California developers are using a hidden loophole to build hundreds of homes on land athigh risk of wildfires, locals have warned.
Builders are bypassing thorough safety checks by fast-tracking affordable housing projects on commercially-zoned land in Los Angeles, councilmember Bob Blumenfield told the Post.
He highlighted plans to bulldoze part of Woodland Hills Country Club and turn its former golf course into 398 apartments this year.
The land is next to the Santa Monica Mountains, near where thehorrifying Palisades Firedestroyed neighborhoods and left 12 people dead.
Blumenfield said: “The Woodland Hills Country Club is located close to where the Palisades fire burned and in a ‘Very High Fire Severity Zone,’ where some of the streets are only a few feet wide.
“The fact that newly enacted state laws appear to have stripped most, if not all, of the community’s safeguards is just absurd.”
At the center of the battle is theAffordable Housing and High Road Jobs Act (AB 2011), a powerful state law designed to force cities to fast-track affordable housing on commercially zoned land near jobs and major corridors.
Lawmakers pitched it as a way to convert failing strip malls, vacant big-box stores and aging commercial corridors into housing.
Projects that qualify can bypass years of hearings, environmental challenges, and local political fights.
But Blumenfield argues developers are exploiting loopholes in the law to push dense projects into places it was never intended to reach — including the Woodland Hills golf course in a high-risk fire zone.
Source: California Post – Breaking California News, Photos & Videos
