Low-Income Housing Plan, 1 Year Old, Is Finalist in National Competition

A city-operated program geared to preserving affordable housing for San Diego’s low-income population celebrated its first anniversary Thursday, just one month after being named a finalist in a national competition that recognizes innovation in dealing with social and economic problems.

The Department of Planning’s Single Room Occupancy Residential Hotel Program, formally adopted by the City Council one year ago, helped to change zoning and building codes. It also provided financial incentives to encourage the private sector to rehabilitate and build single-room occupancy hotels for low-income people, according to Judy Lenthall, senior planner.

“Our program was the answer to what the department was going to do about losing so many SRO units to demolition, while the number of low-income, single persons who were seeking housing was increasing,” Lenthall said. “It’s great that we were selected among the nation’s top governmental innovations for the year,” she said, “but the real test comes in the program’s applicability in other cities as well. And we think the chances of it being so are great.”

500 Rooms Now Ready

Since the program’s inception, Lenthall estimates that more than 500 rooms have been completed, 700 are under construction and applications for another 800 have been submitted.

The “Innovations in State and Local Government Awards Program,” sponsored jointly by the Ford Foundation and the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University, seeks to identify a broad range of new and unusual approaches that can serve as models for other areas, according to the foundation’s Andrea Taylor.

Ten award winners will be selected by a national committee from among the 25 finalists, chosen from about 1,000 entries. Each winner will receive a $100,000 grant for its program. The awards will be announced Sept. 30.

Also among this year’s 25 finalists was Escondido’s program to finance $26 million in sewer- and water-facility improvements. The program was cited for its attempt to be effective without incurring public debt or raising user fees by selling future capacity in the system to raise cash. More than $100 million is expected to be generated by the program over the next 20 years.

Former Michigan Gov. William G. Milliken, chairman of the selection committee, said, “In jurisdictions throughout the country, responses to pressing social and economic needs reveal government as a resourceful catalyst in offering valuable program models.”

According to Liz Gianakis, program coordinator at the Kennedy School, California has had at least one finalist in the competition each year.

Three other Southern California programs are in this year’s final round: the Long Beach Department of Public Works for its automation of citizens’ service requests; the county of San Bernardino’s Bethlehem House for its comprehensive treatment of domestic violence; and the Ventura County district attorney’s Parental Child Abduction Recovery Unit, which intervenes when a child is abducted by a parent who is not granted custody in a divorce settlement.