Slow-Growth Movement Ebbing, Builders Told : Lawyer Tells Industry Group That Foes Will Be More Inclined to Compromise

Last year Southern California’s home-building industry seemed beset on every side with slow-growth initiatives pending in Orange, Riverside and San Diego counties.

But the political support for those initiatives turned out to be soft, and with the help of some savvy consultants and millions of dollars in campaign contributions, the builders beat most of them.

Two initiatives that did pass, in San Juan Capistrano and San Clemente, have been overturned in court. The San Juan Capistrano initiative was declared unconstitutional by an Orange County Superior Court judge on Tuesday and the San Clemente measure was tossed out on the same grounds in October.

Measure A Defeated

And voters in the county defeated a countywide growth-control initiative, Measure A, in the June, 1988, primary.

With some of the wind knocked out of the movement’s sail, the home-building industry is decidedly more upbeat now. That was evident Friday at a legal clinic for builders and their lawyers put on by the Building Industry Assn. of Southern California, a trade association and lobby for home builders.

In light of the past year’s events, many slow-growth advocates are more likely to be willing to compromise, said a lawyer for the industry.

“The growth-control movement has lots of smoke and mirrors to it,” said Cary D. Lowe, general counsel for Coussoulis Development Co. in Redlands. “There is not as much of a groundswell behind it as we were led to believe.”

Before joining Coussoulis recently, Lowe worked for one of the law firms hired by the building industry to challenge the Orange County slow-growth initiatives.

Spoke to 125

Lowe told about 125 industry members that he thinks the slow-growth movement probably will fade away as a political force, much as a once-powerful rent-control movement did 10 years ago.

“The tenant-rights movement of the decade ago went from a local, scattered movement to winning some battles in the state Legislature.

“But it led to a balanced result, a compromise, and everybody felt they got something out of it. I see the growth-control movement going the same way.”

More than 100 slow-growth initiatives and referendums went on ballots around the state last year, and 57% won. Lowe suggested that percentage may get smaller in the future.

“There’s one difference between the tenant-rights movement and slow growth,” he said. “And that is that growth control is not a housing-rights movement in any respect. In fact, it’s the opposite.”

He predicted that the slow-growth movement will lose the support of unions, advocates of housing for the poor and other groups. This new political and legal environment will have two results, Lowe said in a subsequent interview.

Slow-growth advocates may be more likely to compromise with builders, possibly finding common ground in so-called balanced-growth plans, such as the one now wending its way through Orange County governmental levels for final approval.

And the movement is already changing its tactics, Lowe said. In Riverside County, where Coussoulis does lots of business, slow-growth advocates have based many of their recent attacks on development on such issues as protecting endangered species rather than on grounds of growth and development grounds, he said.