Not In My Neighborhood

By Jon D. Hull/Los Angeles

John Morris will never forget the day four years ago when two bulldozers arrived in his tranquil West Los Angeles neighborhood. The 38-year-old accountant was already harboring doubts about life in the city. It takes him an hour to drive a mere 15 miles to work on the packed freeways, and he no longer wears contact lenses because the smog stings his eyes. Fear of toxic chemicals keeps him from setting foot in nearby Santa Monica Bay.

But when the corner gas station was leveled and replaced by an ugly mini- mall, Morris revolted. "My life has become an endurance test," he moans. He is now a zealous activist in the biggest grass-roots political movement to hit California since the property tax revolt a decade ago. A new battle cry -- Slow Growth -- is erupting from once placid neighborhoods plagued with congested streets and schools. Fed up with sprawling condos, office towers and mini-shopping centers plunked down among single-family houses, residents are demanding limits on unbridled real estate development. The state may never be the same.

Last June voters in Los Angeles ousted City Council President Pat Russell, a staunch ally of Mayor Tom Bradley and developers, replacing her with an unknown who promised to slam the brakes on overbuilding. Bradley has now modified his pro-growth policies to protect his chances for re-election in 1989.

In San Francisco, where densely packed office towers have overshadowed the city's natural skyline, voters in November rejected a proposal to build a baseball stadium downtown. In last month's mayoral runoff election, they spoke even more forcefully by overwhelmingly rejecting Establishment Candidate John Molinari in favor of onetime Neighborhood Activist Art Agnos. Meanwhile, San Francisco, Los Angeles and San Diego, along with dozens of other California cities, have passed the most severe growth restrictions in the state's history.

While the most dramatic slow-growth rebellions have occurred in California, similar if less intense movements are emerging across the country. Vermont Governor Madeleine Kunin last week called on the legislature to enact a statewide growth-management plan to provide Vermont with "greater control over our destiny." In New Jersey a statewide commission has been appointed to draft a similar plan by 1989. Last fall three pro-growth members of the board of supervisors of Fairfax County, Va., a Washington suburb, were ousted by proponents of slow growth .

A backlash against development was probably inevitable, particularly in rapidly developing Western states, where many residents consider densely packed urban centers uninhabitable. Says Gerald Silver, president of the Homeowners of Encino, Calif.: "We were in favor of progress until we found out what it looks like." This urban claustrophobia is largely a bipartisan phenomenon. In conservative Orange County, Calif., Republicans have joined with liberal Democrats on a ballot initiative to require developers to pay for the impact their projects have on city streets and services. Says Thomas Rogers, a co-sponsor of the measure and a self-described right-winger: "I've got a right to peaceful enjoyment of my property."

That "right" has been jeopardized by California's surging population. Greater Los Angeles, with 8 million residents, is expected to surpass the New York City area as the nation's most populous metropolis in the 1990s. Neighboring Orange County is projected to swell 39% in the next 20 years, to 3 million people, while average rush-hour freeway speeds plunge from 36 m.p.h. to an unbearable 10 m.p.h. In once sleepy San Diego County the population has more than doubled since 1960, to 2.2 million. Says Maureen O'Connor, the Democratic mayor of conservative San Diego and an advocate of growth control: "Development is a negative word in this community."

Frustrated by unsympathetic city governments, residents are gathering signatures and forcing initiatives onto local ballots, overwhelming the resistance of politicians and the developers who finance their campaigns. Of 17 slow-growth measures on California ballots last November, 15 passed. "There is a rage out there," admits Sanford Goodkin, a real estate consultant in San Diego. "Developers are scared to death."

In Los Angeles slow-growthers gathered enough signatures to force & Proposition U onto the ballot in 1986. Approved by two-thirds of the voters, the measure halves the size of new buildings on much of the city's commercially zoned property. In San Francisco voters approved an initiative that reduced the annual limit on new office space by half. In San Diego, where the once inviting hillsides are being covered by endless rows of identical- looking houses, municipal services are swamped by surging demand. Last August the city council set a temporary limit on new housing at 8,000 units a year.

In part, California's slow-growth movement is a product of the state's most celebrated previous initiative. Proposition 13, which passed in 1978, severely restricts property taxes. Unable to stick local taxpayers with the rising cost of services, cities have been forced to cut back on improvements, despite tremendous growth. Now, as the strain on roads, schools and water supplies becomes unbearable, local governments are forcing developers to pick up the tab with heavy "impact fees." In San Francisco commercial developers must put aside money for low-income housing, parks, transportation, child care and even public art.

Although a forced slowdown of new building reduces the demand for costly expansion of city services, it inflates the cost of construction, real estate and rents. Says Karla Rainer, 31, a renter in San Diego: "These growth controls will probably kill my dream of owning a home. They've just turned this whole town into a seller's market."

Many neighborhoods see no alternative, particularly bedroom communities that once provided a tranquil escape from urban congestion but now resemble mini- cities themselves. In the past decade, suburbs have been swamped by an influx of jobs and development: about 60% of all office-space construction now takes place in the suburbs. Tired of fleeing growth, many residents are deciding to fight.

To critics, this amounts to little more than a thinly veiled effort by affluent and largely white neighborhoods to exclude strangers while boosting the value of their homes. Observes San Diego's Sanford Goodkin: "A stranger is defined as anyone who bought a house the day after I did." He and others claim that the effect of growth controls will be most severe on the poor, cutting jobs and investment in their neighborhoods. But developers have never been eager to build in poorer areas, and many of those neighborhoods are equally concerned about congestion. In Los Angeles, Proposition U passed by large margins in all 15 council districts, including Watts and other low- income communities.

For now, developers are on the defensive, turning to the courts for relief and hoping that rising unemployment and real estate prices will eventually bring voters to their way of thinking. They could be in for a long wait. Says Kenneth Bley, a real estate lawyer in Los Angeles: "There are simply more voters than developers." Only now are enough of those angry voters making their numbers felt.