Five years after the roll-out of a plan that is anticipated to increase density in Warner Center, a San Fernando Valley councilman said he is seeking ways to encourage or require developers to construct affordable housing.

The need for affordable housing has become more urgent since a development blueprint was adopted for the Warner Center, an area often billed as the “downtown” of the Valley, Councilman Bob Blumenfield said this week.

Especially necessary are housing that teachers, firefighters and other working people can afford, he said.

“We’re in desperate need of workforce housing,” Blumenfield said.

And this comes amid what is anticipated to be a construction boom in Warner Center.

“We’re seeing a lot of units being approved in Warner Center, which will help tremendously to fill that housing gap,” Blumenfield said.

But there needs to be more tools to ensure the housing that gets built can accommodate people of mixed incomes, he said.

“The goal is to have mixed-income housing in the Warner Center area, where people can live, work and play in the same area,” he said.

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The Warner Center 2035 plan, which was adopted in 2013 and dictates development rules in the 1.5-square-mile district in the southwest Valley neighborhoods of Woodland Hills and Canoga Park, is “silent on the need for affordable housing,” Blumenfield said.

While there are no additional affordable housing incentives or requirements in the Warner Center plan, existing state law and citywide incentives can still apply to the area.

To start the conversation on bringing more affordable housing to Warner Center, Blumenfield introduced a motion earlier this month calling for a report from staff on whether it would be possible to require or encourage developers that want to build in there to build affordable housing.

The motion also comes as Blumenfield and city leaders are pitching Warner Center as the site of Amazon’s second headquarters.

City officials have typically relied on incentives that allow developers to exceed density and height limits or waive certain other cumbersome requirements, to motivate developers into adding affordable units into their projects.

But city officials now also have freer reign to outright mandate that developers make a portion of their projects’ residential units affordable, through a process called “inclusionary housing,” after a state law known as AB 1505 went into effect last September.

Warner Center, which features a stop for the Orange Line bus and the Westfield Topanga mall and The Village, has long been known for its many office buildings. The area also has many apartment buildings, with more expected to join them under the Warner Center 2035 plan that was adopted in 2013.

The Warner Center plan, which has an overarching goal of making the area more transit-oriented and pedestrian-friendly, is expected to increase the number of residential units to 20,000, up from the 9,000 that had been there in 2013.

The plan sets aside 32 million square feet given to residential development and limits commercial development to 30 million square feet.