District 3
Like the rest of the city, the district faces issues including homelessness, a shortage of affordable housing and pressing environmental issues.
The district includes Warner Center, which is a major commercial and retail hub and home to the vacant Promenade mall, recently purchased by the Kroenke Group — owned by Rams owner Stan Kroenke — for $150 million. The area is set to be transformed into a massive urban district with hundreds of homes, stores and possibly a sports venue.
Before being elected to the Los Angeles City Council in 2013, Blumenfield served in the California State Assembly. He heads the City Council's Public Works Committee and is a member of the Budget Committee. Blumenfield has raised $42,487 to Silverstein's $9,552.
During his term as a councilman, Blumenfield said, he has focused on building supportive housing across his district.
“When you only have permanent supportive housing, the waiting room becomes the streets,” he said. “When the streets are the waiting room for housing, you end up seeing people who are waiting to be housed, spiraling down from being recently homeless to being chronically homeless, from being in trouble to being mentally ill.”
The solution, he said, is to offer a combination of affordable housing, including permanent supportive housing, immediate transitional housing and a “safe parking program,” which offers a parking spot to people who live in their cars.
Blumenfield added that making housing more affordable requires “coming up with creative ways to get people housed.”
One of the ways to do that is by funding ADUs, he said, also known as accessory dwelling units — houses often built in homeowners'
Blumenfield
Silverstein
backyards or in a homeowner's converted garage.
He recently suggested a plan to offer city funds to homeowners citywide who can't afford to build a second unit on their property, if the homeowner agrees to rent the space to formerly homeless residents. He said this would give homeowners “an asset they wouldn't have otherwise” while spreading housing units across L.A. for formerly unhoused people.
When it comes to the contaminated and sprawling Santa Susana Field Lab, which stretches across 2,668 acres near communities in West San Fernando Valley, Blumenfield said he was “concerned about the trucks that would go through our community that would have potentially radioactive material” once the long-delayed cleanup of the tainted area in the Simi Hills begins.
“We're getting closer to a compromise where some of that property would be cleaned up,” he said. “I consider myself a strong environmentalist and I want that area cleaned up.”
Silverstein is a businessman and commercial real estate broker who served on the Woodland HillsWarner Center Neighborhood Council for 14 years, including the last five years as its president.
Silverstein described himself as someone who got used to “thinking outside the box,” and “a professional negotiator” who has handled complex negotiations.
He said politicians tend to see homelessness as “a one-size-fits-all issue, and I don't do that.”
It's important for the city, Silverstein said, to spend money on services — and not on purchasing properties
ELECTION AT A GLANCE
The Third District: Communities in Canoga Park, Reseda, Tarzana, Winnetka and Woodland Hills.
Among major issues impacting the district are homelessness, law enforcement, mental health, affordable housing, the environment and the future of Warner Center.
to house the homeless.
Building a single unit of homeless housing under the current municipal approach has seen costs skyrocket from $530,000 in 2020 to $600,000 per unit last year, according to a recent report by Los Angeles City Controller Ron Galperin. That report follows a 2019 City Controller study reminding city officials that they estimated each homeless unit at $350,000 when voters approved HHH, a $1.2 billion funding measure.
Those funds, Silverstein said, could be used for underfunded services for homeless residents.
Among his proposals is a service program called MORE, which stands for Mental Health Over Real Estate, which would allow the city to work with private entities to lease properties and use them for services, instead of buying properties to build housing.
The program would save millions of public dollars, he said, that can be then used toward services, instead of buying costly real estate.
Silverstein said his plan, in a typical scenario, would allow the city to “lease the building from a foundation at a predetermined rate for 40 years. As opposed to spending money upfront on the real estate, you're able to spend a fraction of the money on real estate and spend as much money as needed on services.”
“The services are what these people need, not the building,” Sliverstein said.
That approach, he said, would allow homeless individuals to be housed right away and have access to
services immediately — instead of waiting for years on the streets during the city's delay-ridden HHH construction program.
He said, “removing the bureaucracy will allow builders to move forward with apartments.”
While the city has committed to building thousands of new apartments in Warner Center, he said, as of now “it's all been market luxury apartments.” That would change, he added, if he becomes a councilman.
“If I were to get into office,” he said, “I would stop the construction of any new buildings until at least 20% of the project is marked for the affordable, workforce or low-income, but nothing would be built going forward without that affordable component.”
Silverstein said the district needed “somebody with a backbone” to tell developers that they have to build more affordable housing, especially in areas like Warner Center where workers and middle-class families struggle to afford to live.
When it comes to cleaning the toxic Santa Susana Field Lab, Silverstein echoed Blumenfield's concerns about trucks taking radioactive soil through residential neighborhoods.
He added: “We have to clean up the radioactivity and we should clean up the areas that are considered hot spots with more chemicals, but you can't clean up chemicals that are down into the bedrock.”