CURTIS HOWARD, an ex-serviceman and former truck driver, received a startling piece of post at his San Fernando Valley apartment recently. “EVICTION NOTICE” it read in red capital letters. “You are ordered to vacate the premises described in the writ no latter than 3/07, 2017.” Mr Howard had been homeless for several years before landing at Crest Apartments, a new affordable-housing project in Van Nuys, where he pays $60 a month. His stomach sank at the prospect of moving back to the streets. When he scrutinised the notice more closely, he realised it was fake. The paper was actually a campaign mail-out for Measure S, a proposal that will appear on ballots in Los Angeles on March 7th along with choices for the city’s mayor.

Also known as the “Neighbourhood Integrity Initiative”, the measure would pause construction on projects that require exemptions from existing rules on zoning and height for two years. It would also prohibit spot zoning, where changes are applied to small parcels of land. Proponents of the initiative oppose a mixed-use complex in West Los Angeles that would replace a car dealership, and a squiggly Frank Gehry-designed project in West Hollywood, among others. Those on the other side of the argument, who include the mayor, Eric Garcetti, say the measure would affect most new development in the city. During a recent campaign event held at the Crest Apartments, Mr Garcetti cautioned that of the 12 building sites the city has identified for low-income housing, 11 would be blocked if Measure S passes.

This is just the latest in a long string of tussles over how the City of Angels should grow without sacrificing its low-rise feel. “People who live in Los Angeles have a hard time coming to terms with the fact that they live in the second-largest city in the country. They like being in a city that feels like a suburb,” says Richard Green, at the University of Southern California. Joel Kotkin of Chapman University, who recently left Los Angeles because of congestion, sees Measure S as a “last attempt by middle class neighbourhoods to say, ‘We don’t like what’s happening’.”

Growth-wary Angelenos have long been successful at swaying city planners. After decades of rapid development, homeowners campaigned for influence over land use in the 1960s. Given more control over zoning in 1969, they used it to push for curbs on density. The slow-growth movement continued into the 1980s. In 1986 Proposition U moved to limit the construction of high-rise buildings and cut by half the allowable size of most new commercial buildings beyond downtown. Voters supported it, two to one. Writing in the Los Angeles Times in 1987, its backers explained: “We’re tired of the overdevelopment, the excessive traffic and the inadequate planning that are increasingly plaguing the people of Los Angeles.”

The Measure S camp expresses nearly identical concerns today, shuddering at the “Manhattanisation” of the city. The Los Angeles metropolitan area, which includes the cities of Long Beach and Santa Ana, is the densest in the country. But the city itself is far less dense than other comparably sized cities. It has a mere 8,474 people per square mile; New York has more than 28,250. As of 2014, nearly half the city was zoned for single-family housing.

This is in large part the result of shifts in zoning rules over the past 50 years. In 1960 Los Angeles had a population of 2.5m and a capacity for 10m residents. By 2010 the city’s population had swelled to nearly 4m, but zoning and legislation had reduced its capacity to 4.3m. Increasing density is the only way out (other than pestilence, or a crime wave, perhaps), but weaning Angelenos away from single-family housing will be tough. “A good place to start is for politicians never again to utter the words ‘preserve neighbourhood character’,” says Jan Breidenbach of the University of Southern California. “In reality what they’re saying is, ‘Keep out’.”