Irvine Acts on Affordable Housing : Apartments: City Council chooses three possible sites from a list of 10. There would be 200 units built, half for low-income tenants.
Joining a number of communities that use nonprofit housing corporations to meet affordable housing quotas mandated by state law, the City Council has chosen three possible sites to build a development of 100 apartments for low-income tenants.
Because candidates to live in affordable housing are defined by state law as people earning less than 80% of the county median income--it currently is $47,000 per year--Irvine’s project would include households that earn between $23,000 and $40,000 per year, in addition to poverty-level families earning $14,000 or less annually.
“In affluent Orange County, low-cost housing is really higher,” said Planning Commission Chairwoman Mary Ann Gaido, president of the Irvine Community Housing Corp., the city’s new nonprofit housing firm. “We’re trying to get people into housing that might otherwise be out of their reach.”
The housing corporation is proposing to erect its first apartment project in a partnership with Bridge Inc., a San Francisco-based, nonprofit firm that has developed 3,500 affordable homes in Northern California.
Plans call for construction of 200 apartments, 50% of which would have rents skewed for lower incomes. The rest would be rented at market rates, Gaido said.
The council’s selection of three housing areas, from a list of 10 Irvine Co.-owned sites, enables Bridge representatives to seek permission from Bridge directors for what would be the company’s first Southern California project. If the plan is approved, Bridge would submit a financial proposal to the council, at which time the top three sites would be narrowed to one, City Manager Paul O. Brady Jr. said.
The three sites selected Tuesday are a 15-acre parcel at the corner of Harvard Avenue and San Leon Drive, across from City Hall; a 24-acre parcel south of Harvard Park and near railroad tracks along Harvard Avenue; and a one-acre parcel near the Home and Garden Center at the intersection of Culver and Irvine Center drives.
“This is for our children, the people who teach our children, the workers who are here, and the ones to come,” Councilwoman Paula Werner said.
If the first project proves successful, the two sites not chosen could later be used to house affordable complexes, Brady said. The city already has $500,000 in federal community block grant funds to be used for the purchase of affordable home sites, said senior planner Maya Dunne.
Since offering a list of possible project sites last month, Irvine Co. officials have not said whether they would donate the land or sell it at a reduced rate to the nonprofit builders.
But company officials have been enthusiastic in their support of the program because they can contract with the lower-cost, nonprofit firms to meet affordable housing quotas required of the city’s private developers. In August, those quotas were upped to include 25% of all residential projects constructed after October, 1989. Since 1974, the city’s affordable housing requirements have provided 3,000 units scattered throughout the city’s market-rate projects, Gaido said.
“Nonprofit (housing firms) can get profits and tax breaks that the private sector can’t,” said Irvine Co. Vice Chairman Raymond Watson, who serves with Werner on the committee that recommended the formation of Irvine Community Housing Corp.
