AFFORDABLE HOUSING: STATE GOALS V. LOCAL REALITY
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STEVE WESTON
and
THOMAS COHEN

Weston Benshoof Rochefort Rubalcava & MacCuish, LLP

1. Housing & Affordable Housing Crises

2. State Legislation

3. Factors Worsening The Crises

4. Steps To Make Affordable Housing Work

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1. HOUSING & AFFORDABLE HOUSING CRISES

2. STATE LEGISLATION

To address the problem, state legislation requires California cities and counties to encourage, induce and sometimes exact affordable housing as a condition of granting development permits for market-rate housing.

Meanwhile, the cities and counties have responded to the legislation, and the underlying need, through numerous devices:

- (i) Incentives such as density bonuses are given to developers who construct a percentage of their new residential products at prices affordable to very low and low income wage earners.

- (ii) Cities have enacted inclusionary housing ordinances which generally require developers, as a condition of project approval, to either (1) set aside residential units dedicated to affordable housing; (2) build affordable units elsewhere in the City; or (3) pay an in-lieu fee.

(iii) City adopted growth management ordinances, the principal purpose of which are to slow growth, often exempt affordable housing projects in order to encourage this type of development.

3. FACTORS WORSENING THE CRISES

The inducements above have the potential to overcome developers' reluctance to build affordable housing. However, the irony is that it is not developers, but citizen homeowners, who are the primary obstacles to affordable housing. Local elected officials, accordingly, find themselves torn between state mandates to provide affordable housing and pressure from neighbors fearful of property value diminution and crime.

The affordable housing crunch has been worsened by recent "slow growth" and "no-growth" voter initiatives. These laws have forced cities and counties to largely cease expansion at their boundaries, and instead look inward to in-fill parcels for new housing. Because such in-fill development crowds the urban core, concern about property values and crime are particularly acute, and these concerns become the basis for community opposition to new housing, and particularly affordable housing.

A. Example of Community Opposition's Impact.

A case study frames the problem perfectly. Cabrillo Economic Development Corporation, a private non profit development organization in Ventura County, has developed 11 affordable projects totaling 773 units of both for sale and family rental in an otherwise affluent county. In 1992, the City of San Buenaventura selected Cabrillo as a partner to develop a 135 unit mixed income detached single family and apartment housing project for affordable family rental. The project was to include a park, child care and a neighborhood learning center. The City directed the nonprofit to a specific location within the city, and set aside funds to subsidize the project.

Cabrillo spent four years in the planning and pre-development phase, including two years of extensive neighborhood outreach and project meetings. Yet, a neighborhood group relentlessly campaigned to kill the project. In response to this campaign, in 1996, the City Council recanted the previously committed funding, thereby terminating the project.

As the preceding case illustrates, legislative fixes are helpful but they are often not enough to offset local politics. Therefore, the work must be done locally, to change the attitudes of citizens and elected officials who necessarily make decisions responsive to affordable housing needs.

B. Example of Positive Community Involvement - City of Thousand Oaks.

A more hopeful scenario was played out in the city of Thousand Oaks, also in Ventura County. In a public/private affordable housing venture known as Camelot, the City appointed a blue ribbon committee to do pre-development planning on a City-owned parcel. The committee sent out Requests for Proposals ("RFPs") to the building industry. The Planning Commission reviewed the RFPs and made recommendations to the City Council, which approved the project and selected a private development company to construct the units. This process worked well because of the community involvement and support through all facets of the planning process.

As the Thousand Oaks example shows, affordable housing can work if the rights steps are taken.

(i) Primary among these is outreach, education and consensus building by City officials at the preplanning stage. Small neighborhood meetings are ideal. In this context, neighbors' concerns are heard, and City officials have an opportunity to educate the neighbors on the social importance of in-fill development.

(ii) In addition, affordable housing requires political backbone. Politicians must have the resolve not to simply default to project denial at the first signs of neighbor opposition.

(iii) Finally, there are the developers. Innovative, creative, perhaps even arrogant, developers have what it takes to make a difficult project work. In the case of affordable housing, they just need a helping hand.

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