Commentary: Demolishing Motor Inn could create ‘motel refugees’

The city of Costa Mesa is poised to approve a developer’s plans to demolish the 236-room Costa Mesa Motor Inn and replace it with 224 luxury apartments. None of these new apartments will be affordable for the motel’s current low-income residents.

Because Costa Mesa has so little affordable housing, the Motor Inn has served for years as last-resort housing for the city’s poor. Working families with children, disabled people and seniors live at the Motor Inn as a last step before homelessness. If the city approves the current plans that include no low-income housing to replace the motel rooms being lost, hundreds of motel residents will be pushed to the streets. The haunting image of “motel refugees” flits across our city’s collective conscience.

That terrible scenario of hundreds of low-income motel residents becoming homeless does not have to materialize. The aim of the “motel refugees” protest is to convince the City Council to use the tools it already has under state law and its municipal code to require the developer to include low-income housing in the new apartment complex. We are asking the city to require 20% of the new apartments to be affordable for low- and very low-income households — the same households that will be displaced when the motel shuts down.

In a slight concession to the city’s need for affordable housing, the developer has offered to make 20 units — less than 10% of the project — affordable for moderate-income households (families of four, making up to $87,200 annually). But moderate-income families will not be displaced when the motel shuts down. It is the poor who will lose their housing. Moderate-income housing does not address the problem the proposed development creates.

As explained below, requiring the developer to include lower-income housing as a percentage of the proposed development is entirely consistent with the law. It is also an undeniable moral imperative here.

The motel property is currently zoned for commercial uses. Consequently, the desired change to “planned development residential — high density” will require both a General Plan amendment and a rezoning.

This is where things get sticky: To accommodate the developer’s desire to build 224 luxury apartments, the city is offering to approve a “site specific density” of 54 dwelling units per acre. That density is 170% higher than the maximum allowed under the city’s zoning laws.

Under the Costa Mesa city code, a “planned development residential-high density” development can have 20 dwelling units per acre. Higher density is possible under the city code if the developer applies for a “density bonus.” Density bonuses are a tool created by state law (Senate Bill 1818) to encourage the construction of affordable housing. A density bonus allows increased density and other development incentives only if the developer commits to providing a certain percentage of affordable homes for lower-income households.

Strikingly, the luxury apartments planned for the motel site do not rely on a legally approved “density bonus.” Instead, the developer, with the city’s blessing, is seeking a fancifully named “density incentive” that will give the developer a “site specific density” of 54 dwelling units per acre — nearly triple the density allowed under existing zoning laws — resulting in 141 extra apartments, without providing a single low-income unit. In other words, the developer will reap a huge financial windfall while the city has a net loss of 236 units of de facto affordable housing.

This “site specific density” is the mechanism the City Council majority has used repeatedly over the last few years. Essentially, the city is allowing developers to enjoy the benefit of density bonus law (increased density) without paying the clearly intended price: including low-income housing in the new development.

There is too much at stake to allow the council majority to get away with this yet again. Hundreds of units of last-resort housing will be lost when the Motor Inn shuts down. It would be a piercing social injustice for the city to allow the developer to build 224 luxury apartments on the motel site without including low-income housing as a percentage of the project.

Unless the city changes course, hundreds of Costa Mesa residents, including families with children, will become homeless. We will have motel refugees on our streets.

Hoping to avert this catastrophe, affordable housing advocates will stage a 90-minute protest rally on the sidewalk in front of the Costa Mesa Motor Inn, 2277 Harbor Blvd., at 5 p.m. on Thursday. We are asking the city to follow the law and require the developer to make 20% of the new apartments affordable to low and very low-income households. Join us!

KATHY ESFAHANI is writing on behalf of the Costa Mesa Affordable Housing Coalition.