In Sun Valley, a working class pocket of northwest San Fernando Valley tucked between train tracks, warehouses and one of L.A.’s major landfills, residents said they’ve spent years fighting for the basics: clean air, safe sidewalks and usable parks.
But instead of long-promised investments, residents said, the city has approved something else—a new Tiny Home Village set to rise in the parking lot of the Sun Valley’s only Metrolink station, a modest commuter stop tucked in an industrial zone that many see as one of the neighborhood’s last essential resources.
“People don’t want more housing for the unhoused in our communities,” said Norma O’ Chavez, vice president of Sun Valley Neighborhood Council. “We feel we have done our part supporting them, but we cannot solve the problem at the expense of Sun Valley.”
O’Chavez was one of roughly 30-40 residents who gathered Thursday evening, July 31, near the proposed site to protest the project—just hours after city crews cleared a nearby encampment in Van Nuys as part of Mayor Bass’ Inside Safe Initiative. The mayor’s office was contacted for comment shortly before deadline but did not respond in time for publication.
The Los Angeles City Council unanimously approved the project on April 23, with Bass signing off on it about a week later.
According to city documents, the project will bring 208 beds to the parking lot of the Sun Valley Metrolink station at 8358 San Fernando Road. The $9.4 million in funding comes from the state’s Emergency Stabilization Beds Grant and will support the project’s construction.
The Sun Valley Tiny Home project is also a part of the city’s broader effort to comply with a 2022 legal settlement in the LA Alliance for Human Rights lawsuit, according to a report from the City Administrative Officer’s Office.
Under that agreement, the city must create nearly 13,000 interim or permanent housing units by 2027 — enough to serve 60 percent of its unsheltered homeless population.
Councilmember Imelda Padilla, who represents the area, said in a statement Monday that the project aims to address ongoing concerns from the community about encampments while providing housing and services.
“This area of Sun Valley has been extremely frustrated with the concentrations of RVs and encampments that have impacted local businesses and neighborhoods,” Padilla said. “If done right, interim housing projects like this will finally keep the surrounding area clean and safe while providing housing for folks ready to get back on their feet.”
Padilla said it’s critical that operations at the site work for both the people receiving services and the surrounding neighborhood. She said maintaining the area will require accountability from service providers and continued coordination with LAPD.
“It’s important to me that this be done right to move forward,” she said, “and the best way to ensure that is for the community to share their priorities and concerns at our townhall meeting this Thursday.”
A community meeting to discuss the project — hosted by Padilla’s office — is scheduled for Thursday, Aug. 7, from 6 to 8 p.m. at Alliance Marine-Innovation & Technology 6-12 complex, located at 11933 Allegheny Street, Sun Valley, 91352.
The meeting follows criticism from residents and community leaders who say they weren’t informed about the project before it was approved. Scott Johnson, a Metrolink spokesperson said Monday that the agency was first notified about the Sun Valley project on July 22 — nearly three months after the City Council approved it — and noted that the station and its parking lot are owned by the City of Los Angeles, not Metrolink.
Many residents say placing the village at the Metrolink site — one of the area’s few transit connections — puts essential workers and transit riders at risk of losing a vital resource.
“We don’t have a good public transportation system,” O’Chavez said. “So every little thing we have, we want to keep it. We want to improve it, make it better for everybody.”
She added that despite perceptions that the Metrolink station goes unused, it serves local workers and teens who rely on it for daily commutes.
Others pointed to the Sun Valley’s existing Brandford Village, a tiny home site that opened in 2023 on the site of a former encampment and houses 160 people. They said that site has drawn safety concerns and lacked long-term oversight.
Mariam Moore, CEO of The Climate Corps Initiative (TCCI), a nonprofit focused on environmental justice in low-income communities of color, and organizer of Thursday’s rally, noted that the new project would be the second Tiny Home site in Sun Valley.
“Tiny homes usually impact an area within a five-mile radius,” she said, adding that the proposed location is near several “sensitive areas” — including parks, sports complexes, schools, playgrounds and local businesses.
Moore, who lives in Sun Valley, also argued that placing another site — about 300 yards from the nearest homes — so close to residential areas and public transit could increase risks of theft, vandalism, or other safety issues.
Community members also said they were not informed about the project in time to weigh in. The Sun Valley Neighborhood Council submitted a community impact statement on May 21 opposing the decision — but by then, the City Council had already approved it.
“May 21st, we voted as a neighborhood council to approve a letter saying, no, we don’t want interim housing here,” O’Chavez said. “But we were late, they had already voted on it.”
Moore echoed that frustration.
“We were not aware of any community impact reports. We don’t know how the bidding went,” she said. “I mean, all of this information was never disclosed publicly, at least the information that should be publicly disclosed, such as people’s opinion, people who live in this very area, but none of that happened.”
At the time of the protest, several RVs were parked along the edge of the Metrolink lot. Behind the demonstrators, green construction fencing had already gone up — a visual hint, some said, that work may already be underway.
Mihran Kalaydjian, vice president of TCCI, said the protest was not about opposing support for unhoused Angelenos, but about how — and where — the city chooses to implement those efforts.
While the project won’t impact train service, it will reduce parking at the station, which averages about 82 boardings on weekdays from July 2024 through June 2025, according to Metrolink spokesperson Johnson.
For O’Chavez, the decision to place another shelter site in Sun Valley only deepens the feeling that the neighborhood is being treated as expendable.“Sun Valley is very little, one third of it is industrial,” O’Chavez asked. “So what’s left for us? It’s just not acceptable. Not acceptable.”