Recently, the city of Los Angeles ruled that a golf course is now protected mountain lion habitat, which is odd because mountain lions are ambush predators that don’t like spending time in wide open spaces like manicured fairways, putting greens, or a 28,000 square-foot clubhouse. The only way this makes sense is if you are familiar with how the city of LA treats housing, especially in more affluent single-family neighborhoods
This is about a proposal to build 398 new homes on part of the Woodland Hills Country Club — 175 for sale, 223 rental units, 61 income-restricted — on a private golf course that offers little public benefit. The project was proposed under AB 2011, a 2022 state law amended in 2025, that lets cities approve housing faster on underused commercial land without years of discretionary review. Los Angeles is required to plan for more than 456,000 new homes by 2029, and is nowhere close to accomplishing that.
What’s followed is the classic playbook local officials and homeowners groups use to block housing: “neighborhood character,” not enough parking, too much traffic — all while the city insists it’s taking the crisis seriously. Councilmember Bob Blumenfield, who represents the district where the Country Club sits, has thrown everything but the kitchen sink at this project. Here’s the play-by-play.
First, in December 2025, Blumenfield introduced a motion instructing the city to analyze how these new laws applied to the project, and whether there was a way to stop it — while writing to state legislators, asking them to push for an interpretation that would disqualify it.
Second, in February 2026, Blumenfield with the help of Mayor Karen Bass, sent a letter to Governor Newsom asking the state to define “vacant site” so the golf course wouldn’t qualify as vacant land under the law’s fire-zone provisions – along with another motion to get the city to do the same.
Third, that same February, a motion to physically narrow Canoga Avenue, the street the project sits on, so it would no longer qualify as a “commercial corridor.” A city that takes years to fix a streetlight or repair a sidewalk apparently has the resources to study shrinking a street to dodge housing law.
Fourth, another motion that month, aimed at closing off the last element the golf course needs to qualify under AB 2011: a rule allowing parking on agricultural land. The goal: apply the change to every agriculturally zoned property in the city, whether or not it has anything to do with this project. Blumenfield wasn’t even confident it would hold up, admitting, “I’m still working through the legal ability of the City to do this.“
Fifth, by June 2026, the “vacant site” strategy was dropped as too shaky — replaced by a habitat study citing mountain lions and bats. Not a new trick: a Bay Area town tried declaring its entire city a mountain lion sanctuary in 2022, until California’s Attorney General ruled a whole town can’t declare itself wildlife habitat. LA is running the same play, scaled down to one golf course.
Sixth, in July, the coalition of neighbors fighting the project flat out refused to engage the developer’s offer to find a lower-density compromise. “we are not interested in entering into a tolling agreement with the developers. Furthermore, we formally express our opposition to any proposed rezoning of this area” they said. No deal, no housing.
Six tactics, one target, all circling back to the same argument against new neighbors. The Woodland Hills-Warner Center Neighborhood Council joined the other groups in warning that new housing would threaten “the look, feel, and safety of our single-family neighborhoods,” arguing such neighborhoods “foster stability, enhance the overall mental health of a city,” and that “what is forever lost cannot be regained.” Rising housing costs, and the homelessness they fuel, do more damage to a city’s mental health than new homes ever could.
Their one legitimate concern is fire safety, since the golf course sits on the edge of a high fire severity zone — but fire mitigation was part of the compromise they rejected outright. If fire safety were really the issue, you’d come to the table. Instead, they’re betting the mountain lion designation knocks this project into a discretionary process they can slow-walk until the developer gives up.
That bet paid off. Weeks after Blumenfield told constituents he already believed “the fact that Mountain Lions use this property is well documented,” his own Planning Department’s “independent” review reached the same conclusion: the site is ineligible under AB 2011. The developer’s own biologists disagree, and the developer has announced it will sue.
This is what a typical housing fight looks like in LA: not a good-faith conversation about how to build something that fits the neighborhood, but a search for how to make sure it doesn’t happen in “my backyard.” These groups will tell you they’re not against housing, they’re not NIMBYs. But when the developer offered exactly that — lower density, negotiated — they turned it down.
There’s a simpler reason for all this: fighting against housing costs a politician less than fighting for it, especially with wealthy, high-turnout voters like these. Blumenfield is termed out this year, but he’s already confirmed he’s running for State Senate in 2028, in a district that includes Woodland Hills. Fighting loudly for this community now builds the goodwill and fundraising he’ll use for his campaign — at the expense of the housing existing Angelenos desperately need.
Win or lose, this lawsuit will cost the city real money it can’t afford. LA is already over a million dollars deep fighting Venice Dell, a 120-unit affordable housing project it approved back in 2021, only to have a judge rule in June that the city exceeded its own authority trying to kill it anyway. The Woodland Hills project could easily be next. Nine months, six delay tactics, zero homes built. If LA spent a fraction of that effort working with developers instead of hunting for the next loophole, we would all be better off.
Jon Rawlings is a chapter leader with YIMBY Los Angeles