem with this.
It is only jealousy, or is it he fears the neighbor's second floor.
These days, you do not have to move to find the perfect house, you can use the equity to build your perfect house where you are.
As an added bonus, if you are building on a non association lot, you don't have to deal with the condo komando kermuchens like that old guy.
Yes, I thought that was excessive too.
Could it be the other owners are simply jealous?
They are hideous monstrosities that obstruct one's view, and disturb the look of the neighborhood. If you want to live in a giant suburban McHouse move to a new housing track, don't build one in an older established neighborhood, where people moved there SPECIFICALLY because it they like the style of the houses, the trees and the landcaping.
It may be legal (for awhile) but it's not very neighborly.
"McMansions"
I've usually heard it as a phrase: "those ugly, faux-chateau tract McMansions."
.....round here we have limits on how big they must be.....
.....(keeps them single wides out lol!).....
I lived in a 500 sq ft house once. Not much house...
I agree 100%. A lot of recent immigrants with no sense of estetics or preservation build this crap: Middle-Easterners and Asians (as the article points out).
Masionette. LOL!
And if you don't live in California you probably don't even know what the article is talking about because it's somewhat unique to this region.
A good friend recently sold his house in the Tree District of Manhattan Beach, CA. It was bought by a builder who tore it down and built a house that looks like a rectangular apartment building. Most of the other small houses on the street have succumbed to the same fate. The builder builds to fill the maximum "air space" allowed, in width, depth and height.
While there's really nothin wrong with it, and it actually raised my friend's property value, he missed his cozy little street and sold. Funny thing was, his house would have been worth more if it were burned to the ground than if it were left standing, since all of the buyers were builders who planned to 'doze it anyway.
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