No Mid-Price Condos for Pricy Section of Redondo : Housing: Neighbors object to $170,000 units in an area where houses cost as much as $400,000, while the mayor wants lower income people helped first.
A proposal to build condominiums for middle-income workers in an expensive section of North Redondo Beach failed Tuesday before the City Council amid protests from prospective neighbors that it would crowd the community and devalue property.
The project was favored by three of the council members but vetoed by Mayor Brad Parton. Parton, who last month had unsuccessfully championed a program for the homeless, said the city should shelter its neediest citizens before creating moderate-income housing.
The idea, initially brought up by the council Aug. 1, was to put affordable housing on city lots at the southwest corner of Flagler and Huntington lanes. The proposal before the council called for building a five-unit condominium project with two- and three-bedroom townhouses, on the land that had been acquired for a defunct road-widening project. The units would be sold for about $170,000 apiece to families of moderate means--which, under federal guidelines, amounts to a $45,600 annual income for a family of four. That is slightly less than the average income in Redondo Beach, which is $52,000 for a family of that size.
But in the last few months, as the council prepared to request bids on the project, vehement complaints arose from the homeowners nearby.
“We’re very upset, we’re very angry and we don’t want this in our neighborhood,” resident Sue Wellerstein told the council Tuesday.
“Many of us came to Redondo Beach with very high hopes. We worked very hard and struggled to afford these $300,000 and $400,000 houses, and we don’t want $170,000 houses in our neighborhood.”
Other residents fretted that the project would cause parking problems and add to density in the already cramped area.
Councilman Ron Cawdrey argued that the project would be worthwhile because the people living in the units would have pride of ownership, and council members Stevan Colin and Barbara Doerr noted that it would help first-time buyers get a foothold in the real estate market.
But Councilwoman Kay Horrell, a real estate agent, expressed concern at what would happen should the families be too poor to keep up their house payments, and Councilman Terry Ward called the proposal “economic nonsense.”
At Parton’s behest, the staff was sent back to study the feasibility of selling the North Redondo property and using the money to buy an apartment house that might be converted to low-income housing.
