About, but not limited to, Van Nuys, CA.
There are ten houses along the west side of the 6600 block of Norwich in Van Nuys.
They are all ranches, built in the early 1950s, solid and compact.
Unusual for Los Angeles, the houses are all original. There are no tear downs. There aren’t any protective fences, walls or gates on any of the properties if I recall correctly. The front lawns are still grass. Not concrete, not RV, not Hummer.
Yesterday, I walked down the street, which has a real sidewalk, and on both sides of the block, two rows of identical tall trees, species unknown, currently bare of leaves, chopped up by Cortadores de árboles.
There is something midwestern about this street: sedate, well-tended and reserved. The only person I know who lived on Norwich was a blond-haired man who came from Ohio, married a woman, divorced, and moved back to Ohio.
Norwich Ave. reminds me of Lincolnwood, IL where I grew up. Especially one thing….
Each of the ten houses has a lamppost in front.
You can stand on the end of the block, on the south, at Kittridge, and on the north at Lemay, and look straight down and see the lights lined up, like sentries, in front of each property.
These exterior lights belong to mid-20th Century suburbia. They functioned, in their time, as gracious servants who lit up sidewalk paths for evening guests, paths planted with geraniums, petunias or marigolds; illuminated walkways for the wintertime mailman, dad coming home from work, and junior on his Schwinn thrown down, rushing in for his dinner of fish sticks, tater tots and Kool-Aid.
Some of the posts have address numbers attached.
Like every other block, people see what their neighbors are doing to their homes and they copy it.
The lamppost is a survivor from a domestic time seven decades passed. It has no real security value, and when it’s turned on during the day it indicates that nobody is home, thus negating its magical protection.
But walking past these homes and their lights, brings you back to the old days of bourgeois Van Nuys, when this district was neat, safe, and proud. And citizens thought that men in suits and uniforms, serving under sky god and nation flag, were looking over them and protecting their lives and family, fulfilling oaths sacred and lawful.
When the people, who always paid taxes and sometimes voted, discovered that nobody was in charge, that security was your own problem, that only wealth bought law and justice, the decorative lamppost went out of fashion.
And here we are today, in the new dark ages, monitored and terrified.
Green New Deal
End the housing crisis by investing $2.5 trillion to build nearly 10 million permanently affordable housing units.
Source: Bernie Sanders
After all these policies are in place, we may have a new Van Nuys.
“Vacant apartments in the Valley are scarce, rents are heading toward all-time highs, and observers expect little change for the next three years.”-LA Times 8/24/1969
Most of the new apartments will be large, luxury, high-rent operations because land is so expensive.
Landlords are choosey and many refuse to rent to tenants who have pets or children. Only 25% will allow pets or kids.
In North Hollywood, only 3.8% are vacant, in Van Nuys, 2.5% and in Northridge, 2.7%.
Ten and 12-unit buildings were once common, but now land costs and materials are pushing builders to put up 40, 60 or even 80-unit structures.
The average tenant in the San Fernando Valley, incidentally, is 27-years-old and cannot afford the high rents.
And some of the rents that are being asked are quite shocking.
Furnished and unfurnished bachelor apartments are going for $85-$95 a month ($90=$657 in 2018); one bedrooms are averaging around $115 ($115=$796.42 in 2018); and two bedrooms for $175 ($175=$1,211 in 2018).
Walt Taylor of Van Nuys, who is the new president of Valley Apartment House Owners’ Association, fears that if the trend continues only large corporations will become landlords, or even worse, the government.
On a brief walk, after dropping off a package at the UPS on Van Nuys Bl. I walked west on Sylvan, south on Vesper, ending this set of photos at the new fire station on Oxnard.
There is a small but significant amount of new apartments going up. They are pleasant additions to the neighborhood and are all in the currently popular white style, blindingly white, with dark windows. They add some upgraded cleanliness to an area which has long been the sad kingdom of slumlords.
On Sylvan, the former post office, built during the 1930s by the WPA, in a classical style, was later a home for Children of the Night, a non-profit created to fight childhood sexual exploitation. They have since moved out, so the sidewalk outside the gracious building is now a trash camp.
The new fire station (2019) is a great asset for the neighborhood and has significant architectural beauty that recalls the 1930s Streamline Era, and is also conversant with the first fire station on Sylvan (1939) as well as the former DWP building on Aetna and Vesper (1938) just behind the new edifice.
Just to the east of the fire station, Aetna is closed, with a high fence, between Vesper and Van Nuys Boulevard, most likely due to the trash campers who took over the area. They are banished to fly somewhere else, probably to the bird sanctuary in Woodley Park.
Councilwoman Nury Martinez has jurisdiction over this area, and her office is nearby in the Valley Municipal Building. She is now the head of the city council, and the first Latina to hold that position in city history.
We can applaud the justice of diversity, the idea that anyone from any background can ascend the ladder of politics and achieve leadership.
We cannot applaud the failures of Ms. Martinez, and her predecessor Tony Cardenas (who is now a congressman in Washington, DC) for they have had over 20 combined years of allowing Van Nuys to fall into utter disintegration, filth, homelessness and blight.
Their ethnicity has pushed them up into the spotlight even as their academic records in elected office should be graded D- or F.
The idea that one’s identity deserves praise rather than one’s achievements is a new chapter in our American conversation. If Van Nuys should fall further into the gutter, which seems unimaginable, we will think of the paucity of Ms. Martinez’s and Mr. Cardenas’ accomplishments and recall this verse from Matthew 7:16 “Ye shall know them by their fruits.”
Rotten.
For almost twenty years I’ve made a home in Van Nuys, CA.
And since 2006, I have published this blog: walking, photographing and writing about a peculiarly blessed, and unjustly afflicted section of Los Angeles.
Here are some 11 ideas that I am proposing to better Van Nuys, especially Van Nuys Boulevard:
Create Walkable, Garden Court Housing
We need, desperately, little, affordable, small housing units that share common garden areas. These were built all over Los Angeles up until the 1960s when dingbats took over with their car-centric designs.
Such garden courts would be most effective within walking distance of major bus and light rail streets.
Relocate the Van Nuys LAPD to Van Nuys Boulevard
The Van Nuys LAPD is buried deep behind the Erwin Street Mall, way back from Van Nuys Boulevard. What this accomplishes is removing the police from active interaction with pedestrians, shops and the action, good and bad, on Van Nuys Boulevard. Putting the police station back on the boulevard where it belongs would send a message to the community that law enforcement is on active duty: watching and patrolling, enforcing the law.
Reduce the Size of Wide Streets and Plant Trees
When drivers see five lanes of road in front of them, but every single lane is packed with cars, or conversely, when there are wide-open lanes with few vehicles, both scenarios create frustration. The speeding, the road rage, the frustration of having so much space for cars and hardly any for bicycles or light rail, has caused the decay and decline of Van Nuys Boulevard, as well as Victory.
The heating up of our climate, the constant hot weather, is creating a meltdown of mood, with more anger, more violence and more irrationality. Trees would help cool down the street and provide shade. Narrower streets, lined with cafes, pedestrians, activity, would build a sense of community decency.
Hawker Centers Like Singapore
Singapore has “Hawker Centers” which are groups of different food merchants housed under one roof. A Singaporean can get off a train and within a few feet find delicious, cheap food in clean areas which are protected from the elements but still open air.
By contrast, Los Angeles has nothing like this other than Grand Central Market which is not next to a train stop. Van Nuys Boulevard would greatly benefit from one, large, enclosed, regulated building full of food sellers. This would bring the pushcart under control and provide a clean, reliable, fun, sociable place to eat and meet.
Give Commercial Buildings Without Billboards Tax Breaks
Billboards are so ubiquitous that we have wearily come to adjust our eyes to them. Yet their ugliness, their cheap, desecrating, looming presence brings down property values even while providing landlords with some income.
On every corner where there is a mini-mall with a billboard, the property owner who removes the signs should get a tax benefit because they are helping the community improve aesthetically.
A Monument When Entering Van Nuys
Why is there no marker, like an arch, an obelisk, or a gate when one enters Van Nuys Bl. at Oxnard Street?
Imagine a Washington Monument type obelisk in the center of Van Nuys Boulevard to make evident, proudly, commemoratively and architecturally, the fact that Van Nuys is a historic and proud area of Los Angeles deserving its own marker of identity and purpose.
Seen for miles, an obelisk perhaps 150 feet tall, should stand in the center of the boulevard, a booster of morale and an instigator of commerce and civic pride.
Pick a Unifying Style and Stick With it.
Paris, Santa Barbara, Charleston, Savannah: certain cities have an archetype of architecture which provides the base for how a city is constructed and designed.
In recent years, we have seen the onslaught of non-conforming, strange, computer-generated frivolities in architecture such as those which have marred and destroyed the beauty of London, England.
Yes, it is great to have one Disney Hall, but a street of melting blobs, narcissistic designs, starving-for-attention buildings, does not engender a district wide identity.
A classical Van Nuys would actually be revolutionary because it goes against so much architectural dogma these days and restores the primacy of community standards and group identity.
Tear Up the Parking Lots and Plant Orange Groves
One of the tragedies of Van Nuys since 1945, indeed of all of Southern California, has been the loss of agriculture.
Once we all lived near local fruit groves, and their soothing, healthful, beneficial trees provided not only big business for the state, but gave a mythical, blessed countenance to Los Angeles which was exported around the world.
There are hundreds of acres of unused asphalt sitting behind empty stores along Van Nuys Boulevard which could be torn up and planted with citrus trees.
Perhaps an innovative architect could design housing that is combined with citrus groves?
Kesterville
This blog has actively supported the preservation of an area of 33 acres, containing light industries, near the corner of Kester and Oxnard.
“Option A” would have destroyed 58 buildings, 186 businesses and thousands of jobs in a walkable, affordable, diverse district and replaced it with an open air, light rail service yard.
It would have been disastrous for the revitalization of Van Nuys. If it had succeeded it might have been the final nail in Van Nuys’ coffin.
Instead, happily, the Metro Board, with the support of Councilwoman Nury Martinez and others, objected to the Option A proposal. “Option B” was chosen, near the already existing Metrolink train tracks, thus preserving the Kesterville area.
So now is the time to put Kesterville on the map and make it a harmonious, vibrant destination of little apartments, stores, restaurants, cafes, all along the public transit corridor next to the Orange Line.
by Fleury, Benjamin / Photo: Emmanuelle Blanc
by Fleury, Benjamin / Photo: Emmanuelle Blanc
by Fleury, Benjamin / Photo: Emmanuelle Blanc
Remove Onerous and Expensive Regulations on Housing
Builders are required, by law, to do so many expensive things that they are dissuaded from building.
One example is parking. The average building must spend 30-40% of its construction costs to provide space for vehicles.
Thus we have the paradox: not enough housing. And the housing we have becomes more expensive because there is not enough of it to bring prices down. And each rentable unit only becomes affordable if four working adults, with four vehicles, split the rent!
So now we have less housing, more cars, more cars parked on side-streets because we have, by law, made the construction of apartments so expensive.
Remove parking minimums and stop catering to the car as if it were the ONLY important thing in city planning.If a building were built with 200 apartments and only 100 parking spaces, would it really harm Van Nuys?
Is NYC harmed by scarcity of parking?
Regulate Homelessness
California is often the destination for anyone living unhappily in any part of the world. Thus our state, because of its warm weather, attracts people coming here to escape.
Van Nuys, long considered the unofficial dumping ground of Los Angeles, is now under onslaught from homeless men and women sleeping everywhere, on bus benches, under boxes and tents, behind buildings and in RVs parked along the street.
We need to regulate where people can sleep by providing safe, clean, sanitary areas, to park RVs and where people can wash themselves, and get help so they do not have to sleep outside.
To talk about this is not to attack people who are in need. Rather, it is to assign us the proper legal and moral task of ending homelessness by not permitting it to exist in the first place.
Here in Van Nuys 
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