‘Living Unit’ May Mean Housing Hope for Poor
San Diego would become the nation’s first home for a new form of low-income housing under a plan approved Monday by the City Council to build three demonstration “living unit” projects downtown.
Generally bigger than single-room-occupancy hotel rooms but smaller than studio apartments, “living units” combine elements of both dwellings in an effort to provide a solution to the city’s critical shortage of low-income housing.
Two people would reside in each living unit. Their combined rent, set by the city, would be $431 or $496 a month, depending on the amount of parking provided at the project. Council approval of the project Monday marked the first time the city has established a rent-controlled dwelling.
Finding Home Of Their Own
The living units “will allow two people who are, say, living in a shelter, to be able to find a place to live,” said Joan Dowd, a member of a panel composed of the leaders of the city’s community planning groups. “They can go and find a home that is their own.”
Devised by the city’s Planning Department to complement a program that encourages construction of single-room-occupancy hotels, the living unit concept required state legislation, signed into law by Gov. George Deukmejian on Jan. 1, 1988, that defined such a dwelling unit under state building codes.
On Monday, the day before the election to fill four council seats, the council considered delaying the project over concerns about allowing construction in residential areas. Instead, it settled on construction of three demonstration projects, all of which must be in the downtown Center City planning area.
No developer has proposed construction of a living unit building, according to Senior Planner Judith Lenthall, architect of the concept. But Lenthall added that availability of “tens of millions of dollars” in state subsidies beginning Jan. 1 could spur construction of the dwellings. The money was included in ballot propositions approved by voters last year, Lenthall said.
San Diego, like most major American cities, suffers from an acute shortage of affordable housing for the poor, primarily because of billions of dollars cut from federal housing programs in the 1980s.
According to the Planning Department, the city would have to produce 4,500 low-income housing units per year to accommodate recent increases in the number of poor in the city. In the last three years, developers have built 258 such units.
Living units are aimed at getting the poor off the street or out of shelters. They would allow two minimum-wage earners to pool resources to share the dwellings, which must have at least 150 square feet. In a building composed of living units, the average size of all the units can be no more than 270 square feet.
Unlike SROs, where rooms can be as small as 70 square feet and kitchen and bathroom facilities are generally communal, each living unit must contain a kitchen sink, a toilet, a counter top, a closet and electrical outlets for a refrigerator and a microwave oven. Laundry facilities and communal bathrooms are required in buildings where units do not included complete bathrooms.
Limited to Certain Areas
In comparison, under state law studio apartments must be at least 220 square feet and include complete kitchen and bathroom facilities.
Under the Planning Department proposal, living units would be allowed in areas zoned for hotels and motels and in high-density multifamily zones near major hospitals, colleges, large military installations or major transportation corridors.
The plan to evaluate three demonstration projects before allowing further construction came when council members Gloria McColl, Ed Struiksma and Bruce Henderson said they had too little knowledge of the plan.
However, even the demonstration projects will have to wait until a developer demonstrates interest in the plans.
No living units would be permitted in Barrio Logan, Golden Hill, San Ysidro or Southeast San Diego, which already have disproportionate shares of the city’s low-income housing.
