Why the 398-Home Woodland Hills Country Club Proposal Cannot Proceed as Planned

I strongly support building more housing in Los Angeles, and I believe deeply in responsible, well-planned growth. However, the proposal to construct nearly 400 residential units on the Woodland Hills Country Club property—at this scale and in this location—raises serious and unresolved concerns. These concerns are not about opposing housing; they are about public safety, wildfire risk, and the growing problem of state-level preemption that silences local voices.

Our city urgently needs new homes. But housing must be safe and grounded in on-the-ground realities. This project would generate hundreds of additional daily vehicle trips onto narrow, aging hillside roads that were never designed to accommodate that level of traffic. It would require extensive grading in a Very High Fire Severity Zone, adjacent to the Santa Monica Mountains, where wildfire risk is not theoretical—it is recurring and severe. These are not minor technical issues; they are fundamental public-safety considerations.

In the event of a serious wildfire, tens of thousands of residents in the neighborhood surrounding this property would need to evacuate. We saw what happened in the Palisades Fire when motorists abandoned their cars on Sunset Blvd and a bulldozer had to end up moving them. However, unlike Sunset Blvd. many of the streets near the country club property are not even wide enough for two cars. If a single motorist were to abandon their vehicle, it would make that road impassible for the rest of the community. 

In the 2018 Paradise Fire, at least seven individuals died in their vehicles trying to flee the fire. We of course know there were significant fatalities in the Eaton and Palisades fires but we have no way of knowing how many of those fatalities were caused by evacuation issues. 

Equally concerning is how this project is being advanced. The developer is relying on AB 2011, along with subsequent amendments including AB 2243 and AB 893, to bypass local review and community input. These state laws effectively preempt the City’s planning authority and limit residents’ and their elected representatives’ ability to meaningfully shape projects that will permanently affect their neighborhoods.

Thoughtful planning and genuine community engagement are meaningless if local planning powers have been stripped away. When Sacramento removes cities’ and communities’ ability to evaluate wildfire evacuation, emergency-response capacity, roadway access, and infrastructure limits, it undermines both public safety and public trust.

To be clear: I want more housing built. I am not anti-growth or anti-development. But housing policy must reflect real-world conditions, especially in hillside communities facing extreme fire risk. Evacuating the neighborhoods surrounding the Woodland Hills Country Club during a major wildfire is already challenging. Adding nearly 400 additional households without full local review compounds that risk in ways that cannot be responsibly ignored.

I urge the developer to pause and return to the community for a genuine, collaborative planning process. And I call on our representatives in Sacramento to revisit, reform, and revise state legislation, including AB 2011 and its amendments, that removes local discretion and community voice from projects with significant safety impacts.

We can build more housing while protecting our hillsides. We can add homes while respecting wildfire risk and emergency access. But that requires laws that empower—not silence—local communities, and development processes rooted in transparency, safety, and accountability.