Use This Version : Hidden Hills Wants Low-Cost Houses Outside : The Suburbs: The City Council asks its attorney to check on the legality of putting a required senior citizens complex beyond its gates.

The Hidden Hills City Council is investigating whether it can satisfy legal demands for affordable housing by building a senior citizens residential project but keeping it outside the boundaries of the wealthy, gated city.

Council members asked the town’s attorney Monday night to find out whether keeping the 46-unit senior citizens’ project outside the city boundaries would satisfy a court settlement agreed to by the city in May.

The settlement was to resolve a lawsuit against the city by Los Angeles County and a private attorney over the city’s use of a redevelopment agency to fund a flood-control project. State law requires that a portion of redevelopment funds be spent on affordable housing and requires all cities to provide for affordable housing in their planning and zoning laws.

Hidden Hills, a community of about 2,000, is considering working with a developer to build low-cost housing that would meet the terms of the settlement.

The proposal encompasses 25 acres adjacent to the city boundary that could be annexed by the city. The developer, Danny Howard, would build nine luxury houses on 20 acres inside the town’s gates. The houses would be accessible from the town’s network of private roads. But the remaining five acres, which would include the affordable-housing project and a small commercial area, would be outside the gates and use public access roads.

The plan has generated opposition among some Hidden Hills residents, who say they fear affordable housing might detract from the city’s image as a community of expensive single-family homes.

On Monday night, the council instructed City Atty. Wayne K. Lemieux to ask a Los Angeles Superior Court judge to modify the settlement to allow the city to avoid annexing the affordable-housing area while still using redevelopment funds to help pay for the project.

The county Board of Supervisors, as one of the plaintiffs, also would have to approve such a modification of the settlement.

But whether that change in the plan would quell the opposition among residents is uncertain. The City Council, concerned about the outcry, has agreed to poll the residents early next year for advice on how to proceed. The issue of how the poll’s questions will be worded seemed to spark as much controversy at the council meeting Monday as the housing proposal itself.

The council voted down a set of four questions suggested Monday by an advisory committee of Mayor Chris K. Van Peski, Councilman H. Brian Herdeg and four residents. The key question among the four asked, “Do you want the City Council to adopt a plan which complies with state law but does not require the building of new low-cost housing?”

Some council members said the questions were biased, apparently aimed at generating replies opposed to the housing project.

“These questions are so loaded it isn’t even funny. . . . That insults my intelligence, frankly,” Councilman Warren H. McCament said.

“Your insulted intelligence insults my intelligence,” Herdeg replied.

The council later approved a different set of poll questions, which supporters said will give respondents more information about the project before asking for an opinion.