Message from the President

The League of Residential Neighborhood Advocates (LRNA) began in the living room of Michael and Margo O’Connell. We were a small group of concerned homeowners who had witnessed the demolition of a local residence and had watched in amazement as a mammoth new structure rose to replace it.

To various degrees and at various moments in time, we had all registered our concern with local government officials about the effort to convert a private home in an R-1 neighborhood into a religious institution. And we had repeatedly been assured that such a conversion would not be allowed.

Not one of us had ever heard of RLUIPA. What we subsequently learned only added fuel to the fire. We were, in the words of Paddy Chaevsky, mad as hell and we weren’t going to take it anymore.

LRNA was formed out of our belief that the situation that threatened Hancock Park was going to infect residential communities throughout the country. We wanted to create an organization that would give voice to disenfranchised homeowners nationwide.

LRNA believes that no citizen or group, whether private or public, commercial or non-profit, should be exempted from democratically designed, locally enforced zoning laws. The Constitution guarantees all citizens equal protection under the law. Any law that awards a specific group of landowners rights that are superior to those accorded to ordinary citizens is a violation of this fundamental Constitutional principle.

If Congress prevails in its ongoing efforts to give religious groups preferential treatment in local land use issues, then LRNA believes that ordinary homeowners will become second class citizens in their own neighborhoods. We believe that it is beyond the role of the Federal government to award special preferences with regard to local land use issues.

At the core of our mission is the deeply held conviction that home ownership is a cornerstone of the American dream. We believe that the residential quality of single family neighborhoods must be secured against the degradation brought about by the introduction of institutional or commercial enterprises, no matter how lofty the goals of those entities might be.

LRNA seeks to empower local homeowners around the country in an effort to preserve our neighborhoods. We hope this website will begin to link our disparate communities together. We look forward to hearing from you.

Leonard Hill