Van Nuys Residents Fight to be 'Part of Sherman Oaks'

Some Van Nuys residents who live in the southern part of the neighborhood have embarked on a mission to annex into Sherman Oaks, the tonier Valley neighborhood to the south. The residents, who call their group 'Part of Sherman Oaks,' argue that they already shop and work in Sherman Oaks, and send their kids to Sherman Oaks schools. The two neighborhoods are both incorporated in the City of Los Angeles, but were individual cities before LA's water-related annexation in the 1940s. Their taxes go to LA and their municipal services come from LA but they often use their neighborhood name on their addresses. The area, bounded by Sepulveda Blvd, Oxnard Blvd, Burbank Blvd, and Hazeltine Ave, houses some 18,000 residents.

The southern area of Van Nuys is notably nicer than the rest of that neighborhood, so it makes sense that they would want to identify more with their ritzier sister to the south. The Metro Orange line, and the industrial train tracks that preceded it, is the defining boundary of Van Nuys' two halves. It is true that lines like railroad tracks can form unforgiving urban boundaries, but wasn't Metro's landscaped transitway supposed to cleave the area's opposing neighborhoods?

It sounds like the case of an insecure child who, having been handed into the custody of one parent after a divorce, longs to be with the other parent simply because she is prettier. The upscale residents of south Van Nuys want to rid themselves of the associations of crime, filth, and disrepair that come with that neighborhood. But calling themselves something else isn't going to get rid of those problems. Instead, if the switch happens, Van Nuys will lose some of the important funding and attention that come to that city district. Funding and attention that Sherman Oaks would hardly benefit from. Just seven years after the failed Valley secession movement, some Valley residents just can't get enough gerrymandering.