Mugged by the California HCD
by Dale Tyler

I went to the joint City Council and Planning Commission workshop held on November 15, 2006. The usual supporters of affordable housing were there in support of their meal ticket. Also present was Cathy Creswell from the State of Califorina Housing and Community Development.(HCD) department. She was there to deliver the message that they don't really care about Mission Viejo or the people who live here, but simply wanted the city to promise to build 94 more low income housing units “No matter what it takes”.

She told the council and planning commission that they must approve one or more sites that will hold such housing and that the city cannot put any requirements on what is built, even to the extent that the buildings need not meet any city standards or requirements that apply to every other development in the city.

Only one resident spoke on the matter, our own Carl Schultess. He told the Council and Commission that we don't need or want any low income housing in Mission Viejo. Instead, he recommended looking at other ways to satisfy the poverty support system. Mission Viejo residents need to wake up and tell the city what they think we should do about this problem. In fact, the public, council members and commission members was invited to send their ideas and specific plans on how to solve this problem to the city at communitydev@cityofmissionviejo.org. Ideas should be specific and must be submitted by December 1.

At the start of the meeting, the city staff gave a report on the background of the low-income housing problem and identified three possible sites that we could put more low income units. One was near the old Kmart site on Los Alisos (Site A), one near the Mission Viejo Country Club (Site B) and one on city owned property near the Animal Shelter (Site C).

One problem with the meeting was Councilmember MacLean's refusal to discuss other means for solving this problem, including legal challenges to the state and possible swaps of housing requirements with other cities. Others, like Brad Morton and Richard Schweinberg, who are apparently more familiar with the law than our feckless City Attorney Curley, made a number of suggestions that looked promising. Also speaking up were Gail Reavis who apparently has quite a list of alternative sites . Trish Kelly spoke against site C, saying that there were too many low-income developments south of Oso, which is quite correct.

J.P. Ledesma. pointed out that even if we built at the maximum density on all three sites using the customary 15% set aside for low income units, we would still be short of the 94 unit goal. Ledesma suggested that we might dedicate an area for mostly or all low income housing. If the area was big enough, we could build enough number of units to satisfy the state's goal. Also, we will have even more units assigned to us in July 2007 and then again a few years later. The demands of the poverty supporters will never stop,

How about this for a solution that would build enough units to satisfy the poverty supporters? What about finding a site in a remote area of the city, buy it (getting the money by selling the site near the animal shelter) and then construct walls around the property at least 15 feet high with a locked gate. Next, we would place 94 units of manufactured housing inside. I would estimate that we could buy used single wide house trailers for less than $30K each. The units could then be rented to those who qualify based on income per the state guidelines. To offset any possible crime problem, we could put a sheriff's substation at the entrance to the property and require random inspections of units to ensure illegal activity or overcrowding does not become a problem. Another benefit would be that as the state forces more low income units down our throats, we could simply add more manufactured housing. Now, it is clear that this housing stock would be far below the standards for the rest of Mission Viejo. However, if the state of California insists on our providing low income units, then we should not feel obligated to make them luxury homes.

One problem that I see is that this type of concentrated low income housing has the potential to become a slum, but careful supervision and restrictive occupancy rules that the residents would have to agree to in order to move in should prevent this. Also, if in fact the residents are teachers, police and firefighters as is promised by the purveyors of poverty, then there would be an even lower likelihood of problems . Another problem is that the city would have to come up with all of the money for this project, although we might be eligible for money from the state. The rents that the residents pay would mostly cover the continuing expenses of operating the area. We might even be able to get a non-profit to operate the site on behalf of the city. It is also possible that not all of the units would be rented because of the lack of qualified candidates, In that case we would still have met the state's goal.

This extreme alternative or something like it will be needed if the city council does not have the strength to challenge the housing code in court. It would put the city in the position of being a socialist provider of housing, quite the opposite of what I and most Mission Viejo residents believe. It might be just what we need to point out the stupidity of the state's housing code.