LAT: Cities Join to Fight Housing Project

[DeepModem Mom]

Cities Join to Fight Housing Project
Neither L.A. nor Santa Clarita wants 5,800 homes built on hilly land between them. Clogged freeways are cited as a major reason.

By Amanda Covarrubias, Times Staff Writer


Officials in Santa Clarita and Los Angeles are gearing up to fight a developer's plans to build a 5,800-home community in the hills above one of California's biggest freeway bottlenecks, where the Golden State and Antelope Valley freeways merge.

The unusual partnership comes amid a major building boom in north Los Angeles County that is expected to add 400,000 residents in the next 15 years, growth that some fear would further clog the region's already congested roads.

The battle over the Las Lomas project underscores the lengths to which local governments are willing to go to control growth as new home construction proliferates on the edges of the Southern California megalopolis.

"This really is an example of two cities saying, 'Enough is enough,' " said Los Angeles Councilman Greig Smith, a leading critic of the project whose district is adjacent to it. "There's a long history of cities doing something to another to the detriment of regional participation…. I think the fact that the two cities are working against it signals a death knell for the project."...


http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-lomas28may28,0,7296350.story?coll=la-home-local