Housing Panel Scraps Reviews, Will Revamp Critique Process
The San Diego Housing Commission went ahead Monday with plans to scuttle its annual progress reviews despite charges by housing advocates that the move is politically motivated.
The commission, meeting for the first time in six weeks, heatedly defended canceling the reviews drafted by the city Planning Commission, which have criticized the agency’s slowness in providing low-income housing.
“We are talking about creating something to help us do our job better. When things are being done stupid, it doesn’t help any of us,” said Councilman Ron Roberts, who has chaired the commission since January.
Roberts, commission Assistant Executive Director Elizabeth Morris and Planning Department Director Robert Spaulding said the annual reviews are out of date by the time they are completed and don’t offer explanations for the commission’s failings.
More Panel Participation
The commission, which runs scores of programs to assist housing construction and rehabilitation in the city, voted 6 to 0 to develop a new evaluation method with greater participation by the Housing Commission staff. The Planning Department will continue to draft whatever type of progress review is chosen, Spaulding said.
“It will be a very public process. We want a document of some use to us, rather than a sensational news piece and just that,” Roberts said.
Hans Jovishoff, a member of the activist Housing Coalition of San Diego, accused the commission of violating the city ordinance establishing the annual reviews, a point officials responded to with uncertainty.
Commission Executive Director Evan Becker said he didn’t know if City Council action would be required to alter the review process. Deputy City Atty. Harold Valderhaug said: “It would be appropriate for the City Council to adopt a resolution, but I don’t know what the legal effect would be if they didn’t.”
Jovishoff told the commission: “It seems clear that the Housing Commission, which had previously commented very negatively on the (most recent June) review, used its position to intimidate the Planning Department. Since they did not like the message contained in the review, they decided to kill the messenger. There are no valid policy reasons for this change. It is simply an attempt to polish your image.”
Wants Broad Review
Frank Landerville, project director for the Regional Task Force on the Homeless, said the existing, 2-year-old review system “allows across-the-board reviews and a look at how the city has done.” He urged that the new review process be equally broad.
The City Council established the Planning Department reviews to chart the city’s progress on housing goals 2 years ago, at a time when the commission was beset by allegations of mismanagement. In a later move, the mayor replaced five of the seven appointed commis
sioners with City Council members. O’Connor also sits on the commission.
The commission has not moved to adopt the second and most recent review, which declared that “the city has not been effective in providing an adequate supply of low-income affordable housing units.” The 83-page report noted that low-income units made up less than 2% of the 15,435 new units created with some public assistance from July 1, 1986, to June 30, 1987.
Becker said that the Planning Department staff members who had been working on the next annual review would instead revise the city’s master housing plan, a yardstick used by the Housing Commission to measure progress. The staff will incorporate whichever growth-management ballot proposition passes in November, if any.
Roberts said it might take more than a year before the commission and Planning Department staffs get their work “in sync” and draft a new progress review.
