i had to deal with the city of glendale over a zoning issue several years ago. we had a landlord that wanted to raze our beautiful, spacious 37 unit apartment complex in order to build a 95 unit complex on the same footprint. many of us spent months going to city council meetings trying to persuade the council to give us a more desirable zoning rating. we lost 3-2. the three who voted to keep it zoned as it was, allowing the owner to bulldoze? all were involved in construction outside of their political office. all three were armenian, too, which may have played in to the equation of providing more housing for more armenian immigrants (that statement sounded a lot less racist in my head).
in the end, the landlord raised illegally the rent of those who protested, but the city refused our evidence. most of those opposed ended up moving out. the building still hasn't been torn down, for some reason, but they wouldn't replace the pool heater and kept raising the rent, so it was time to leave on our own terms.