For homelessness advocates in Los Angeles, a packed community meeting on a homeless housing project in a well-to-do neighborhood isn’t ordinarily a great sign. But the overwhelming majority of some 80 people at a Sherman Oaks Neighborhood Council meeting Monday night wanted to see a permanent supportive housing facility for formerly homeless seniors.
The council board unanimously voted in favor of the possible development, marking the group’s first approval of a homeless supportive housing project after two sites proposed for similar projects by Councilmember David Ryu last year drew staunch community opposition.
Those proposals were since dropped due to feasibility issues, according to Ryu’s staff. Recommendations by neighborhood councils are purely advisory, but City Council district offices throughout Los Angeles often look to the groups to identify community concerns and needs.
The project in question is a quarter acre, 55-to-58-unit permanent supportive housing facility for independent seniors 62 and older who have experienced homelessness. The site is at 14534-14536 Burbank Blvd near the corner of Van Nuys Boulevard. Residents would live in studio apartments alongside a live-in property manager, social services and community spaces.
The site’s developer and manager, Mercy Housing, is a national non-profit affordable housing organization operating 143 sites in California, including five LA area facilities in downtown and east LA, Koreatown and El Monte. For this project, the group secured $11.8 million from Proposition HHH, a $1.2 billion bond measure for supportive housing, and construction is slated to kick off in May 2020.
According to the annual count conducted by the Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority, rates of senior homelessness in Los Angeles rose by 22% last year even as overall numbers of individuals living in shelters, cars and on the street dropped slightly to just under 53,000.
At Monday’s meeting, around 25 community members and LA area homeless advocates spoke passionately about the need to step up and address the city’s homelessness crisis, dismissing some neighbor’s concerns about possible behavior issues or other negative affects on the neighborhood.
Last week, United Way of Los Angeles held an event featuring stories of formerly homeless people hoping to drum up support for the Sherman Oaks project. Residents of other Mercy Housing facilities, like 61-year-old Dwight Nairen who lives at a veterans supportive housing site in El Monte, spoke to the board on Monday.
“I lost my home when the economic crisis hit and Mercy Housing has been everything I needed,” he said. “They have people I can talk to about my family situation, my personal problems. I really don’t have anything negative to say.”
Only two people had something negative to say – one decrying the $521,000 price tag per unit of housing and the other accusing the Sherman Oaks council of pushing a blight problem onto surrounding Valley neighborhoods.
“You’re not just putting a shelter in the northern end of Sherman Oaks where nobody has to see it, you’re putting it in three neighborhoods,” said board member of the Valley Glen Neighborhood Council Joseph Barmettler. “That Ralph’s has a lot of problems with homeless and theft already, and children have to step over needles on the ground.”
Carolina Goodman, who lives just a couple blocks from the proposed site, expected to hear more such voices at the meeting.
“I thought there would be more NIMBY’s,” she said after telling the council she hopes even more projects like this come to fruition. “I’m excited because property values and safety are harmed by unhoused people.”
Sherman Oaks Neighborhood Council board member Lisa Petrus voted against past homeless housing projects. But after a site tour on a similar permanent supportive housing facility in North Hollywood, she decided this type of project was “perfect” for her neighborhood.
“I thought I’d find homeless people hanging out drinking in front of the building maybe,” she said of her visit. “But I was shocked … It was immaculate, clean and quiet. I think this is exactly what we need in Sherman Oaks.”
Prior to this vote, Mercy Housing held a total of nine meetings with dozens of neighbors — including a site tour in El Monte — and continuously shared updates on a project website. Amy Bayley of Mercy, whose job it is to work with communities that surround new housing projects, suggested Mercy Housing’s robust engagement efforts may have persuaded naysayers in a way that the city could not in its efforts.
“The past projects didn’t have an owner and an operator, which I do think was a drawback. It was just a site and idea without anything concrete – who was there to address worries?” said Bayley after Monday’s meeting. “I’m not shocked it passed but I’m really pleased, and maybe a little surprised.”
While supportive housing projects are underway in other parts of councilmember David Ryu’s district, like Los Feliz and Hollywood, Ryu staff said that the office would be open to exploring new projects in Sherman Oaks if other sites were identified.
They added that this particular project will not likely be heard City Council going forward but due to Mercy Housing’s requests for entitlements will undergo some form of a public hearing process in coming months.
“I am encouraged to see non-profits like Mercy Housing take an active role in addressing homelessness among senior citizens,” Councilmember David Ryu said in a statement. “I applaud the Sherman Oaks Neighborhood Council for their unanimous support of this life saving project as well as the community members who have spoken up to be part of the solution to the most challenging crisis our city faces.”
