L.A. Officials Say Court Edict Perils Housing for Poor

Disappointed Los Angeles housing officials on Tuesday decried a state Supreme Court decision that requires voter approval for specific low-rent public housing projects, saying that the ruling is likely to result in long delays for future projects.

However, considering that the city’s Housing Authority received federal funding for only 23 new low-rent housing units in 1988, authorities admitted that the decision would not have an immediate impact. County housing officials said it is unclear how the ruling will affect up to 3,300 low-rent housing units it owns or now has under construction.

“It’s very upsetting that no real consideration is being given to the poor who need housing and it just exacerbates the problems of the homeless,” said Joseph Gelletich, director of housing development for the city Housing Authority. “Now if there is organized opposition to a specific project, they can just marshal their resources and kill it, forcing us to start all over again.”

Details a Requirement

The court ruled 4 to 3 Monday that municipal officials must disclose the specific details for low-rent housing projects, including the size, design and site of the developments. The decision invalidated a 38-year-old practice in which municipalities were only required to give a general description of the project and the number of units to be built before seeking voter approval.

Few large-scale public housing projects have been built in recent years, partly because of severe cutbacks in federal funding and also because many experts no longer believe in the concept of housing the poor in self-contained communities.

Los Angeles voters had authorized up to 30,000 units of new low-cost housing but there are no specific plans to build on such a large scale.

Even so, city attorneys who handled the case on which the court ruled this week said the broad ruling could have lasting implications for public housing in California.

“Even if you can only get funding for 30 or 40 new units, that’s still better than zero,” said Dov Lesel, the deputy city attorney who argued the case before the court. “This means we’ve taken a giant step backward. Any project delays will turn off funding sources who don’t want to invest money in projects that they know might be defeated.

“As far as I can tell from the decision, this basically closes the door on any future low-cost public housing.”

Written Dissent

Lesel pointed to the dissent written by Justice John A. Arguelles, who said that cities often will be unable to gain voter approval fast enough to secure already scarce federal funds when they are available.

The suit, brought by Berkeley residents, challenged a provision of the state Constitution known as Article 34, which was approved by California voters in 1950. The provision said local referendums must be held on low-rent housing projects proposed by government agencies.

Gelletich said that since most the low-rent housing projects are built in minority communities, the court’s ruling could allow racial prejudice to play a role in future housing referendums.

Delays, Higher Costs

At the very least, the decision “adds another layer of citizen approval that will delay projects,” said Lester Berg, a housing official for the city’s Community Redevelopment Agency. “And the more you delay it the more it cost. By the time a project is ready for construction, you may find that it costs more than the funds available.”

Charles Elsesser, a lawyer with the Legal Aid Foundation of Los Angeles, which represents low-income tenants, said that if a few projects are defeated by voters, “the result will be that after a while you probably won’t see too many elections. Once you begin to lengthen the time it takes to get these projects going, you’ll destroy them.

“It would seem that the judges don’t understand the effect of the housing crisis. What they’ve done is catastrophic.”