On Tuesday, Mark Lipis of Westwood brought council members poster-size photos of his neighbor's house towering over his own. He described the offending home as a 6,500-square-foot giant with a roof deck and an elevator.
Other residents from all over Los Angeles had similar complaints.
One woman invited the council to a backyard barbecue to experience the loss of privacy she said her neighbor's giant home had caused.
The new law limits most homes to a square footage about half the size of the lot, plus 400 square feet for a garage. It would affect 304,000 lots in the flatlands of Los Angeles, most of the city's single-family homes.
Since the average size of a home in Los Angeles is now 1,700 square feet and many lots are between 5,000 and 6,000 square feet, city officials said most homes still have plenty of room to grow before hitting the new limits.
Councilman Tom LaBonge said he hoped to see a similar law for the city's 100,000-plus hillside homes soon.
Building industry and real estate representatives, on the other hand, warned that the law would drive down property values and hurt the city's economy. They also decried what they said was the law's one-size-fits-all policy.
James Ward Litz, government affairs director for the Beverly Hills/Greater Los Angeles Assn. of Realtors, conceded that there is "bad design out there." But hurting property values is not the way to fix it, he said.
Others, including representatives from the building industry, cited a report commissioned by the city that said the law could lead to an "immediate decline" in property values.
But council members were easily persuaded otherwise, approving the measure 12 to 0. Council members Jack Weiss, Bernard C. Parks and Garcetti were absent for the vote. Garcetti, who made an appearance in support of the ordinance, was on jury duty.
The residential hotel ordinance passed 13 to 0, with Parks and Garcetti absent. It replaces a temporary measure approved in 2005, when there was a growing concern that available housing for the poor -- especially in downtown Los Angeles -- was rapidly dwindling amid the gentrification of historic neighborhoods. That ordinance was set to expire later in the month.
The law, which is modeled on a similar regulation in San Francisco, protects units in the 336 single-room-occupancy and residential hotels across the city, most of which are privately owned.
