A new theme for the big park: Have a heart

American history abounds with stories of poor people doing the grunt work by day and disappearing into the mist when night falls. Another of those stories likely will be told tonight when the Anaheim City Council debates whether to support a residential development in the resort district near Disneyland that would allow for low-cost housing.

In other words, housing that the maids and janitors and cooks and ride operators and busboys who keep Disneyland up and running could afford.

Disney and at least two council members oppose the idea, saying the area is better suited for tourist-related development that precludes low-end housing. Two members favor it, and the decisive vote will come from member Lucille Kring.

I’d love to sound the trumpet on this one for the working poor, who never seem to catch a break. If you count my grandmother who worked in a bakery and my grandfather who was a railroad company janitor, I come from that kind of stock.

But I can’t forcefully argue that Disneyland or California Adventure workers must live in proximity to the park. That’d be a coup for them, but there’s nothing in the U.S. Constitution that says poor people are entitled to a short commute.

So I won’t make a legal case for them.

But I would argue -- to Anaheim and the Disney Co. -- to look beyond zoning changes and charter amendments and do the right thing for the people who help make their city tick.

Anaheim and Disney, it seems to me, owe as much to the poor as almost any other city you could imagine. Mayor Curt Pringle himself recently wrote that tourism is the economic engine that powers Anaheim. Once you get past the Imagineers in the Disney offices, who shovels the coal into that engine?

It’s the working poor.

They deserve consideration. To borrow a well-traveled phrase, attention must be paid.

And there’s no reason it can’t be done, no matter what the council does tonight.

It would fit a good-versus-evil scenario to portray Anaheim as the city with a cold heart. Luckily, that is not true.

The city has shown its heart in recent years, with impetus from council members Lorri Galloway and Bob Hernandez and former colleague Richard Chavez. But the rest of City Hall didn’t kick and scream.

I asked Scott Darrell, who runs a countywide coalition that supports housing for low-wage workers, where he’d rank Anaheim. “Of our 35 jurisdictions [in Orange County], they’re No. 2, right behind Irvine,” he says.

That wouldn’t have been the case a decade ago, he says, but the city has redefined itself, even as it has dolled itself up. “They’ve definitely come from back to front in a very short period of time,” Darrell says, noting that the city has had both available land and available political will to make the transition.

So, kudos to Anaheim.

As for Disney? Well, let’s be kind and note that it’s a private company and is bound only by the law and its own sense of civic duty.

But even that raises a question: If your company has thrived off the sweat of poor people’s labors, why isn’t affordable housing one of the company’s hallmarks?

I don’t give a hoot if the housing is in the resort district or not. But it ought to be somewhere in the city. Why isn’t Disney in the forefront of the low-income housing movement in Anaheim? You’d think gratitude would be reason enough.

To my surprise, Darrell isn’t hung up on whether Disneyland workers live in the resort district, but he thinks they should have quality housing within a reasonable distance to the theme parks and with access to public transportation -- often a necessity for workers.

He won’t even say that Disney has a moral obligation to help with it. But, with an eye to the vote tonight, he says the company ought to at least “get out of the way” if it isn’t willing to assume a strong role in expanding low-cost housing in Anaheim.

No doubt, Disney hopes Kring gives it the third vote it wants to scuttle the residential plan near the parks.

Even if she does, that shouldn’t end things.

In a world where corporate giants actually showed goodwill and appreciation to the people who help them prosper, it would just be the start of something big in Anaheim.