The Myth of Neighborhood in the R4 Areas of Burbank
By Mike McDaniel, Burbank Resident,
to the Burbank City Council, January 2004
Madame Mayor and honorable Council Members,
I come to you with
this e-mail by way of my failure to attend your Council Session Tuesday night.
I had intended to speak to you, but family responsibilities took me away. This
is a blessing as I could not have limited my important comments to the few
brief moments of public comment allowed to each citizen wishing to address you.
Being an expert on the multifamily development problem in Burbank, I have a few issues to bring to your attention. First, I have lived in an R4 neighborhood in the same house for 47 years, now surrounded by a large apartment to the left of my house and another that hovers over my back patio and yard. There are condos to the front of me across the street. There are two more new projects to be built within 100 yards of my home. Even the place I was born is now an apartment complex (Burbank Community Hospital.)
I was able to catch the council rebuttal to open communications on TV and I agree with Mr. Campbell, "The city is changing." Multifamily dwellings are the blame in my area - you can put whatever spin you want on it. It does not change the truth; no one can get to know anyone when they drive into their gate-guarded building or walk in the gate-guarded front entrance and only come out to go elsewhere to work or play. These people do not associate with others outside the building (or, in it very much). When I was young I knew every person by name on the block from top to bottom, both sides of the street, and still remember every one of them by name. We had birthday parties and visiting - an old tradition of going for a walk and stopping by to see how people up and down the block are doing. I helped paint houses, mow lawns, rake leaves, fix cars, and the list goes on. All of it was done out of genuine concern for the people. I was roofing my house one time and I heard a voice of my long-time neighbor across the street, Mr. Dewey. He had climbed up the ladder and was offering his help... he was 89 years old at the time! When his wife passed away, I was attending the funeral representing my family. They needed one more person to assist with carrying the casket with his sons. He had grandsons he could have asked, but he asked me be the last pall barer because we were good neighbors and we looked out for each other. No one talks or knows anyone any more in the large, cold multifamily structures. I do not call this progress.
Prevent future
conflicts between the developers and the community, please! Where homes
are torn down and apartments are built there will always be conflict from true
community-minded people! Very little, if any, community spirit exists in these
structures at all. It’s a spirit of "What has this community got for
me?" with no thought of giving back to this city or, for lack of a better
word, neighborhood. I have seen these people crash into other people’s cars and
leave, throw wild parties and leave trash in other’s yards. You don't dare say
anything to them because you will be told where to stick it. Pornography is thrown
deliberately out of windows down to where children play, chemicals washed down
alleys dumped from company vans of people who live in the apartments, filling
up other’s trash cans because its too far to walk to your apartments trash can,
gardener blow leaves and clippings from the front of the apartment to the front
of your house. Dog droppings - you do not realize how many dogs live in one
square block and if you have a lawn and the apartments don't, you save on
fertilizer. Shopping carts are left on your parkway so the apartment looks
good, fast food bags - thrown out of your car when you hit the alley so you
don't have to carry it to the trash, or, worse, up to your apartment.
People steal things out of your yard and people on the street see nothing. Dents and scratches appear on your car, hubcaps are stolen, newspapers are taken off your lawn in the morning before you get up (especially on a coupon day), gang spray-painting festivals in the alleys, on buildings, trash cans, walls etc., property egged, loud music being played in parking structures (they are like caves). Gates opening and closing with loud metal clanging at night, the “Fast and the Furious” race up and down the street, hundreds of kids have no place to play or play safely, more bicycles, skateboards , scooters etc., with nowhere but the street or alley to ride with the increased traffic from all the cars. You can call the police, but they would get tired of hearing from you. You can report them to the city, but that has its problems also.
Speaking of cars,
you take a block which originally had 10 houses and, say, two cars each, then
tear them down, build apartments, condos and townhouses which total about 80+
units at two cars each. 10 houses x 2 cars = 20 cars. 80 units x 2 cars = 160
cars on just one block. At what point did “the staff” not think this
would have a negative impact on the streets and immediate area? Parking?
You don't want to go there! But we must. You would think that when you build a
building with two spaces per unit that renters would take advantage of
having a place reserved just for them. Wrong! I lost count of
how many times I have had to walk home from the 700 block of my street to the
500 block, where I live, all because I got home after 6 PM. If you need to
go out after 6 PM it is a given that you will have no place to park near
your house. Would any of you like to carry your groceries for a block and a
half to your house?
To be fair, I have
options: 1. Turn on my car’s flashers in the street in front of my house, jump
out and put the food on the lawn, and have the kids truck it in while I take
the car on safari to find a place to park. 2. Park on the edge of the alley for
a few moments with the flashers on again while unloading. But wait. Why is that
parking control lady walking toward me with a paper in her hand? Back to
the safari. Yup, I got a ticket. Where is parking control when the kids park in
the mouth of the alley and talks with their girlfriends for two hours at 2
AM? The leader said that, "Continued development, they contend, is
leading to more traffic, less parking space and increased incompatibility
with adjacent single-family properties." They “contend?” I am there! It is
FACT and has been for over ten years.
Another thing I get a kick out of hearing is that "We have a housing crisis in Burbank." Why does Burbank have to be the housing supplier for the area? Burbank is ten square miles or so. Not everyone can live here. Even if you tear down the whole city and fill it with multifamily dwellings there would be people who could not live here, so you will still have a “housing crisis.” Get over it! Mr. Rondinella said, "The value of property will be greatly decreased." As a Realtor I would think he should know that; it has already happened. My house is $200,000 less than a similar house with similar utility above Kenneth Road. It was also quoted in the council’s time to respond to the public comment that one developer said that he could have by code built so many units but built two less out of concern for the density. If there is only thing you understand from this e-mail, please remember that it’s “MONEY.” That's what it’s all about for the developer, it is a business. A 24 unit building of 2 bedroom apartments which rent for $1500 each =$36,000 a month. I will be kind and say that the mortgage is half $18,000 - how many of you get that from your house? This is why it is called income property - because it brings the owner income. (Very good income or they would not do it!) The City of Burbank will not allow me to have a business in my home because of city code section 31 - 672 which the says no excess pedestrian and vehicle traffic increase. But my neighbor the apartment can! My home can’t have signs or advertising for my business but my neighbor the apartment can. I could site code for pages but you get the idea. The home can’t but the apartment can!
The developer’s
business is not to help the housing crisis but to profit from it. It has
nothing to do with helping a neighborhood or the City of Burbank a better place
in which to live; it is a business with one goal: making a buck! Who
are these people? Do they live in the apartment area? Do they even live in
Burbank? Because if they do, they have no concern at all for what this
town was or is, or what the quality of life should be in those areas they have
destroyed by their over-building (which city councils have allowed to be done
in the name of “progress”). School overcrowding is a direct result of this
over-building. Is the city willing to pay for this? More teachers, new
buildings, school supplies? Past Councils’ short-sightedness has created your
current problem for you, the current city council. If the apartments and
multifamily dwellings are not curtailed, what problems are this Council going
to cause for future councils? More police are needed to handle increase in
crime and gang issues in the apartment zones - will city funds increase to
handle this? With departments looking at scenarios for 2% cuts and 4% cuts for
FY 2004-2005, future staff increases are not likely. Multifamily dwellings
decay after the current owners/developers sell off holdings and the differed
maintenance eats up any profits from rents. (The building behind me has had
many problems to this effect already and is not even twenty years old yet).
In summary, do
not fool yourselves by thinking that a project, because it is within
code, is a quality project. No multifamily project brings quality
to Burbank, as was indicated by the developers and their supporters. Their
motives are in question. All such projects will have a negative impact on the
city, if not now, in the future. That future will be better for everyone with
less, not more, overbuilding. I have seen and lived through the
destruction of my neighborhood. It was a warm, neighborly place. Now it’s a
cold, tall, heartless, profit-driven business area where the term
"neighborhood" simply does not apply anymore. If anyone says
different they were not there. I was and am still there, and history is on
my side for 47 years.
I love this city. I was born here and went through all Burbank schools, as have my children. I have been in the same house for all my life. I have given back to this city many times over and would gladly do it again. My best friend maintains two websites that cover what it was like in the 1960's and 1970's here in Burbank. It’s a celebration of what Burbank was. The other is about little known Burbank facts; the things are what we as a city are known for and why people wanted to live here back then. Take a look and enjoy: Burbankia and Wes Clark's Avocado Memories
I thank you for taking the time to read this. End the overbuilding. I close in memory of all of the good neighbors of my youth who taught me the values of community, neighbors, caring and concern for others and that Burbank was a great place and still can be: Mr. & Mrs. Felton, Mr. & Mrs. Tewalt, Mrs. Stoker, Mr. & Mrs. Johnson, Mr. & Mrs. Prectile, Mrs. Green, Mrs. Velma White, Mr. & Mrs. Ivo Dewey, Mr. & Mrs. Coffman, and Captain and Mrs. Muller of the Burbank Fire Department. Our Neighborhood. As it was then, not now.
Michael B. McDaniel