City Snubs Low-Cost Housing Scheme

A short-lived idea in Mission Viejo to pay a neighboring community to provide its share of low-cost housing has renewed debate on whether the master-planned city is doing enough to create such housing.

Mission Viejo, where property values run high and land is scarce, has been reprimanded by the state for giving short shrift to low-cost housing.

Last year, city officials angered housing advocates by twice rejecting plans for an apartment complex that would have fulfilled the city’s low-cost housing obligation.

The housing debate in upscale Mission Viejo has been rekindled by an idea quietly raised two months ago by Planning Commissioner Brad Morton, who suggested the city find another community to shoulder its low-cost housing responsibility.

In an e-mail to Councilman Frank Ury, Morton wrote that it would be a “real coup to jettison our redevelopment housing burden” by transferring funds that are intended to subsidize low-cost housing. He suggested that neighboring Rancho Mission Viejo -- a planned but undeveloped community -- take care of the city’s low-cost housing obligation.

State Sen. Joe Dunn (D-Santa Ana), a leading advocate of low-cost housing, said the e-mail was a disturbing sign.

“It reflects the fact that certain city officials in Mission Viejo have no intention of complying with the state law as it pertains to affordable housing requirements,” Dunn said. “For a long time, Mission Viejo has sat high on a list of cities that have tried everything available to avoid building affordable housing for their residents.”

Roughly 30% of California cities do not meet housing requirements, said Lucy Dunn, the state director of housing and community development. She is not related to the senator.

This week, the Mission Viejo Planning Commission began studying mixed-use housing, a combination of residential and commercial or industrial use of property, as a way to ease the shortage -- an effort that housing advocates and housing officials say the city has been slow to undertake.

The notion of one city shifting a portion of its redevelopment profits to another town is not without precedent.

In 1999, Indian Wells, reluctant to build affordable housing near its swank desert resorts, gave $1.5 million to the rural, farmworker city of Coachella for low-cost housing. But weeks later, Coachella officials backed away after a state agency warned that the city was on shaky legal ground.

Morton’s idea surfaced in a memo two months ago and never gained traction at City Hall.

As they have across the state, real estate values have risen sharply in Mission Viejo, where the median home price is $710,000.

Low-cost housing is restricted to households that earn less than the median income, which in Orange County is $75,700.

The affordability rate is determined on a weighted scale. A family of four, for instance, would have to earn less than 80% of the median income to qualify for low-income housing.

Cities that fail to comply with state housing laws are vulnerable to litigation and are ineligible for some state grants. Dunn has introduced five bills since 2000 aimed at adding teeth to state housing rules; all have died, he said.

“Affordable housing is our responsibility and not that of an adjacent community,” said Councilman Lance MacLean, who dismissed Morton’s proposal as a “ridiculous suggestion.”

“It’s disappointing and embarrassing to have this elitism coming out,” said Planning Commissioner Chandra Kraut, who learned of the memo Monday. “It breaks my heart.”

Morton, however, sees his plan as a viable solution to his city’s task of meeting low-cost housing requirements.

“It seems like a very efficient situation for cities like Mission Viejo that are built out,” Morton said Tuesday.

“And Rancho Mission Viejo is building thousands of homes in that area, so they could use the money. Mission Viejo is like many cities, their redevelopment money just sits in a fund and is not being spent.”

Scott Darrell, executive director of the Kennedy Commission, an Orange County nonprofit low-cost housing group, has been working with Mission Viejo officials to provide more housing opportunities for low-income workers.

Darrell said he was “shocked” by the overall tone of Morton’s letter.

“It’s amazing the lengths they will take and the amount of creativity they will put into avoiding meeting their affordable-housing requirement, as opposed to putting that energy into housing their work force,” Darrell said. “They continue to not move forward with any serious plan, projects or any meaningful policy changes.”

The e-mail was also sent to City Manager Dennis Wilberg and Charles E. Wilson, Mission Viejo’s director of community development. Wilson said he saw the memo and immediately deleted it.

“I don’t think it reflects the city’s position,” Wilson said.

Cathy Creswell, deputy director of state housing policy development, warned the city in June 2004 that it was not creating housing opportunities for residents across the economic spectrum. Creswell said Morton’s proposal was surprising.

“We are hoping that Mission Viejo is going to be working aggressively to try and provide more affordable-housing opportunities,” she said. “If they’re not moving in that direction, we would find that disappointing.”

The city of 100,000 drew attention to itself last year when its Planning Commission twice rejected Aliso Ridge, a proposed 168-unit apartment complex that would have met the state’s low-cost housing standards.

Based on various formulas that factor in the cost of housing and median family income, Mission Viejo is 154 units shy of its low-cost housing obligation.

The proposal was strongly resisted by neighbors and lacked sufficient support from the council.

Darrell said mixed-use housing, which the city is researching, did not address the real problem.

“Allowing residential development on commercial land is of no help whatsoever,” he said.

“Perhaps it opens more sites in the city, but it does nothing to address the real barriers -- the Planning Commission and the City Council having the lack of political will to approve projects because of the objections of a small number of people.”