Lola Williams said she moved to Placerita Canyon in 1961 because she had been in the horse business “forever,” and felt like she was being pushed out of her home.  “I was raised in the (San Fernando) Valley, and, you know, they basically, kind of ran all the horses out of the valley,” she said.   Fast forward more than 60 years, and Williams has that “being-pushed-out” feeling again. She is among the Placerita Canyon residents who say the current and planned growth of The Master’s University is changing the nature of the bucolic canyon – and gobbling up property.  The 88-year-old said she and her husband moved up to the Santa Clarita Valley when they were “just kids starting out,” and they still live in the same two-bedroom home just south of Quigley Canyon.  A locator map for The Master’s University campus Around the same time Lola and her husband were starting out in the canyon, a neighbor moved in about a half-mile south of them to Happy Jack’s Dude Ranch, a 27-acre plot purchased by TMU’s predecessor, the Los Angeles Baptist Theological Seminary President. The seminary moved to Placerita Canyon because it had outgrown its home in Los Angeles and had plans to grow, according to the university’s website.  John MacArthur, the Grace Community Church pastor, took the helm at Master’s in 1985, made the college nondenominational and quickly continued its growth path, doubling the student population to 600 in one year, the TMU website states.  For 2022-23, TMU reported it has enrollment of more than 1,900 students, with The Master’s Seminary reporting another 660 students, based on its website.  Williams and a handful of her neighbors shared a growing sentiment among Placerita Canyon residents, that new plans for the college seem to be threatening their way of life permanently. Only now, the horses and single families are being displaced in favor of college students, residents told The Signal.  Through city and county property records, The Signal has identified more than a dozen properties TMU is operating as part of its “Campus Cottages” student housing program with high-occupancy permits issued and reviewed by the city of Santa Clarita.   The university’s neighbors say TMU’s growth is coming at the expense of their beloved, quiet, rural, residential special standards neighborhood and no one’s giving them a say in the matter.   Lots of new neighbors  At a recent meeting of the Placerita Canyon Property Owners Association, Teresa Todd, the group’s president, indicated the number of homes owned by TMU now was closer to 30 properties, comprising about 7% of the 425 in the association.   According to city records, 16 of the houses have high-occupancy permits for students, and Todd said the PCPOA’s representatives meet monthly with James Bradley from The Master’s University to address residents’ concerns. Bradley is listed as the director of parent relations on the college’s website.  “While progress has been made in resolving some immediate issues, such as safe driving in the canyon especially when horses are present, there is still a pressing need for a comprehensive evaluation of the impacts related to the TMU canyon homes and the city’s issuance of residential high-occupancy permits without public input or a limit on the number of permits approved,” Todd said in a statement to The Signal.  She also listened to residents' concerns for more than an hour inside the Village Church on Alderbrook Drive where the PCPOA meeting was held.  Some of the residents were under the impression the high-occupancy permits for the student housing were pending city approval; city officials also confirmed via email the permits have been in use, under this pending status, since the beginning of the previous school year.   Residents at the meeting also shared gripes about how the complaints have been handled in the city.  Carrie Lujan, communications director for the city of Santa Clarita, said Friday the city does not have any code enforcement officers “who live in Placerita Canyon or are TMU alum,” in response to a resident who said their complaint about the cottages was handled by a neighbor who was a TMU alum and friends with the other property owner.  A lack of transparency in the process surrounding how the canyon is changing is the most oft-repeated complaint. And, as many residents are already aware, there are even bigger changes on the horizon.   Lujan declined additional comment for this story on behalf of the city. Mason Nesbitt, spokesman for TMU, declined to answer questions or make Bradley available for an interview for this story.  Students walk throughout The Master's University and surrounding areas in Placerita Canyon in Newhall on Thursday, Nov. 21. Habeba Mostafa/ The Signal Resident frustration  Placerita Canyon resident Mitchell Landau laughed when he recalled the bit of irony in his past — he was recruited by TMU to play baseball as a local high school student in the Santa Clarita Valley, but ultimately, he took the junior college route and ended up playing at Iowa.  He and Samantha Lewin live across the street from two of the 16 dorms, and they both said that 99% of the students were “fabulous,” adding every college or university might have one or two kids who don’t follow the rules.  But their gripe was with TMU.  Right around the time that the Canyon Cottages began, TMU formed a nonprofit called GCC Real Estate Corp., presumably an acronym for Grace Community Church, which started showing up in transactions for the canyon homes and the property where TMU proposes to build a new chapel.  Indeed, the campus has now grown from its original dude ranch claim to more than 110 acres and counting, according to its website.  “We, the next-door neighbors, are not selling,” read the post Landau showed on his phone from a private social media page for Placerita Canyon Property Owners Association, when asked if other residents have expressed concerns about the purchases.  Landau and Lewin both said they’ve heard, “We’ll never sell to them,” but Landau also said he understands how neighbors might have found it hard to turn down an offer six figures over the asking price.  Typical for canyon residents, who enjoy the quiet lifestyle a special standards district affords them, for the most part, the discussion to date has largely been on private pages, although residents have shared concerns during the discussion of the Dockweiler Drive extension.  The university is not doing anything illegal, according to residents, but all the purchases are changing the dynamic of the neighborhood.   Some have said the city’s permit system is allowing the neighborhood changes to happen without any chance to weigh in on the process.  Another resident who works as a bankruptcy lawyer griped at the meeting that if a nonprofit owned 30 properties in the neighborhood, it’s likely the community is missing out on hundreds of thousands of dollars in property tax revenue.  Speaking on background, more than one city official mentioned TMU actually received the permissions needed to build a large traditional dorm structure more than 15 years ago, in a master plan that was given a 10-year renewal in 2019. Most of that work is awaiting the completion of Dockweiler Drive.  Students walk throughout The Master's University and surrounding areas in Placerita Canyon in Newhall on Thursday, Nov. 21. Habeba Mostafa/ The Signal Cottage life  Joshua Most, a computer sciences major at TMU, said he really appreciates the opportunity he has to live in one of TMU’s Canyon Cottages, as he made his way home down Placerita Canyon Road.  Most said he and his roommates were planning to do another service day in the neighborhood the following day, which was one of the ways they give back as part of an “outreach week.”   Some of the homes have up to 12 students living in them, according to permit records with the city. But there haven’t been any problems for Most, his roommates and neighbors, he said.  “As far as I know, it’s been really chill, and we haven’t had any problems with the neighbors,” he said, adding that he and his roommates had dinner at a family’s home one recent day.  For some it’s their first opportunity living on their own, “and it gets you halfway used to that,” he said, referring to taking care of the house.  Failing to keep up the “white-picket fence” standards of the canyon’s residential neighborhood, which is regularly featured as a filming location due to its prized presentation, is not a fault residents can claim in their new neighbors.  “I will tell you, the one bonus is, TMU keeps all of those houses in pristine condition,” said Tracey Lloyd-Arnold. “The yards are done. Everything is very well-maintained.”   But there have been frustrations, some of which have been addressed, and some of which remain lingering concerns.  There are paths for students, she said, but they’re frequently ignored, and she said she spent a recent trek home behind a skateboarding student with AirPods in, and the wireless headphones seemed to have rendered him somewhat oblivious. A number of residents cited speed and traffic on the canyon’s narrow streets as a concern.  She also had noise complaints for most of last year after a dorm was put in above her home in the canyon, she said, but she added that recently was worked out with the residents and the college, which eventually was responsive.  Santa Clarita City Councilwoman Laurene Weste is recognized at the Zonta Women in Service Celebration at the Canyon Country Community Center on Saturday, March 25, 2023. Chris Torres/The Signal Personal perspective   Santa Clarita Councilwoman Laurene Weste has a vested interest in the project going forward and has recused herself from the closed-session negotiations the City Council has had regarding property around TMU, but she gave several reasons for her support of the university that others have shared.   “I think Master's University is filled with extraordinarily nice people. They do a good job at keeping their campus clean, organized, very attractive,” she said. “They've upgraded all the buildings that they've either built or inherited from (the original college).”  The council member, who recently appealed a housing plan the city’s Planning Commission tried to stop because it didn’t have enough housing density to meet state requirements, also essentially said the state certainly wouldn’t have a problem with more student housing, so why should the city?  “I'm pretty sure that the state wouldn't object under all of the changes that the state has made in the last, what, three, four years,” she said, referring to housing laws she’s regularly lamented. “So other than that, you know, I'm not interested in trying to vilify a Christian university.”  She also called them “good neighbors” in the Nov. 1 phone interview.  "And so I'm pleased it's that university, and there are so many other things that could be there, and I'm glad that they haven't sold out to some other kind of university.”  However, even some of the residents who have appreciated their neighbors’ efforts at upkeep also shared concerns of their juxtaposition — that a mass of pedestrian college students, maybe even the occasional lead foot behind the wheel, and Placerita Canyon’s narrow, poorly lit, often privately maintained roads represent a recipe for disaster.  Several residents said it’s already a nightmare getting in and out of the canyon when things are busy. Many at the church meeting had questions about plans submitted to the city recently for a “landmark chapel,” as well as all the single-family home conversions that are changing the canyon.   A number of the single-family residences the college purchased are now filled with as many as 12 students, which can also change the feel of a neighborhood, to say nothing of its parking supply.   “From what I've heard is, they basically kind of want to take over,” Lloyd-Arnold said of the college. “They are the majority property owner now in the canyon, which makes it hard for individual property owners to express an opinion or with (the Santa Clarita) City Council when we're not the majority owners of the canyon. And that could be just a misinterpretation on my part, but I feel like once they have the corner market, we're kind of, you know, outnumbered.”  A slide from a previous Santa Clarita City Council presentation on TMU's master plan. Courtesy Changing the neighborhood  The push-back, said one resident, is because many feel families are being pushed out. “It’s unfortunate, and how they're buying up all the houses makes it so that other family neighborhoods can't move in,” said Rochelle Mitchell, who also lives near a pair of dorms near the college.  She said her family considered listing their home but pulled it back when they learned they already had an offer.  “We took it off the market because we were gonna buy another house down the street, but they took theirs off the market,” she said.  “We like this area, and it's impossible to buy another house in this area, because Master’s will swoop it up,” she said. “So we're lucky we got in when we did.”  She knows why she took her home off the market, she said. She figured that TMU was the offer, but the agent wouldn’t tell her. She and her husband didn’t want to sell to TMU, she said, and they worried if they did sell, they might not be able to find another in the area.  “Now it's all college kids, instead of maybe having where our kids could have other kids moving in, they could play with and ride their bikes with,” Mitchell said, “it's turning this canyon into just the college, and it's pushing all the homeowners out.”  The college’s 2019 plan calls for the addition of 42 single-family homes identified as the property surrounding 27126 Placerita Canyon Road, which is not expected to be for students, according to officials familiar with the project.  Williams said she’s part of the “never sell” group, knowing that with an acre of land, the property would likely be razed and rebuilt.  “If they did buy it, they’d probably tear it down and build something bigger and better,” she said, adding she also wouldn’t want to sell to TMU out of “respect for my neighbors.”  “I'm going to leave it to my family, and they will never sell it.”  The Santa Clarita City Council is expected to discuss two projects related to the Dockweiler Drive extension at the next Santa Clarita City Council meeting 6 p.m. Tuesday at City Hall.  Students walk throughout The Master's University and surrounding areas in Placerita Canyon in Newhall on Thursday, Nov. 21. Habeba Mostafa/ The Signal The post Placerita residents say TMU has them feeling ‘outnumbered’  appeared first on Santa Clarita Valley Signal.